This is episode 423, with two time National High School Coach of the Year, the coach who led his teams to four state cross country titles in California and author of the new book Beyond Fast, Sean Brosnan.
Welcome to the Strength Running Podcast.
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I'm your host, Coach Jason Fitzgerald.
I'm a former cross country and track athlete for Connecticut College.
I've been coaching runners since 2010 and I'm a former columnist for Trail Runner Magazine.
Today I'm the head coach of Strength Running, host of this podcast and author of the Performance Training Journal, now available on Amazon.
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My guest today is one of the most prolific high school coaches of the last decade, and Sean Brosnan took over a struggling high school cross country team in Newberry Park California, to turn it into a national powerhouse.
His boys team won three national championships.
His girls team won one national championship, and he was named as national coach of the year twice.
He's also been the California coach of the year twice.
Sean himself was an All-American in both cross country and track while competing for Adams State University, and holds a PR of 344 in the 1500 meters.
Sean is now a coach for the UCLA track team.
Our conversation focuses on the mental and the physical strategies that Sean used to develop his athletes into nationally competitive runners.
It's just a masterclass in how to lift people up, show them what's possible and set a really high standard and hold runners to that standard.
His book Beyond Fast How a Renegade Coach and His Unlikely High School Team Revolutionized Distance Running is now available.
And on a personal level, This book was really powerful for me.
Most know that I'm a former cross-country athlete.
And when I read Running with the Buffaloes, which is about the University of Colorado Boulder cross-country team, I read that when I was in college in cross-country, knee deep in the sport of cross-country.
And it really... formalized my love for the sport.
And I think this book has the potential to do that for our younger audience.
I think that this is an excellent book.
I really enjoyed it.
And I think that Sean has a very unique way of approaching the sport.
And I think you're going to get a lot of value out of listening to him.
So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Sean Brosnan.
Sean, welcome to the podcast and big congrats on your new book.
Thank you.
I'm excited to be here.
Well, I got to say, you have written a book that speaks to me.
I was a high school cross-country runner who I think had a very similar mentality.
I just wanted to be the best runner that I could be.
And so much of the book is about this mentality and what it takes to improve.
So thank you for capturing this incredible story.
It's like running with the buffaloes. at the high school level.
I mentioned that before we clicked record.
And that's one of my favorite books.
And this is rapidly becoming at the top of my list.
So I thought it would be fun to separate this conversation into two parts the physical and the psychological.
You obviously pushed your athletes and challenged them with training.
But Thank you so much.
Can you go a little deeper on this idea and how you managed to convince the team that they could get as good as they did?
Yeah well, I mean, if you read the book, you'll see that my traditional path to coaching and how I ended up in Newberry Park wasn't probably your normal way to get there, right.
So I a thing that I tried to do was surround myself by like, a lot of different coaches, a lot of different athletes, and figure things out the way I felt like I could learn to be a better coach.
And ultimately that's what I wanted to do.
So I think when I did that, you know I picked up some little tidbits here and there and a lot of different aspects of training and running.
But on top of that, I think I picked up a lot of the mental side of it.
Yes, we did work with a sports psychologist at Newberry Park.
I think one of the best ever, because that was important to me.
But that's not how I came in and had this mindset even back in the days when I was a volunteer division two coach in North Carolina, one of my first kind of coaching gigs.
I you know there was a lot of things that I would watch and I'm like man, there's a, there's a big part of like self-belief, you know, and as my, as I matured, I really got into like manifesting and positive thinking and It may be corny to some people and cheesy, but it's just the way I feel like you should be in all avenues of life.
And when I went into this program, I told myself I'm like listen, I'm going to make this the best team ever, or they're just going to fire me.
It's going to be one or the other.
I always think it's possible.
I have a lot of coaching friends that say, you think everyone can be great.
You think everyone can be fast.
And I do.
You know, I don't think everyone could be a gold medalist, or in high school all state or all American or whatever the highest achievements in high school are.
But I do believe that, you know, people can be a lot better.
And I think the human body is capable of a lot more.
