ESPNHS Track & XC

What do coaches Rob Hipwood of Los Alamos High in New Mexico, Corbin Talley of Davis High in Utah and David Christian of Broughton High in North Carolina have in common?

In addition to producing state championship teams that have also made their marks nationally, the three coaches were all Foot Locker cross country finalists in their high school days, as well as outstanding college runners. While it is
logical that top runners would fill the nation’s coaching ranks, it’s also the case that many of today’s leading high school coaches did not come from much of a running background. In fact, some never ran a step in their lives.

This seeming contradiction leads to the question of whether good coaching is based primarily on running knowledge and instincts, or whether a coach’s personality and ability to relate to the student-athletes can carry the day even if he or she lacks certain expertise at the outset.

Paul Limmer, the former Mepham High coach from Long Island who nurtured all-time greats like Mark Belger, Christine Curtin and top teams for 30 years, performed his own athletics on a baseball diamond. He knew next to nothing about running when he started coaching track and cross country in the 1969-70 season. He said, “I had to pick up bits and pieces from books, other coaches, trial and error, ‘ruining’ a lot of kids till I could develop a system that worked.”

It’s hard to imagine any coach, especially a dynamic force like Limmer “ruining” a youngster. Kids have a way of surviving even dumb workouts. But Limmer’s point is well-taken, and it underlies what a caring coach can do when he figures things out.

Coaching Neophyte Finds Potential Runners

Initially, Limmer — a long-time executive with the National Scholastic Sports Foundation that puts on events like this month’s New Balance Indoor Nationals — went with his strength, which is to say, his personality.

“I was an excellent recruiter,” he said. “I could recruit kids out of my class, in the cafeteria. I could make the sport sound very attractive to them.”

Limmer was the type of person that few people, young or old, can ever say no to. He could identify students who might thrive on hard work and the camaraderie of cross country.

“You pick those kids out sitting by themselves who could use a team to feel part of something,” Limmer said. “Very often those were the kids who grew to love running and become the backbone of my program.”

It was not long before Limmer’s program was humming. He developed the middle-distance star Belger, a 1:50 half-miler who led the nation in 1974, and after girls track was soon to be officially established via Title IX, Limmer had Curtin, the 1982 Foot Locker national champion.

New coaches without the confidence to rely on their own ideas tend to pick up on the latest trends. That’s what Limmer did when he started, citing the “mileage craze” of that early 70s period when 100-mile-a-week LSD seemed like the be-all and end-all.



“We did it like everyone else,” he said, referring to his boys’ team. “But you had to have a lot of kids because you’d lose up to 40 percent to injury. Those standing at the end of 10 100-mile weeks were really good.”

When Tim McLoone started coaching at Rumson Fair Haven in New Jersey (along with a partner, Henry Mercer) seven years ago, he brought the same high-wired personality and entrepreneurial spirit as Limmer to give the program a lift.

Last fall, all the years of nurturing and attention to detail resulted in a crowning moment: the school’s first girls’ Meet of Champions cross-country title for what was aptly described as a Cinderella team.

McLoone, who had quite a reputation as a restauranteur, musician and humanitarian — his Holiday Express Christmas concerts are known to draw the likes of Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen — brought his Limmer-style salesmanship to the RFH program but also something Limmer did not have at the outset: a substantial running background. McLoone ran for Harvard. He raced against that Yale guy, Frank Shorter, in Ivy League competition.

College Mistakes Provide HS Lessons

Oddly enough, instead of some sweeping motivational concepts picked up from his prestigious running background, McLoone said that the most important thing he learned at Harvard that he could apply to his high school athletes was a college deficiency: poor tapering.

“Our coach,” said McLoone, “was big on training but not big on pre-meet psych-ups.”

McLoone said that an experience during the 1968 cross-country season has stayed with him. The NCAA meet was making its first appearance at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. It poured so “hellaciously,” according to McLoone, that the site was not usable and the meet was postponed a week. McLoone’s Harvard team had already tapered for an entire week, and now they tapered for a second week.

“We felt out of it,” he said. Harvard placed ninth with only one runner in the top 50. After that, McLoone always felt, “if you over-taper, you are really rolling the dice.”

At RFH, said McLoone, the girls worked just as hard the week of the state meet as they had the entire season. He said the key to the team’s preparation was a Wednesday session of repeat 400 “dropdowns” on 60 seconds rest. They started at 90 seconds and worked down below 80. It was, in effect, the anti-taper.

During the workout, McLoone got a good indication about Saturday when girls standing next to him after their eighth repeat were fresh enough to hold a conversation. They would win the Meet of Champs by 16 points over two-time defender Hillsborough.

Elite Runners Pass on Proven Methods

Hipwood, Talley and Christian have brought considerable range and know-how to their programs, and each emphasized the role their own coaches played in providing a launching pad.

Hipwood probably had the best teacher of all, the master: Joe Vigil. After making the 1981 Foot Locker finals, placing 26th, Hipwood went on to run for Vigil at Adams State in Alamosa, Colorado. While winning the 1985 NAIA cross country title, and earning six All-American citations, he absorbed Vigil’s “amazing ability to connect with people.”

