Tempo Runs: (Scheduled for Mondays.) A tempo run in this program is a workout of 30 to 45 minutes, usually run on trails or in the woods so you have no reference to exactly how far or how fast you are running. Here's how to do a tempo run. Begin at an easy pace, about as fast as you would during any warm-up on the track. After 5 or 10 minutes of gentle jogging, gradually accelerate toward peak speed midway through the workout, holding that peak for 5 or 10 minutes, then gradually decelerate, finishing with 5 minutes of gentle jogging, your cool-down. At peak speed, you should be running about an 8-min mile. I don't want to be too precise in telling you how to run this workout. The approach should be intuitive. Run hard, but not too hard. If you do this workout correctly, you should finish refreshed rather than fatigued.

Interval Training: (Scheduled for Tuesdays.) This is a more precise form of speed training than tempo runs above, or fartlek below. You may have done interval training, or some variation on it, during the track season whether or not you recognized it by that name. Interval training consists of fast repeats (400, 600 and 1,000 meters in this program), followed by jogging and/or walking to recover. It is the "interval" between the fast repeats that gives this workout its name. In this program, I suggest a 400-meter jog (slowly) between the 400 repeats, a 200-meter jog (slowly) between the 600 repeats, and 3 minutes walking and/or jogging between the 1,000 repeats. Most important is not how fast or slow you walk or jog the interval, but that you be consistent with both the repeats and the interval between. For example, you do not want to run this workout and discover near the end that you are running the repeats slower than at the start, or that you need more rest during the interval between. The goal is not to run super-fast. THE GOAL IS TO RUN CONSISTENTLY. If that happens, you picked too ambitious a time goal for the workout. Interval training is best run on a track, although it can be run on soft surfaces or on the roads, as long as you maintain consistency. Here's more information on the three interval workouts I've chosen for this program:

10 x 400: Run this workout in the first, fourth, seventh and tenth weeks of the program. Pick a pace in the first week that you can handle easily. I suggest the same pace that you ran 3,200 meters in track last season, assuming you raced at that distance. Pick as your end goal for the tenth week the pace you ran 1,600 meters. (Going from maybe a 1:32 to a 1:25 minute 400) If you have never run those track distances before, run the reps at a pace you think you can maintain for the entire length of the workout. In ten weeks, I'd like you to improve about 5 seconds per 400, but be conservative; I would rather have you run too slow a pace than too fast a one. You can run faster as you adapt to the rhythm of interval training. For the intervals, jog 400 meters. You want to recover between repeats, but not recover too much.

5 x 1,000: Run this workout in the weeks after you run the interval 400s: the second, fifth and eighth weeks of the program. This workout is best run on trails. I still need to scout some out but this is meant to simulate the 5K race. We’ll run 5 x 1,000 fast, thus 5,000 meters, the same as the race distance. In between, we’ll walk 3 minutes to recover. Run each rep fast, somewhat slower than race pace the first time, with your goal to eventually to run as fast as race pace. If running on an unmeasured course, you may need to simply run intuitively, about the time it would take you to cover a kilometer in a race.

6 x 600: Run this workout during the third, sixth and ninth weeks. Run each 600 at about the pace you would run in a 3,200-meter race. Notice I said "about" to give you some leeway. Jog a 200 between, then go again. Keep the pace the same in later weeks, but progress instead in number: 8 x 600, ultimately 10 x 600. I choose these variations mainly so that you speed train differently from week to week. Don't get into the trap of comparing one week's workout to the one before or the one after. Focus more on how you feel at the end of each workout, not the numbers on your watch. You should finish fatigued, but also refreshed.

Run correctly and in control, interval training can be invigorating. It is also the single best way to improve both your speed and your running form. Overdone, however, it can lead to injuries and fatigue, chipping away at your ability to attain peak performance. Learn to use interval training as the key to cross-country success.

Fartlek: (Scheduled for Thursdays.) Fartlek is a Swedish word, loosely translated as "speed play." Fartlek is a form of training developed in the 1940s by Coach Gosta Holmer and used by Gundar Hagg and Arne Andersson, the world's fastest milers of that era. A fartlek run in this program is a workout of anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes that involves constant changes of pace at different distances. It is entirely intuitive (similar to tempo runs) and is best run on trails in the woods where you have no idea how far you are running. After 5 or 10 minutes of gentle jogging at the start, pick up the pace and surge for maybe 10 or 20 or more seconds, then jog or even walk for a near equal time until partly recovered, then surge again. These speed bursts could be anywhere from 100 to 400 meters, or longer. They could be up a hill or down a hill or on the flat. They could be at top speed or at the pace you might run a 5,000 meter race or from this tree to that tree. Bill Dellinger, 5,000 meter bronze medalist in the 1964 Olympic Games and who succeeded Coach Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon, said: "An athlete runs as he feels. A fartlek training session can be the hardest workout a runner does all week, or it can be the easiest." Dellinger adds: "In order to be a good distance runner, you have to build strength and endurance, learn race pace, and practice race tactics. Fartlek training can incorporate all of these essential elements into a single workout." Fartlek teaches you how to surge in the middle of the race to get away from opponents--or hang with them when they attempt to surge on you.

