Dave Van Sickle
- From Iowa, did track to stay in shape for football
- DII football and track athlete
- Moved to Arizona in 1982 to see how fast could run post-college
- Started coaching in 1983
- Started middle distance coaching in high school then local community college needed a coach and took over their cross country program, not knowing how to score a cross country meet
- After 3-4 years there moved around the country for a few years
- in 1990, at age of 30, got a full-time job a Xavier High School in Phoenix and been there since
- Sponge for learning and sat with Arthur Lydiard for 3 hours
Stephanie Bruce
- Ran for Dave and Xavier in high school 1998-2002
- She came on as an unfocused freshman
- Eating habits were horrible
- Was stuck at 5:28 for a few years before breaking through as a senior with 4:54 in just a few weeks
- When asked how that happened, she thought she was running hard, now knew what running hard was
- Doing the basics, but with super motivation and you can have breakthroughs
- Things were kept simple
Training
- Early in career SebCo was a big influence and trained like him with circuits and low miles
- Mid-distance kids had success but the long distance was not having the success
- Later in 80's started learning more about aerobic component
- First-year Xavier only 5 girls and only 5 could run 3 miles
- Woke me up to the importance of being an aerobic distance coach
- Late 90's saw an advertisement for Jack Daniels looking for research subjects and volunteered
- Learned energy systems from Jack and touching on all of them in every phase
- Had to slow the kids down, they were running too hard
Coaching Girls
- Girls are easier, generally listen better and loyal and will give it everything they have
- Girls tougher
- Girls will go through a year where they don't get better
- When they become a woman it gets harder for them and they need to get through it
- Prepare them for it
What does season look like?
- Start in May 1-2 weeks off after track State meet
- Long progression start 25 minutes for the first two weeks and then add minutes
- Start hill sprints early
- Tempo runs start at 10 minutes
- If vacation still responsible to run and communicate what they did
- End of summer camp
Week
- Monday do about 5 miles progression runs, then hill sprints with long recovery to hit hard
- Will work up to 16-20 hills with walk down, 30-second hill
- Total for day around 8 miles
- Tuesday we get up to 60-minutes recovery
- Wednesday steady over rolling hills up to 75-minutes probably 9 miles
- Thursday hard effort day 5xmile 5-6 seconds slower than race pace 400 recovery or something like fast mile, tempo, end 400s
- Friday OYO
- Saturday long run up to 100 minutes with tempo work, 10 sets of 10 minutes with last two minutes of each segment tempo