At Adams, Hipwood would meet his future wife, also an all-American, and together Rob and Kathy Hipwood have propelled Los Alamos to New Mexico state champion or contender year after year while also excelling at Nike Cross Nationals (NXN). The Hilltoppers’ boys were second (by two points) at NXN in 2007; the girls took sixth in 2004.

Hardly a day goes by when the Hipwoods don’t use an idea he picked up from Vigil, such as how to maintain a patient approach to excellence, especially for athletes hoping to run in college; and ways to inspire confidence in youngsters ready to move to a higher level.

Christian, 31, ran for another coaching legend, Tony Rowe, at Daviess County High in Kentucky. He was a two-time Foot Locker finalist, in 1996 and ’98, and went on to achieve ACC track and cross-country honors at North Carolina State under coach Rollie Geiger.

In his eighth year coaching boys at Broughton (and 3rd year with the girls), Christian relies on a particular approach to the state cross-country meet that was a hallmark of Rowe’s program. At Daviess, they called it “The Raging Red Line.”

At Broughton, Christian calls it, “Rowe Miles.”

On a Monday three weeks before state, the Broughton varsity does a hard two-mile followed by a hard mile; two weeks before, it’s 2 x 1 mile; and the week before it’s one mile all-out, a time trial in pursuit of PRs. The workouts are on grass or track. Since the athletes are in cross-country shape, not mile shape, Broughton’s boys pack looks for low-4:30s times while the girls aim for sub-5:30.

Christian said the three-week preparation is excellent for state, offering the athletes tangible evidence of their readiness. “They can say, ‘I PR'd in the mile, I must be really fit.’” he said.

“Super-Intensity” Produces National Stars

That same mindset of going hard — “pushing past pain” — is what Talley brought to Davis from his high school experience at Bingham High in Utah under coach Jeff Arbogast, a much sought-after clinician whose 1999 girls team was ranked No. 1 in the Harrier Super-25.

“When we went hard, we were super-intense,” said Talley, 34, in his ninth year at Davis.

That intensity enabled Talley to place 12th in the 1994 Foot Locker nationals.

In college, at Weber State, he competed in the NCAA championships as a steeplechaser. Currently, Talley’s Davis athletes are national headliners. The boys’ cross-country team made the 2011 NXN podium with a third-place finish, and just last Sunday, the Darts’ star, Brad Nye, won a sensational indoor nationals mile in New York over Edward Cheserek.

One of Arbogast’s staple workouts, repeat 800s, has become a Davis staple.

“The last one or two intervals,” said Talley, referring to intensity, “everyone’s going for it.”

But not all high school running successes can be traced to a trickle-down effect from illustrious coaches. Many good ideas are picked up from the youngsters themselves.

“I think the best way to learn is to be around kids,” Talley said. "I'm learning from my athletes all the time.”

Will the record book or the rule book take a beating at the Armory Track & Field Center on Saturday night?

Seeking to continue a hot streak that has made her the female prize of the indoor season, Samantha Nadel of North Shore High on Long Island stands to give both a working over while defending her title in the Millrose Games girls’ high school mile.

The record on the line is Nadel’s own Armory girls’ mile all-time best of 4:46.11 set on January 7 in the Hispanic Games. That performance broke the 12-year-old facility mark held by a certain 2012 Olympic marathoner and 2008 Olympic 10,000 medalist, Shalane Flanagan, when she was running for Marblehead High of Massachusetts. Also at risk on Saturday is the New York State indoor record of 4:42.64 set in 2010 by another Long Islander, Emily Lipari of Roslyn High, who now competes for Villanova.

The rule in question is actually a battery of training and racing “rules” that constitute conventional wisdom, but have been under assault by Nadel all winter. Buoyed by her coach’s daring and unorthodox approach, the Georgetown-bound senior has relied on an ease with simplicity to do her best running ever.

Photo Finish: Nadel is All Smiles

The result has been… well, check out any finish line photo of Nadel--like the one from the Jan. 28 U.S. Open mile in which she set a Madison Square Garden girls’ record of 4:47.66—and what do you see? A great, glowing smile and can’t-stop-running body language that makes one wonder if racing could possibly be more fun.

No anguished countenance or collapsing at the finish for Nadel. She’s been feeling so great she almost can’t believe it. “I feel fresh every time out there,” Nadel told me after her U.S. Open victory. She continued glowing well past the finish line, adding, “I attribute it to my strong base.”

But don’t all outstanding high school distance runners have a strong base? Perhaps not. We all like to think we know what a sufficient base is: a few months’ mileage from summer into fall, right? Ten to 12 weeks of build-up with a gradual menu of faster repeat and tempo work mixed in to sustain a cross-country season and beyond.

Ever see those celebrity chefs on TV drip their olive oil into a base of ingredients piled high in the Mixmaster? That’s how we tend to look at a base. The mileage is piled high, then levels off; we pour in the juice to finish it off. Whatever fits in the mixer is it. We’re done.

Nadel’s coach at North Shore, Neal Levy, has a different idea. “We haven’t done anything strenuous in practice,” Levy told me. “The whole season is a continuation of base building, for spring, next fall, and college. Not one interval yet.”