And I think it starts with the mind.
You know yes, you have to follow it with all the physical aspects.
So When I went to Newberry Park, I said, all right, this is what I'm going to do.
And we're going to set the bar high.
And we're going to, from day one, cut the barriers down.
There's a famous saying, you're born in a sin.
You don't know anything when you're born.
If i could get these kids early enough to just not know anything and and the bar was high, that that's kind of the mindset i went in with and um, obviously it all worked out.
You know newberry park and that that helps when things start clicking, but that's that's kind of the way i went into things.
I'm curious how you balance the idea of you're better than you think you are.
I'm going to push you really hard.
We're either going to be the best team this school has ever seen or they're going to fire me.
You know, that's Potentially a very bold statement right there.
Did you get any pushback from the team on that kind of mentality starting the season like that?
Yeah, definitely.
You know, when I came in, the program wasn't at the highest state that it could be at.
You know, they hadn't won a league title in like 20-something years.
They weren't qualifying well to state championships, or even individual qualifiers at the time were nowhere close.
So yeah, I mean some people.
I think the younger kids were more like yes yes yes, because they didn't know any better.
But I think some of the older kids were just like, well, why do we have to listen to this guy?
Like, you know, but I think I had one guy on the team and I talk about him in the book.
His name was Ethan Duffy.
And he was my number one athlete, my first year coaching with Newberry Park.
And he took over as the leader.
I never elect a team captain.
I'm not someone that does that.
I don't think it.
I just I'm not a big believer in like appointing someone like you're the team leader now, even regardless of their ability.
But he kind of took it upon himself as that strong personality and was like hey listen, we have to listen to Coach Sean.
This is what we need to do.
Because he wanted to go to the state meet.
He wanted to run in college.
And he was like, you guys aren't going to screw up my senior year.
And even though he kind of had that little bit of a bully attitude with them, it helped because he would tell me when kids were slacking off and i just went in and was like listen, like you know, some of the parents thought i was a little crazy.
I know that and i'm i'm, you know i that's not deniable.
But at the end of the day it's like listen, i've been a lot around a lot of coaches and like, most of them are crazy and they're the best coaches ever There is.
So I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do what I do.
And I'm not gonna do anything bad or, you know, against the rules.
And I always say that because it's the truth.
It's like, let's figure out what we can do.
And let's do it to the fullest extent.
And that's, that's the kind of the way we went at it.
You hit on a very interesting aspect of coaching high school, which is the fact that you're dealing with children.
And you're going to have kids skipping practices to go hang out at Trader Joe's or go off to a pool to goof off with their friends, instead of completing the training run.
And those are actually real examples from the book of kids that you were coaching.
How did you instill this level of discipline and belief when...
You know, you're admittedly coaching a group of kids who like to goof off, who can sometimes not do what they're supposed to do.
I certainly remember being 15, 16, 17 years old.
And you know Sean, I admittedly skipped a couple runs in my day and went and goofed off with my friends.
I think it's like a kind of a rite of passage.
But like, how did you navigate that?
Yeah.
I mean, I think we all probably kind of did it.
I think I might've been a little different in high school.
I came on running later in my high school career, more of my junior year of high school, even though I was around running, you know, I left running.
I went to BMX racing to talk about that too in my book and came back to running later in my high school.
And obviously I'm still around it today and love it.
But, you know, I don't know.
I mean I think it's.
There was some.
You know I used to go to this camp for years before I was coaching too.
It's called the Running School and it's in upstate New York, one of the biggest and largest running camps in the country.
It's like 54 years going now.
And I know the two owners well, I consider them good friends.
And, you know, it put me around a lot of high school kids before I was coaching high school.
And I talk about this too in the book and like how I think I was like Hey, maybe I can really make a difference.
I felt like there was a connection that I was able to have.
And I don't mean on a personal level, but a connection of like, When I would talk to these kids and I would see them interact with some different coaches.
It's like man no no no, no.
I don't know what it was.
It was just something I felt like I could get the best out of them or the belief.
