“The bad part of nice weather is they want you to race all the time,” says Lauren Saylor, an assistant coach at Clovis North High School in Fresno, Calif. In Fresno the weather has been much more cooperative than it has been in the rest of the country. And in taking advantage of it, Californians have been racing for a month now.

The boys and girls of Clovis North are eight meets into the season in late March. Every Wednesday is a dual meet, and every Friday or Saturday is an invitational. Constant racing makes it tough to fit in training, especially when you’re doubling or tripling at a dual meet, so the Clovis North coaches incorporate workouts into the races.

It’s working: Psalm Ocampo is a junior with a 3200m PR of 9:13 who is hoping to get into the fast heat of the Arcadia 3200m on April 12, and senior Leigh Moffett is coming off a cross country season that saw her qualify for NXN. (She’s heading to Dartmouth this fall.)

The boys and girls of Clovis North do the same workouts, with adjusted volume depending on how old the athlete is. Saylor gave Running Times an inside look at a typical week of training with the Broncos in the early part of the season. Each week, the older boys will get up to 65–70 miles, while the girls will run anywhere from 20–50 miles per week depending on age and talent level.

Monday: Threshold Workouts
A typical workout is 4 sets of 3 x 300m. For each set, the runners run 300m at threshold pace, then jog 100m. They get 2 minutes between each set. To make the workout fun, one 300 in each set is a “hammer,” meaning they hit mile pace. For each set, one person gets to choose which one they’ll hammer and it can be any of the three reps, so it comes as a surprise to the other runners. It’s also a great way to mimic racing and changing pace. 

Tuesday: Mileage and Strides
With the Wednesday race, the boys and girls take Tuesday easy to get in some miles and light strides.

Wednesday: Dual Meet and Workout
Clovis North mixes workouts into racing as best as they can. Last week, Saylor says, the 3200m runners ran 8 x 300m at tempo pace then jogged 100m—in the midst of the dual meet race. The miler group ran the 800m by running 600m at threshold and then kicking home the last 200m. That group then comes back for a 4 x 400m after some strides.

Thursday: “Flying Fifties”
Thursday is just like Tuesday, some easy running and strides. The team does “Flying Fifties.” These are 50m bursts of speed. The athletes get a running start and run 50m at 90 percent speed. Saylor says it’s “working on pure speed.” 

Friday: Invitational
This is the same as a Wednesday dual meet, especially in March. Up until May when league and sectional meets come around, the focus is getting in volume and workouts within the races. Saylor says that one race each day isn’t enough volume, so often right after an event a group will do something like 4 x 800 at threshold pace. “It makes it really difficult to peak in June,” Saylor says of all the early season racing, so they make sure to keep mileage up.

Saturday: Long Run
The day after the Friday invitational is set aside for long runs. Every once in a while an invitational will be on Saturday, so the long run will get pushed to Sunday. The higher volume runners (mostly juniors and seniors) will run as many as 14 miles, while the lower volume runners will get somewhere around 10-11 miles. (Moffett runs 12.)

Sunday: On Your Own
“We’ll never meet on a Sunday,” Saylor says. “Some run on their own or some kids will take it off. That’s pretty standard for every week.”

Enjoy this look inside a week of training with Clovis North HS? We want to feature you as well. Tweet @RunningTimesHS or email Liam.Boylan-Pett@rodale.com if you’re a coach or an athlete who wants to share what a week of training looks like.