No Intervals for Indoor Track?

What? No intervals? No fast work for indoor track?

Levy repeated: “No formal interval training. No mile repeats. No tempo runs either.”

I was incredulous. “No lactate threshold? No 85 to 90 percent of max work? No hard/easy? Just easy/easy? So what do you do?”

Levy said, “Hills and strides, that’s all we do. It’s cross-country year-around. Training does not change from summer to fall to winter. The weather changes, that’s all.”

Levy, 38, is in his 16th year of coaching, the last 10 at North Shore. He has had a succession of prominent mentors. When he ran at Stony Brook University on Long Island, his coach was Steve Borbet, who would go on to long-term success on the high school level at Bay Shore. “Steve is the greatest motivator I have ever come across,” said Levy. When Borbet left Stony Brook, Levy transferred to the State University at Cortland, where Jack Daniels was coaching at the time. Yes, that Jack Daniels, the master coach and exercise physiologist whose training books have taken on biblical importance.

And to top it off, Levy, like others, has sought out Fayetteville’s Bill Aris for advice. “At Nike Cross Nationals,” said Levy, “I had a conversation with Bill about what they do over the winter time. I adapted his ideas and the kids really respond to it.” To emphasize his point, Levy noted, “At Yale, we had 12 girls break 11:30 in the 3,000. They all ran their best times. Four girls went 10:04 or better.”

Hills, Strides, Keeping It Simple

“Tell me again what you do,” I asked one more time.

“Hills for strength, strides for speed,” Levy said. “We keep it simple.”

The Fab Four at 10:04 or better for 3k last month were the victorious Nadel in a brilliant 9:31.65; the Vikings’ other senior star, Brianna Nerud (also in the Millrose mile), in 4th in 9:50:32; and juniors Elizabeth Caldwell and Jessica Donahue, 9th and 10th, respectively, in 10:04.43 and 10:04:73. It’s doubtful any school has ever had four girls run that fast in the same race. That quartet may rival anything that even Fayetteville could put together on the track. We’ll find out at nationals next month when North Shore aims for the national 4 x mile record (19:59.24), the team’s main goal for the season.

Nadel said the lack of structured speed work “confused” her at first. But she’s warmed to the entire approach, which can be viewed as a return to fundamentals. “I’m a big believer in strength. The more distance you do, the more your aerobic capacity will build up and you’ll get fitter.”

This is what the late Arthur Lydiard, everyone’s patron saint, learned when he started working with Olympic great Peter Snell and others more than a half-century ago in New Zealand. A recent Running Times article on Snell, an exercise physiologist living in Texas, and his formative Lydiard training emphasized the role of endurance, hills and cross-country. And remember that Snell started out as a half-miler, winning the first of his Olympic gold medals in the 1960 800 at Rome.

Base Building Takes Months, Even Years

At least some high school coaches are finding that an emphasis on long-term base-building, a la Lydiard (Aris likes to quote Percy Cerutty, Lydiard’s Australian “cousin”), yields the best results. It takes months, even years, to build a true base. We are sometimes distracted from that basic concept by the demands (and, at times, jeweled showcase) of the high school season.

Fast work implies: getting good now. Slower work implies: wait-and-see. But some, like Nadel, are finding that you may have to slow down in order to run faster.

Nadel, who will face an array of marquee opponents in Saturday’s loaded field, admits, “I thought that since we were not doing speed work, I wouldn’t have any speed in races.” She’s learned otherwise. “When you think about it, hills are really speed work in disguise. We do hills every other day, and on days when we don’t do hills we do strides. We are getting ‘speed,’ but in different form.”

The North Shore training mix is a peon to old-school thinking. It’s short on razzmatazz and long on development. It’s not the stuff of clinics, not if you’re looking for the new hot workout. The basics, through summer, fall, winter, etc., as Levy said, are: (1) Run 10 days straight, then take a day off; (2) run hills three times a week in a 65-minute road run in which you do 10 minutes on the flat, 45 minutes on a hilly route (pushing the up hills, easing off on the down hills), then finish with 10 minutes on the flats; (3) other days run 45 to 65 minutes on the flat followed by 8 x 30-second strides; (4) do one longer run of 90 minutes in the 10-day cycle.

“I really like what we do,” said Nadel. “I find it enjoyable, relaxing.”

Nadel--who prepped for Millrose with a 2:10.5 leg on North Shore’s victorious 9:04.99 4 x 800 at last weekend’s New Balance Collegiate meet at the Armory--has also challenged the rule book on a second front: racing frequency.

Another “Rules” Buster—Frequent Racing

Nadel, undefeated, has been competing non-stop since the end of cross-country--a busy, pressure-packed season unto itself. This winter Nadel has run at least a dozen major races, as many as Bernard Lagat contested all last year. She has run the 800, 1000, 1500, 1600, mile and 3000. She has run individual events and relays. Nadel has run at the Armory, Yale, the Garden…

She reports no injuries. She invites competition. “When you think about it,” she says, “racing is a big portion of our speed work.”

Some coaches like the idea of “racing into shape.” Some don’t. Nadel is not doing this. She’s already in shape from her tremendous base. Her racing fuels a competitive edge, and with her strength she’s kept herself in one piece.