You know, I had a few coaches that did that to me and a few mentors, even teachers in life.
And I felt like when you could not master that, but when you can do that I guess at a high level I think you can get the most out of people.
I mean, I said earlier you know, right when we got here, that I think the body is capable of more.
Then um, then we, we believe, and i think everyone wants to be good, everyone wants to be great at something, and if it's like you know, it's not just being positive and being nice and allowing people to to flourish, it's about, like discipline too, and it's like I don't know.
The other one tells the same exact joke.
Why is one funny and why is the other not?
It's the delivery.
It's the connection and it's the way you say things.
And I think, when you're around people.
I had a college coach, Damian Martin, one of the most brilliant coaches out there today at Adam State University.
It was at Adam State College when I was there.
And like when we used to go to meetings with him, it blew me away of how much better I felt about myself after talking to him.
And I was like, what is he doing that I need to?
And that's what I always was striving for.
And then when I was around pros, I would listen to these coaches and there were little things here and there that I was like he just said that that made them believe.
And when I'm around other coaches, Sometimes I have to hold back because they'll be doing a workout and there's a moment that they have.
I was like, now you have to go in and say something and they don't do it.
And I'm like, ah, And it drives me crazy.
And I think those are the things that I don't think people see behind the scenes, that you do as a coach, that you learn, if you look for it, of how to connect with the athletes.
And I don't know if there's a way to teach that, but I always felt like blessed.
I guess you could say that.
I felt like I had that and I was able to connect with these athletes and, you know, yes, you get pushback, but I think when enough of them start doing well, they start outnumbering the people that are giving you pushback.
Like we don't need to listen to this guy.
Let's go jump in the pool.
And you're right.
That did happen a couple of times.
And I remember when they, went for a run of my top runners.
And, you know, we were, we qualified for the state meet for the first time ever.
And I found out they did that.
And I basically told them like, you guys don't, you want to waste my time, waste my time.
Like I'm here for you.
Like you need to make up your mind what you want to do, and i always give the the speech.
I'm like listen, give me four years of your your time to do something great.
You have your whole life to do all these other things and party and whatever you may do, but it's like if you really want to do something great, it will echo what you do the rest of your life.
And you know that i don't know, that's just the kind of the way i look at it.
And again, it all worked out but Um, there's it's not always roses.
You know there's a lot of um, a lot of pushback sometimes and a lot of uh, um down things that you know that the public doesn't see.
They just see, Ooh, this is a national championship team.
They think they just might, you know, have all these talented people.
They do so well.
It's like, I wish you were at practice every day.
And you saw what we went through.
Yeah well, running in high school and college and just having such a wide variety of coaches, I know exactly what you're talking about.
There are certain coaches that just have a way of lighting a fire under you so that you start believing that you are capable of so much more than what you think you might be.
And it's those coaches that I think are really special.
And you mentioned, you know, a couple times you have to like, say something, or these little moments where there's a good opportunity to kind of insert yourself and light that little kindling of belief under an athlete.
Can you give us an example or two of when might be a good time, or a past story of some of the specific moments where you inserted yourself and kind of taught a runner to believe in themselves a little bit more?
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of moments.
You know, one, I mean, I have a few examples, I guess I can think of right away.
But one was maybe not even a running example was Nico Young, one of my biggest, most famous runners now.
He, you know, is a US 10K champion.
Olympian American record holder has a good chance to meddle in Japan in a few weeks in the 10000 and the 5000.
So Nico Young, everyone in the running world knows him.
Going into his senior year of high school.
He just ran the National Cross Country Championships and finished fourth place as a junior.
He went on to win it the next year.
After he got fourth place, that gave him a lot of notoriety.
All coaches knew who he was.
He was being recruited by some top schools even before that for how well he ran the whole year in that cross-country season and track the year before.
He was talking to the Stanford coach at the time.
He ended up going to Northern Arizona University, but Stanford was high on his list.
And he was only talking to the assistant, I think.
And then he, I don't know if he called me.
I think he called me and he's like, hey, coach, like the head coach called me.