Long Runs: (Scheduled for Saturdays, but you can run long on Sundays if it seems more convenient.) Long runs are necessary to improve your aerobic fitness and endurance. I prefer to prescribe time rather than distance. I also don't care how fast or slow you run, as long as you run for the prescribed length of time at a pace that allows you to finish as fast as you start. If your pace lags and you have to walk in the last few miles, you obviously ran the early miles too fast. Run at a conversational pace. If running with your teammates, use this workout as an excuse to talk about everything that happened to you during the week. Or sing songs. This is a workout that you can run on the roads or on trails. Mostly, have fun.

Rest/Easy Days: (Scheduled for Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.) These are the three days of the week when you do not run hard. And quite frankly you can't run hard seven days a week without risking injury or overtraining. So in between the hard workouts, run easy. Rest can be an easy run of 30 minutes, or it can be a day when you do not run at all. You need days of comparative rest between the hard workouts, otherwise you will not be able to run those hard

workouts at full speed. If you fail to do the hard workouts properly, you will not improve. Don't train hard every day assuming that it will make you a better runner; it may actually affect your training negatively.

We will try to meet most days at Blount Cultural Park for a run. Stay tuned to the Remind updates for exact details.

Week Monday

Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Miles

May 30 30 min. Tempo

10 x 400 30 min. Easy/ or Rest

30 min. Fartlek

30 min. Easy

60 min. Long

Rest 20

June 6 30 min. Tempo

5 x 1000 30 min. Easy/ or Rest

30 min. Fartlek

30 min. Easy

60 min. Long

Rest 21

June 13 35 min. Tempo

6 x 600 30 min. Easy/ or Rest

35 min. Fartlek

30 min. Easy

60 min. Long

Rest 20

June 20 35 min. Tempo

10 x 400 30 min. Easy/ or Rest

35 min. Fartlek

30 min. Easy

60 min. Long

Rest 20

June 27 40 min. Tempo

5 x 1000 30 min. Easy/ or Rest

40 min. Fartlek

30 min. Easy

60 min. Long

Rest 23

July 4 40 min. Tempo

8 x 600 30 min. Easy/ or Rest

40 min. Fartlek

30 min. Easy

60 min. Long

Rest 23

July 11 45 min. Tempo

10 x 400 30 min. Easy/ or Rest

45 min. Fartlek

30 min. Easy

60 min. Long

Rest 23

July 18 45 min. Tempo

5 x 1000 30 min. Easy/ or Rest

45 min. Fartlek

30 min. Easy

60 min. Long

Rest 24

July 25 45 min. Tempo

10 x 600 30 min. Easy/ or Rest

45 min. Fartlek

30 min. Easy

60 min. Long

Rest 25

August 1 30 min. Tempo

10 x 400 30 min. Easy/ or Rest

30 min. Fartlek

30 min. Easy

60 min. Long

Rest 20

Shoes

One thing we didn’t really talk much about last year was the subject of shoes. What should you be wearing to train in? Should that differ from what you race in?

These are examples of a training shoes. Notice the thick cushioning that will protect you from injury as you log your many miles over the course of your training. This is what you should wear to practice.

These are examples of cross country spikes. There is little support. The shoes are cut down to make them as light as possible. By the time you run your race, your muscles should be strong enough to support you without injury for the 5K distance. There are also slots to insert spikes, which will give you a noticeable advantage in traction as you run across open country.

Know Your Sport: Shoes

Bill Bowerman: Nike’s Original Innovator

“A shoe must be three things,” Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman declared. “It must be light, comfortable and it’s got to go the distance.”

Bill Bowerman with an early track spike.

In the late 1950s, veteran track and field coach Bill Bowerman was dissatisfied with available running spikes, which were constructed of weighty leather and metal. As a result, he became obsessed with shaving ounces off shoes to help runners slash seconds off their times. His quest wound up redefining athletic footwear. 

Prior to this feat, Bowerman’s drive and relentless curiosity had precipitated a string of diverse accomplishments: Born in 1911 in Portland, Oregon, he excelled as a student-athlete while attending the University of Oregon and later gained acclaim as a high school football and track coach. He fought in World War II and came back a decorated hero. In 1948, Bowerman returned to his college alma mater and, during his 24-year tenure, led the university to four NCAA track titles and coached 16 sub-four-minute milers. Further, he introduced jogging to the community of Eugene in the 1960s, which helped spark a national phenomenon, and he served as the U.S. Olympic track coach in 1972.