Levy is not been inclined to hold Nadel back. “Being that she’s a senior, I wanted to give her the opportunity to experience high school life as an elite runner,” he said. “We had a conversation at the end of cross-country about reaching one’s potential. Last fall, I don’t think Samantha was really racing but pacing herself. She’s gotten back to her roots on the track.”

Those roots have blossomed as Nadel continues to embody a running essence linked to a glorious heritage. Every day is a day to run better. Just break a few rules and keep building your base.

Two days before last month’s Nike Cross Nationals, when the country's teams arrived in Portland to begin a weekend of festivities on the sprawling Nike campus, the first thing on the agenda for the Southlake Carroll boys of Texas was an interval workout of 15 x 400.

That was on Thursday before the Saturday meet, the most important meet of the season — or perhaps of any season for the Dragons, who were a co-favorite for the national title.

While other teams were playing ping-pong, munching chips and grooving to a pulsating soundtrack in the game room of the Tiger Woods Center, the Carroll boys stripped off their sweats and proceeded to do repeat 400s around the soccer field used by Nike-sponsored professional runners. In fact, while the Carroll boys ran, Alberto Salazar was on the field coaching 2011 world 5,000 champion Mo Farah and American 10,000-meter record-holder Galen Rupp.

Using a GPS watch, Justin Leonard, the Carroll coach, measured off 400 meters.

The team used shoe boxes from gear the athletes had been given to mark the course.

“It didn’t feel odd at all,” said Carroll junior Joe Sansone of doing an aggressive workout so close to the meet while the opposition relaxed. With that same approach, Sansone had led Carroll to an undefeated cross country season including a runaway victory in the South Regional.

“Once we got onto the field,” said Sansone, “it gave us even more pride.”

The athletes’ confidence was emboldened by an unorthodox, counter-intuitive training program called “Paavo,” which has become a hallmark of the entire Carroll program, boys and girls. Advanced many years ago by an Indiana coach named Marshall Sellers (and named after the legendary Finnish Olympic champion Paavo Nurmi), “Paavo” stresses year-around running without any days off, and interval work close to race day. Challenging the prevailing wisdom that high school runners need some time off, and that interval workouts should end well before a meet, “Paavo” calls for the opposite.

Belief System Critical to Success

“The biggest part of it is the belief factor,” said Leonard. “I don’t think Paavo is the end-all, cure-all. No matter what system you’re using, if kids believe in what you’re doing 100 percent, then they will excel. Our athletes believe in running every day.”

The coach-athlete belief system has gotten a lot of attention lately amid the dominance of Fayetteville-Manlius and the factors behind the girls’ six straight national titles. When pressed to describe his methods, F-M coach Bill Aris rarely mentions particular workouts but rather the trust that his athletes, boys and girls, have in his team-centered, values-based “Stotan” program.

One man’s Stotan is another man’s Paavo.

The Paavo mosaic of total devotion and going against the tide (again, with a nod to Fayetteville) enabled Carroll to run one of the greatest team cross-country races ever in Portland, even on the losing end of its long-awaited duel with Christian Brothers Academy of New Jersey. By most accounts, these were the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the country. The final score was CBA 91, Carroll 95.

And Carroll’s girls, also undefeated regional winners, placed seventh at NXN after running their Paavo intervals the day before the championship. On Friday all of the teams -- including Carroll -- toured the course and did some light jogging, and then returned to the Nike campus. The Carroll girls went straight to the Nike track and ran 400s.

“It’s not even like speed work because we’re not going that fast,” said Rachel Harper, a senior, who led the Dragons in Portland with a 19th-place finish (in team scoring).

Harper ran her 400s, a “low” set of nine reps (as opposed to her usual 13 reps), at her prescribed pace of 80 to 82 seconds.
While her pace was actually pretty quick (mile race pace considering she had a 5:20 1,600 PR from the previous track season), what makes the pre-meet Paavo system work for those who master it are two key elements.


First, the rest between repeats is long, about three minutes for girls, so that heart rate drops back down to 120 beats per minute, or 60 percent of max, before the next repeat. In that way, the pace is manageable and, says Leonard, there is no leg-tiring lactic acid build-up in the muscles.

No Mileage Cutback Before Meets

Second, with daily running and substantial weekly mileage, the athletes have a tremendous base to work off in order to handle the seemingly high-intensity workload. The Carroll boys who ran NXN log 70 or more miles per week year-around; the girls do about 40. Leonard uses a formula to determine number of repetitions. For example, a runner hitting 60 miles a week would do 14 x 400. There’s never a cutback.

“We would never say, ‘You’re running 70 miles a week, it’s the week of Nike Nationals, we’ll cut you back to 50,’” Leonard said.

But Leonard will accommodate runners who find intervals the day before a meet a little too close for comfort. The team will experiment with doing them one or two days before meets early in the season, then tweak the plan for the championship events. That’s why the boys and girls had separate schedules for Portland.

Also, for high school runners who find running seven days a week too much, Leonard has them cross-train on a stationery bicycle on Sundays, a running recovery day.

In fact, all Carroll training is individualized by pace. The boys’ 400 repeats range from 71 to 76 seconds; the girls, from 80 to 86.