And at the time it was this guy, Chris Miltenberg, who's now at UNC.
But he's like, I just talked to Chris Milberg.
I'm like, well, it's always a good thing when the head coach calls you.
And he was kind of telling me what they talked about.
And then we were talking about his training.
And he goes, he asked me my goals for the season.
And I was like, oh, yeah?
I was like, what did you tell him?
And he's like, I want to run 855 for the 3,200.
I mean, there was silence and I said, I said, Nico, we got to talk, man.
And so I had to pull him aside and I was like, okay, you got to stop number one.
Once you put a number in your head, that's the number.
So get rid of that number.
I go, I'll give you a number.
You could run faster than 840.
I go, I believe that.
And I know that.
And I said, I don't tell my athletes anything they can't do.
And that's something I always stick by.
And I said, so you got to start thinking 840.
Stop thinking 855.
I said, that's not you.
And he was like a little taken back.
But slowly but surely, we got him to believe.
He ended up running 840 flat, which was crazy.
And he won this big Invitational called the Arcadia Invitational.
He beat one of his biggest rivals, this guy, Cole Sprott, who was one of the best in the country too.
And it came down to like the last lap of the 3200.
Anyway, the whole point and I'll bring it back.
It's like he that that it's like he just he wasn't clicking.
It's like because.
I always tell people, what is your goal?
I'm not a big goal setter.
When I give you the goals, I want the work you're going to put in, not the overall, because everyone can give me the overall.
It's not a big deal to me.
I always like to ask, and if somebody goes, okay, I want to run a 410 mile in high school.
I'm like, why 410?
I go, why not 407?
And they're like, well, what do you mean?
I said, because once you put that number in your head, it's really, really hard to do better.
And you're going to be satisfied with that.
So I'm not telling you to go crazy and be like, I want to run 352 and be the best ever in the world.
But what I'm saying is I like to take a step back and say, let's put in the work.
Let's let, let's let, let's let the goals take care of themselves.
And like, let me talk to you about that.
And I think those moments, I think when you can find them, they make a big difference, you know.
And another moment and not to draw this out too much is like I had an athlete once in the opposite who we had a college coach coming and recruiting them and they come to practice sometimes and they were watching a workout and it was a windy day and it was really hot.
And this particular athlete was also one of my top athletes.
It wasn't Nico, but another one in the same era.
And he was bombing his workout.
And he was so nervous about this coach.
He kept looking at me mid-workout as the coach is like 30 meters away watching.
He's like, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't.
I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You just said I can't like 10 times in five seconds.
Stop.
You got to stop that.
And then something i always tell my athletes is like and this is like one of the newberry park secrets which people can make fun of and i go ahead because it works.
But in mid-race i tell my athletes all the time you're gonna feel terrible, you're gonna feel terrible at 2K, 3K of this 5K race and you're gonna put your head forward and you're gonna say I can, I can, I can and say it.
I go, I'm telling you, laugh at that. but say it and it works.
And it's like that positive, like, you know, that positive reinforcement.
And those are the little things.
I mean again, those are just small examples, but like I think, when we do that, It's like it sets you up for success and all ends.
And that's like a running example and a non running example.
But there's so many things we have.
And it's like, I love this side of it.
I love when a kid struggles because I think it's my job as a coach to say, OK, that was that wasn't a good race.
We'll admit that.
But.
It's my fault too.
So we're going to figure this out and I'm going to figure it out.
And I think when coaches blame the athletes all the time, it's terrible, you know?
And I find it funny that a lot of times when athletes run well, they'll be like oh it's the kids just talented.
But then when an athlete runs poor, they're like, oh, the coaching is terrible.
It's like, which one is it?
I think it's a team.
I think, you know, you work off each other and some people just do well together.
And again, those are some examples, if that makes any sense at all.
I think of like positive things that's happened, you know, when I was at Newberry Park.
I love those.
And you know, basically you're saying like, don't put a cap on what you think your performance is, because you actually don't know.
I mean, you don't actually know what your limit might be.
So why even dwell on the limit, put an actual number on that limit?
