For the summer, we recommend that the kids who are newer to running focus on running and walking for 15-20 minutes on Mondays & Wednesdays when they can't make it to practice. We recommend the same for everyone on their own on Fridays, when we don't host in-person practices.

Mom & Dad, we've had a lot of parents get into running themselves by pacing their kids on some runs, so lace up the shoes and share those Friday miles with them! Focus on an easy pace where they can maintain a conversation the entire time. At this pace, their body makes adaptations that will make running easier in the long term. (If your child is into the sciences, check out the book Daniels Running Formula by Dr Jack Daniels - it's high level but pretty easy to read and includes lots of info on all of this, like how your body develops more capillaries when running at this conversation pace, allowing your body to transport oxygen to your muscles more effectively. Geeky runner info for those looking for it!)

For those experienced runners in the club, I would recommend 15-30 minute runs for now. They can throw in some basic fartlek workouts if they'd like to pick up some speed. A fartlek workout is really simple - they just need to alternate between an easy pace and a fast pace. You can do this by time (run easy for a minute, hard for 30 seconds) or by landmarks (sprint to the next lamp post, jog slowly to the next one, repeat).  

Any of the kids who have gone beyond this level and want to push farther, contact me or talk with your coaches. On the more advanced end, like with alums of our spring program, details can vary dramatically, so it's best to go through things in person. I'm a fan of limiting any extreme miles at this age and focusing on consistency and building some speed, but the specifics will vary. For the kids who have done fall or spring Grasshoppers, who are used to the longer workouts, we'll still use the summer as a lower mileage time to build a base for those longer fall XC runs to come.  

Exact practices will vary a bit by location, but most of our locations will start with a light run on day 1 followed by a time trial on day 2. At our larger locations, we'll use time trials to break the kids into training pods so that young runners of similar abilities can train together.