Running what amounts to race pace prior to competition keeps the cardiovascular system “open,” said Leonard, as opposed to letting it sit dormant.

The arteries become more elastic and, he said, blood flow is facilitated. Your body is primed for the oxygen transport requirements of racing.

Leonard, in his fourth year as Carroll head coach of cross-country and the distance coach in track, inherited Paavo methods from the former head coach Rob Ondrasek, who’d put Carroll running on the map. Leonard was Ondrasek’s assistant before he left the program.

Coach Leonard Sees Results, Builds on Them

Leonard was a skeptic at first.

“When I walked out onto the track,” recalled Leonard, “and saw Colby Lowe doing 16 x 400 the day before the state cross-country meet. I looked at Rob and said, ‘What are you doing?’”

That was in 2007. Lowe proceeded to win the Texas state 5A title by 25 seconds, then place second at NXN and fourth at Foot Locker that fall. In all, Lowe would collect seven state titles in track and cross country at Carroll and run PRs of 4:08.99 in the mile and 8:47.07 in the two-mile. And, dispelling some criticism that Paavo training kills runners for the future, Lowe, now a senior at Oklahoma State, is a five-time all-American who set a Cowboys record for 10,000 meters last spring and helped OSU win the NCAA cross country championship in 2009.

Leonard, seeing Carroll’s positive response to the Paavo system — runners motivated by consecutive days’ running, or “CDs,” as they refer to them, along with fresh legs and a zestful mind-set for Saturday meets — continued where Ondrasek left off. The transition was seamless.

The Paavo effect at Carroll has given the team an aura of invincibility that approaches that of Fayetteville’s. Carroll boasts the most combined boys-and-girls NXN team appearances (5 boys, 7 girls, 12 in all) and last season Carroll’s second (boys) and seventh (girls) was the best combined showing for any program.

Sansone credited his pre-NXN intervals (at 70 to 74 seconds per 400, with 2:30 to 2:45 rest) with enabling him to run his best race of the season in Portland.

“I think the workout definitely did its job,” he said. “I really felt ‘opened up,’ and loose. I had pep in my step, ready to go.”

On the Portland Meadows course, Sansone performed his team role to perfection. He crossed the line as the field’s third team scorer, just ahead of Christian Brothers’ top man, George Kelly.

“It’s 100 percent work ethic,” Sansone said. “It’s all about your mind-set.”

After NXN, while Leonard told the boys “I don’t want to see you for three weeks,” they ran on their own, with Sansone building on a CD streak that now stretches over 250 days dating back to the start of cross country base work.

Rachel Harper’s Amazing “CD” Record

Harper also had her best race of the season at NXN.

“I felt the most ‘open’ that I felt all season,” she said, echoing Sansone’s assessment. “When I got to the 800 mark where you normally start feeling it, I felt loose and could change speeds.”

Harper, whose sister Jessica ran for Carroll and now runs for Texas, bought into the “CD” idea as a freshman. She now holds the school record, close to 1,300 consecutive days and counting (even during a bout with the swine flu, she ran a mile), and hopes to finish her senior year with never having missed a single day of high school running. Harper said she’s never been injured.

“My base keeps supporting me,” said Harper, who reached a high of 49 miles a week last fall.

That’s 49, not 50. Paavo calls for detailed log books to record and assess efforts. The books (binders, not on-line programs) also serve as motivational tools. Team members brought their books to Portland for a confidence boost.

As a coach using Paavo methods, Leonard can also have more confidence, seeing the hard facts of what his athletes have run close to race time. This enables him to better nurture the nuances that can affect the outcome. He knows who is ready, and who might need some unspoken TLC.

It’s doubtful that Nurmi himself ever needed any TLC for his peak efforts.

Known as a reclusive slave to his sport in some quarters, Nurmi’s ability to run hard repeatedly was legendary, as when he won the 1924 Paris Olympics 5,000 meters 45 minutes after capturing the 1,500.

In those primitive times, Nurmi turned conventional wisdom on its head.

Almost a century later, some committed high school runners in Texas, GPS watches in hand, are doing the same.

Champion runners Sophie Chase of Lake Braddock High in Burke, Va., and Nicole Mello of Hickman High in Columbia, Mo. have a lot more in common than being two of the nation’s up-and-coming distance stars.

They were both Foot Locker national cross country finalists this past season.

They’re both juniors. They’re both strongly-built young women at 5-feet-7 and 118 pounds. And, with much more activity on their plates than running, they both love to eat.

“I l-o-o-o-o-v-e breakfast,” said Mello, who placed 20th at Foot Locker after taking seventh in the Midwest Regional. After breakfast, in school, Mello said she snacks every hour, on energy bars, fruit, and peanut butter crackers.

“I eat a really big breakfast, a really big lunch and a really big dinner,” said Chase, 11th at Foot Locker in her second trip to the finals.

Chase loves breakfast as much as Mello does. She has oatmeal, a bagel and cream cheese, banana and yogurt. “And a lot of milk,” she added. “I’m big on milk.”