Bill Bowerman with an Oregon track athlete circa 1969.

Bowerman was also a mentor, coach and friend to Phil Knight, with whom he co-founded Blue Ribbon Sports, the precursor to Nike, in 1964. His confidence and counsel helped the company's original business model — importing and selling Japanese-made running shoes — succeed and grow. 

However, Bowerman’s own footwear innovations proved even more influential, shaping Nike’s ethos of leveraging athlete insights to design transformative products.

Building a better shoe

Bill Bowerman at a Eugene lab circa 1980.

Bowerman first began tinkering with running shoes in the 1950s, when he wrote to several footwear companies proposing ideas for improving shoes to better serve runners. None accepted his recommendations. Frustrated but not deterred, Bowerman took matters into his own hands

and, with the guidance of a local cobbler, learned how to make shoes. To start, he deconstructed existing racing shoes with his band saw and examined their anatomy. Then, he toyed with metal and plastic spike plates and assembled various uppers over diverse lasts. Later, a Springfield-based bootmaker provided technical advice and showed Bowerman how to craft shoe patterns. 

Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight at Oregon.

Phil Knight became the first student-athlete to try a Bowerman original. In a letter to Knight dated August 8, 1958, Bowerman suggested a weight-training regimen and running schedule. He closed the letter with a postscript: If you have a pair of shoes that you think would make good flats, send them down to me. They will be ready for you when school starts. Bowerman fitted a handmade pair with an upper made of white rubber-coated fabric — “the kind you’d use for a tablecloth you could sponge off,” he explained — to Knight’s size. Knight says Bowerman chose him to try the shoes because he “wasn’t one of the best runners on the team. Bowerman knew he could use me as a guinea pig without much risk.” 

Whatever the reasoning, the young runner tested the shoes at practice one evening, but didn’t get to wear them for long. His teammate Otis Davis spotted the prototype and wanted to give it a try. He liked the shoes so much he didn’t give them back. In fact, Davis went on to win a conference championship and a gold medal in the 400 meters at the 1960 Olympic Games in Bowerman-made shoes.

Moving forward, Bowerman custom fit shoes to his runners by drawing an outline of their feet, measuring widths and noting individualities, such as an extended heel or slim ankle. He experimented with dozens of textiles — kangaroo leather, velvet, deer hide, snakeskin and even fish skin — to find the ideal lightweight, stretchy and resilient material, churning out new creations on a weekly basis. As his prototypes grew more refined and reliable, he continued to seek alliances with footwear companies, to no avail.

In an August 1960 letter to a Portland company requesting steel for spikes, Bowerman wrote: Most American shoemakers are not interested in what we track coaches think about track

shoes. The best shoes...at this time are made by the Germans. Their sole material is not too good and I can either replace their sole or I can make my own shoe. I don’t think there is any question, certainly in my own mind there is not, that I now have the best shoe in the world – if I could just find some good American shoemaker to make it.

 

A shoe in the door

This opportunity finally arrived when Knight forged a relationship with Onitsuka in 1964, based upon the belief that less expensive Japanese-made running shoes could perform as well as standard-bearer German shoes. Subsequently, he and Bowerman invested 50-50 in the business of importing and selling running shoes, opening a path for Bowerman’s own ideas. The coach expressed his optimism in a letter to Onitsuka in May 1964: I hope that your arrangements with Mr. Knight would be such that I would be free to turn over the ideas that I have worked out on track shoes. 

Bowerman spent the following summer designing and in October traveled with his wife, Barbara, to Tokyo for the 1964 Olympics Games, where three of his Oregon runners were competing. The couple stayed an extra week so that Bowerman could meet with Onitsuka founder and CEO Kihachiro Onitsuka as well as S. Morimoto, a company executive. Bowerman explained his ideas and toured factories to study the cutting and stitching machines. He gained confidence in the Japanese shoemaking process and established relationships with the two leaders, ensuring a receptive audience for his future prototypes and suggestions.

THE DAWN OF CORTEZ

Bowerman’s first breakthrough with Tiger shoes surfaced the following spring, in 1965, the indirect result of a track meet. At the meet, University of Oregon distance runner and future Olympic marathoner Kenny Moore moved wide in an 880-meter race, into the path of a passing teammate. The misstep resulted in a spike-inflicted gash on the outside of his foot. That injury led to a stress fracture and one of Bowerman’s most enduring inventions.