These two cosmic appetites are rooted in what Chase and Mello share the most: they are successful multi-sport athletes who started swimming at age 5 and currently swim and run in the same seasons. Both girls swim for club teams as well as their high school teams. Both run track and cross-country. Hence, for nourishment, both girls eat like there’s no tomorrow.

Non-Stop Training and Racing

In an era of youth sports specialization, these girls are in the vanguard of the next horizon — two-sport specialization in which a high school athlete goes pretty much full tilt in two sports year-around. Depending on your point of view, this is either a recipe for disaster — potential injury, burnout, conflicts among coaches and parents -- or an exciting challenge for exceptional teenagers who can use each sport as a building block while honing time management skills.

Amid their non-stop workouts and meets (how would you like to be on laundry detail in their households?), Chase and Mello have found ways to keep things in balance.

“Sophie benefits from swimming by getting in the extra cardio work without the pounding,” says Lake Braddock track and cross country coach Michael Mangan. “We work out the racing schedule ahead of time. It’s not an issue.”

“My running helps my swimming, and my swimming helps my running,” said Mello. “I feel odd on a day when I don’t have both sports. My body can tell when I really need a good swim.”

From a fitness standpoint, running and swimming are compatible cousins.

There’s no question that from their years in the pool Chase and Mello brought fantastic cardiovascular development into running. Chase started running in high school. Mello ran the Junior Olympics on a youth track squad before high school.

The war stories that track and cross country coaches often tell about multi-sport conflicts usually center on the consensus public enemy No. 1: soccer.

“The club movement is infringing on high school,” says Roger Evans, girls cross country and track coach at Simi Valley High in California, home of 2011 Nike Cross Nationals champion Sarah Baxter. Evans said that the issues usually revolved around traveling team soccer, but may also involve other travel sports like basketball and softball. In many communities, traveling team sports have few breaks and conflict with track and cross country.

Three Sports, Honors Classes… What Gives?

At Pearl River High in New York, girls track and cross country coach Dan Doherty has had runners doing three sports simultaneously—travel basketball and soccer in addition to track. “And usually,” said Doherty, “those same kids are taking all the honors classes. You wonder, ‘What are their parents thinking?’ Something’s got to give.”

Soccer’s impact on running made recent headlines when a top runner and soccer star from California, Sarah Robinson, a sophomore at Gunn High in Palo Alto, gave up her Foot Locker nationals berth to participate in a U.S. soccer under-17 training camp that same week. Robinson had placed fourth in the West Regional. This past fall she attended cross country and soccer practices daily.

As Doherty points out, since there is no such thing as “Little League Track,” most young athletes will enter a high school cross country or track program with years of family commitment to other sports. Coaches have no choice but to try and work out an accommodation with parents or risk losing talented runners.

Oftentimes, parents, groomed on community teams, do not appreciate the magnitude of a high school varsity program.

“Why are we the second fiddle?” asks Doherty.

The head coach at Hillsborough High where I assist in New Jersey, Rich Refi, asked the same question when a freshman girl missed meets for traveling softball and at times another freshman missed practice to attend a sibling’s club soccer match. Refi had worked out a schedule with the softball player in which she could do both sports. The girl was conscientious and a pretty good runner.

However, her busy season took its toll and in mid-season her parents pulled her out of cross country.

Chase, 17, joined high school cross country to get in better shape for swimming. “I didn’t think I would be much of a runner,” she said. Chase had run a 5:41 mile in middle school P.E. As a freshman, her 5k cross country times went from the mid-19s to the mid-17s. She placed third in state 3A, leading Lake Braddock to the team championship.

Mix and Match, From Track to Pool

Aside from parental issues, it takes a tremendous amount of planning and calculation to make the two-sport specialty work. This winter, Chase will run indoor track while swimming for both the high school team and her club, Mason Makos. Chase is a champion breaststroker who made the 2011 NCSA Junior Nationals in the 100 breaststroke. She’s also a 4:52/10:25 track performer outdoors.

Upcoming, Chase will do track practice Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then she’ll swim with her club from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday she’ll skip track while doing the high school swim practice along with some weight training. Friday’s an easy run then a swim meet at night. She’ll run Saturday and Sunday, with no swimming. Chase tries not to miss hard workouts, and also tries not to do a hard run on the same day as a hard swim.

“It’s definitely difficult,” said Chase, who maintains a perfect 4.0 GPA in the classroom. “Last year, I felt burnt out at the end of the winter season. But this year I’m a stronger athlete.”

Chase’s strength comes from smart eating, constant hydration and a good night’s sleep, 7 1/2 to 8 hours a night. Last year, she received dietary counseling from a nutritionist, who gave her a meal plan that included meat, fish and plenty of fresh vegetables. Her snacks after cross country practice and before swim practice were on the order of chocolate milk (shown to be an excellent recovery drink in various studies), fruit and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

“Some girls who don’t put enough nutrition into their bodies will not be able to hold their strength for long,” said Chase.

That goal is no problem for Mello, who logs up to 7,000 yards at swim practice and feasts on her mother’s lasagna. Mello’s mother, Magda, is a nutritionist. Her father, Cesar, is a former world-class swimmer and coach. (Mello has an older sister swimming in college and a twin swimming with her at Hickman.) Like Chase, Mello is a top-notch student with a 3.9 GPA. “My parents always stress that academics come first,” she said.

Last fall, Mello, who turns 17 in May, was up at 4:40 a.m. for 5:30 club swim practice before school. After school, she did cross country. With her busy schedule, Mello wound up ninth in state Class 4 in 19:42. In the postseason, training on her own, she made it to seventh in the Foot Locker Midwest, running 17:43.

Sleep Issues Critical For Good Health

With her morning swim work, Mello said she gets only six hours of sleep a night, a deficiency associated with high injury risk. In the fall of 2010, Mello suffered a stress reaction in her foot and had to wear a boot. She still competed and qualified for state. According to news reports, Mello came to the state meet on crutches, removed the boot and ran, placing 11th. After that, Mello took a full recovery.

One key safety valve for Mello is that she does not run indoor track. In the winter, she swims only for Hickman, not the club, which resumes in spring. Each season has a priority, she said.

The key for all of this to work — other than heaping portions of lasagna — is for open communication among coaches, parents and athletes, so expectations are shared and compromises, when necessary, are understood. While it might be natural for track and cross country coaches to feel defensive, you can’t take a hard-line, all-or-nothing posture at the outset, or you’ll likely lose a youngster with potential.

Doherty said that if you enable the newcomer to experience success, you could win them over into running, especially as they develop new friendships.

Evans agreed. He’ll facilitate dual loyalties with freshmen, feeling that by sophomore year they’ll likely choose one sport or the other, oftentimes running.

Of course there are no guarantees. Doherty had a girl on his team who also played soccer and developed a bad case of shin splits. The doctor told her to lay off for a couple of weeks. “When I told the mom that her daughter had to lay off from soccer as well as track,” she said, “That’ll be the day.”

Girls are strong. Girls are fast. Girls are motivated. Girls are tough, maybe even tougher than boys.

Girls are also fragile.

Female distance runners are fragile not because of gender weakness or athletic deficiency. We’ve all stood at the finish chute of a cross-country race marveling at the awesome power of girls coming across the line—and not just the top-notch kids, but those well down in the pack as well.

Girls are fragile because during the teen years they grow in rather complex ways (comparatively, boys’ growth is a piece of cake), and that growth must be allowed to occur in a natural, healthy manner. You can’t fool with Mother Nature, or with prospective mothers. Mistakes can be costly.

Therefore, a girl’s natural growth must be protected.

To insure proper growth and development, and successful running through the high school years, girls must maintain a healthy weight. To achieve a healthy weight, girls must eat nutritious foods and consume enough calories (that is, “fuel”) to support their
running. Energy input (food) should equal energy output (activity). Otherwise, there will be an energy deficit that can lead to health problems, injury and impaired performance.

How can girls and their families determine a healthy weight?

Girls Need Substantial Caloric Intake

To start to address that question, it should be emphasized that teenage girls need to take in at least 2,000 calories per day for normal living and growth, plus an additional 70 or so calories per mile run, roughly 2,500 calories per day, according to Dr. Angela Smith, an orthopedic surgeon at the renowned Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. That’s a good amount of food— less than many female runners take in, to be sure.

In addition, the food should consist of nutritious calories containing “all six core elements that the body needs to repair, rebuild and recover daily,” said Kim Cover, a dietitian, sports nutrition specialist and colleague of Dr. Smith’s at CHOP’s Center for Sports
Medicine and Performance.

Let’s repeat that: Repair, Re-build and Recover.

Cover said that to enable the Three Rs to take place, each meal should consist of all six nutritional essentials: (1) fruit, (2) vegetable, (3) complex carbohydrate, (4) calcium, (5) protein, and (6) fat.

Is that possible, to have all six nutritional essentials in every meal? Cover said that a lunch as simple and tasty as a peanut butter (crunchy preferred) and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread, chocolate milk, apple and carrot sticks contains all six essentials and
would serve a runner just fine for after-school practice.

In addition to number of calories consumed, and the nutrient quality of those calories, a third key factor in good health and running is when you eat—how those calories are distributed throughout the day. First on Cover’s wish list for female runners is to eat a
full breakfast before school. Too often, she says, girls rush off to school after eating little or nothing, and that may be after not getting enough sleep as well.

Typically, in the hustle-and-bustle world of a teenage girl running cross-country or track, her school day starts off with (1) lack of sleep and (2) lack of fuel. That is a potentially toxic combination, especially for someone who will have a rigorous practice session later in the day.

Girls Need to Eat All Day Long

Either because of poor time management, and/or the wrong-headed idea that food intake should be kept low to meet female perceptions of thinness, girls oftentimes fall victim to a distorted eat-and-run schedule in which they are famished after practice and gobble up most of their calories late in the day. By afternoon practice, you should have at least 1,000 calories (and, again, good calories) in your system.

With weight, body fat, self-image and running performance all wrapped up in a mosaic of complex challenges for girls, I sought to illuminate some of the issues by speaking with Dr. Smith, whom I’ve interviewed many times before, and Cover, whom Dr. Smith
recommended to me. Both are leaders in the field of adolescent health and athletic performance. Both are former athletes themselves, Dr. Smith in figure skating, Cover in gymnastics.