Early in Moore’s recovery, the runner trained in the Onitsuka Tiger TG-22, a high-jump shoe that Blue Ribbon Sports mistakenly sold as a running shoe. When Moore’s X-ray showed a break across the third metatarsal, Bowerman asked to see his shoes and promptly ripped them apart. They had spongy cushioning in the heel and forefoot but zero arch support. “If you set out to engineer a shoe to bend metatarsals until they snap, you couldn’t do much better than this,” Bowerman growled. “Not only that, the outer sole rubber wears away like cornbread.” 

To correct the TG-22, Bowerman fashioned a running shoe with a cushiony innersole, soft sponge rubber in the forefoot and top of the heel, hard sponge rubber in the middle of the heel and a firm rubber outsole. In June of 1965, he sent Onitsuka instructions and samples for the shoe.

Kenny Moore Prototype

A month later, Morimoto responded, confirming that he was producing a training shoe to the specifications. But, Onitsuka had “some opinion as to the inserted sponge rubber at the heel.” Despite the objections, Bowerman pushed for the placement of sponge rubber in the heel, stating that it would help alleviate Achilles tendon issues. That summer, Moore rebounded from his stress fracture and logged more than 1,000 miles in Bowerman’s latest creations. Early Onitsuka prototypes featured two distinct pads in the heel and ball of foot, and a narrow heel. This eventually morphed into the full-length midsole Bowerman had originally conceived, a feature that ultimately became a major selling point for the shoe.

Consequently, Onitsuka introduced the Bowerman-engineered Tiger Cortez, which an early 1967 catalog explained as: Designed to be the finest long distance shoe in the world. Soft sponge midsole through ball and heel absorbs road shock; high-density outer sole for extra miles of wear.

 

The Nike Cortez

Consumers loved it. The Cortez was the first stable, comfortable shoe for the roads. It looked cool and debuted as running emerged as an American pastime, popularized by Bowerman and his 1967 book “Jogging.” And when Knight and Bowerman ceased importing and distributing running shoes through Blue Ribbon Sports and launched Nike as a designer and maker of athletic shoes, the Cortez silhouette carried over to the new brand. It also earned Bowerman a patent for

its innovative continuously cushioned midsole. In July 1973, Runner’s World called the Nike Cortez “the most popular long-distance training shoe in the U.S.”

1973 Nike Cortez Ad 1977 Nike Cortez Tradition Ad.

Waffle windfall

The Cortez, however, was just the first of Bowerman’s celebrated inventions, which came to comprise eight registered patents, including shoes with an external heel counter, improved spike placement and a cushioned spike plate. It was also just the first success in his enduring quest to create the lightest running shoe possible. 

“He thought running shoes could be better,” Nike’s first full-time employee Jeff Johnson says about Bowerman’s early innovations. “He challenged accepted notions of traction, cushioning, biomechanics and even of anatomy itself.”

Bowerman next sought to manifest a shoe with excellent traction on multiple surfaces, without metal spikes. The solve came over breakfast in 1970, as he contemplated the syrup-cradling depressions of the waffle on his plate. “What if you reversed the pattern and formed a material with raised waffle-grid nubs?” he wondered. He subsequently commandeered the family waffle iron and substituted melted urethane for batter. Unfortunately, Bowerman initially forgot to grease the iron with an anti-stick agent and it glued shut. Despite this setback, he persevered and fashioned a flexible, springy and lightweight rubber material with a raised, gridded pattern and grip traction. 

The Blue Ribbon Sports crew raced to debut the waffle sole at the upcoming 1972 U.S. Olympic track and field trials in Eugene. They had nylon uppers flown in from Japan to pair with waffle soles hand-cut from sheets of rubber made in Eugene. Early Blue Ribbon Sports employee Geoff Hollister glued the components together, creating shoes for a handful of trial competitors to wear during training or on the infield at Hayward Field.

The hand-built shoes were dubbed the Moon Shoe due to the distinctive imprint they made in the dirt, which resembled the lunar footprints left behind by American astronauts during the era’s historic Apollo missions. The first iterations were crude, but runners liked the feel and traction of the waffle sole and word of the invention quickly spread. Bowerman further refined the concept and developed the iconic Waffle Trainer in 1974. 

The rubber studs of the waffle sole offered give and cushioning that appealed to both elite athletes and everyday runners. The shoes, as TIME magazine wrote, were ‘’grabbed by the army of weekend jocks suffering from bruised feet.’’ The Waffle Trainer placed Nike on the global athletic footwear map, setting the stage for unparalleled growth.

Bowerman’s legacy as an original thinker and innovator will forever be linked with the waffle sole, which like many brilliant inventions is so simple and intuitive it resonates immediately and broadly. Versions of it are still employed today in Nike footwear, as are Bowerman’s many other contributions to running shoe innovation, including the raised heel, the nylon upper and the continuous midsole.