Both Dr. Smith and Cover (who is board certified in nutrition, fitness and mental health) tend to injured female runners on a regular basis. Smith’s patients come to her with stress fractures of the tibia (shin) or metatarsal bones in the foot, for example. She said
that most recurrent injuries are caused by improper diet or insufficient physical therapy following a layoff from a previous injury. Many of Cover’s clients (which include youngsters with eating disorders) are not eating enough, but think they are because of the
mistaken belief that healthy eating for running means taking in as little fat as possible, as well as being as thin as possible.

Girls Need to Have Normal Menstrual Function

Additional points from Dr. Smith:

*Injury Pattern: While having an injury once every two or three years is expected, having a recurrent injury to the same area more often can be a sign of improper nutrition. She defines injury as pain that requires a doctor’s visit.

*Body Type: Girls have body types based on genetics. If a girl’s parents have broad shoulders and big hips, then it would follow that she too -- even as a runner -- would have a comparable body type. If, however, the girl from the broadly-built family is “scrawny at
16,” said Dr. Smith, that non-familial lean-ness could be a nutritional red flag.

*Training Tolerance: Unusual or overwhelming fatigue from standard workouts previously handled well is a sign of nutritional deficiency. Fatigue is not unusual during a period of rapid growth spurt; however, fatigue with older girls whose growth has slowed
or halted is something to look into.

*Menstrual Irregularity: If girl has started having her period and after, say, three periods in a row, stops menstruating, “I’m going to start asking questions,” said Dr. Smith. “Or,” she added, “if a girl has reached the same age as her mother was when she began
menstruating, and the girl has not…” The age of onset of menstruation for a girl’s mother (and older sister) is the biggest predictor of when the younger girl herself should begin menstruation.

*Muscle vs. Fat: Girls who run distance tend not to have a lot of muscle (unlike their testosterone-filled male counterparts). Therefore, you can’t tell just by looking at a very thin girl if she’s thin because she has no muscle, or she’s thin because she has no fat (in which case she could need medical intervention).

By the same token, a girl may have a sufficient body fat level, say 13 or 14 percent, and appear healthy, but still be imperiled by not meeting her caloric-energy needs. This happens when a girl doesn’t eat enough all day, putting her body into “starvation” mode;
then, her body responds by pumping what energy she does have into fat for long-term storage. Thus, she has fat but not fuel.

*Energy Balance: Girls who do not take in enough calories and have an energy imbalance tend to lack sufficient body fat for the onset of menstruation. Without menstruation, girls will not produce estrogen, an essential hormone for bone-building. (Brittle bones and
ambitious running results in stress fractures.) Recent studies, however, emphasize the importance of one factor above all others: caloric intake; that is, energy taken into the body. The research shows that even girls with low body fat will continue to have periods
as long as they eat enough.

Girls Need to Prize Robust Bodies

Additional Points from Cover:

*Safety Zone: Cover has created a “safety zone” concept to help girls achieve a healthy weight so the body is not burdened by undue stress and can “care for itself.” It’s like a shield. The safety zone requires eating enough so the body has sufficient energy for training and can perform normal processes like menstruation.

*Runners’ Needs: Many girls and their parents do realize that when a girl starts a running program she must change her diet to consume a lot more food. Running -- and especially cross-country in which training goes from early summer well into November -- presents a dramatic life-style change and must be met with an abundant, enriched meal plan.

*Marine Mentality: Cover said that female cross-country runners had a “unique way of looking at nutrition” that she likened to a military mentality of sticking together as a team, in this case reinforcing negative ideas like avoiding dietary fat at all costs. “It’s
hard to bust through that mentality,” she said.

*Body Image: There is no basis for the widely-held belief that a certain body fat percentage will make you a better runner. “It’s a misconception,” said Cover, “that the leaner you are the better. Accept the body that you were born to own.”

On this last point, to effectively counsel female runners, Cover obtains “growth curves” from a girl’s medical exams over the years in order to plot normal growth as a teen. She said that parents should have this information, just as they have inoculation records.

Girls Need Guidance on “Fuel” and “Fitness”

Most coaches never see growth curve information and, in any case, should steer clear of any discussion with a female runner about her weight per se. “Girls are prone to have just one comment throw them ‘off a cliff,’” said Cover. In fact, in some states, coaches are
prohibited from even mentioning the “w” word by law.

Both Dr. Smith and Cover advise coaches to address weight by discussing “fitness” and “fueling the body.” Talk about proper nutrition, eating breakfast, making wise food choices for school lunch and so forth. Talk about having fruit with meals, calcium-rich
goods, whole grains. Talk about girls getting strong, not getting thin.

Coaches, parents and health professionals need to make sure they get the message across that grandma was right when she served a family meal and said…

"Eat!"

It's hard to imagine anyone who knows high school cross country better than Marc Bloom.

And yet, freshmen are an eternal source of new, exciting and unpredictable content. Bloom is coaching a group of freshmen girls at Hillsborough, N.J., and he details the effort in this month's installment of the Peak Performance series. It's an entertaining, informative look at cross country's ninth graders -- so full of promise and so short on experience.