Let's focus on the work instead.
It's sort of a process-oriented approach, which most coaches will definitely get behind.
And you mentioned earlier about...
Some setbacks.
Things don't progress linearly.
And I'd love to know what were some of the setbacks that the team experienced that might have given you a little bit of pause, maybe in the early years.
Like, maybe we can't actually accomplish the goal of winning a state championship.
Was there anything that made you think twice about it?
Yeah.
I mean, there, man, there's so many things that happened.
We were at, we used to do this camp, um, you know, that was a month long and altitude.
And a lot of people thought that was crazy for a high school team.
But it was a little crazy.
But you know it's a crazy thing to win and break national records too.
So.
We were up in Big Bear, California and at altitude training, probably about two weeks in maybe.
And I had an athlete come to me.
Basically, he wasn't feeling good.
In the middle of the night and one of my star athletes, daniel appleford, had like really bad stomach pains and he's like i need to go to a like a clinic.
I'm like we're gonna go to the hospital.
Daniel, i gotta take you.
Like something wasn't right.
He went to the hospital and he ended up having an intestine issue and they were like twisted and we don't even know ultimately what happened, but he had something, one of those freak things, and He didn't run for almost a month or two.
Like he was in the hospital for like three weeks, like in bedridden.
And like, I was like, okay, his season's over.
And I'm not that I'm like throwing him away, but I mean I spent the whole night with him at the hospital.
They had the.
They were going to fly him in a helicopter down the hill from Big Bear to a bigger hospital.
I think he ended up going in an ambulance, which was probably a little bit less dramatic, you know, which was ultimately, I think, good.
But He did recover and it took a long time, but it was a big impact in the team.
I was up the whole night.
I rolled straight into the house.
I had my assistant coach.
He was staying in town, come over and watch everyone when I was gone.
And I rolled into the house and we were filming that day and we had like a film crew there and they were doing this whole little documentary thing on us.
I'm like, oh my gosh.
So I had to like jump in the shower, pretend like I slept and just move on.
Like nothing happened.
And I remember talking to the guys privately afterwards because everyone's like what's going on with Daniel?
And I'm like, listen, I think Daniel's out for the season, but.
I was like, Hector, I need you to step up because now you're our fifth man.
Now you're our final scorer.
So it's like you know you have those moments and it's like but then it's giving another.
But to me it's a positive thing because we're giving.
It's like I always say in a cross country team you have seven, five score, top seven run in a varsity race or a big race.
And I'm always like, you have to win without your number one.
You have to be able to win without your number one because everyone has a problem.
There's a sick this.
I always hear people like oh, we would have won nationals, or we would have won the state meet if so-and-so wasn't sick.
I'm like, We had a guy who was like down all month.
We had guys that were severely sick at national and we got it done and you have to be able to get it done.
But there's an example of like, man, we, there was big adversity and Daniel was a big part of that.
Like, Like mental part of the group.
And he was a good leader.
So it was like, dang.
And then all of a sudden his stuff was just there at camp.
He was in the hospital.
Like it just kind of put a dark cloud over the program for a little bit.
But I think like we had to rise above it.
And I think ultimately it made us better.
And the great thing is Daniel came back that season, which honestly shocked me.
And he ended up being our fifth scorer and he ran really, really well and was, you know, top 10 at the state meet.
I think he was like sixth place at the state championships which you know.
Our other four guys were ahead of him, you know, and we came one point from perfect score.
And we would have perfect scored again if he was probably healthy all season.
But he missed a huge part of the season.
And like yeah, that's one of the many, I think, adversity things that we run into that you know, people don't know about, or injuries or different things, or you know, I don't know suspensions, crazy things that happen at school all the time.
So.
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One of the things I'm learning about you Sean, is that you tend not to worry too much about the outcome, whether that's a time in a race or maybe it's okay someone got injured or they have a medical emergency where we may not place the same that we were hoping to.
You have this very much like.
Let's focus on the work, And one of the lines that you wrote in the book is training is where confidence is born.
And I absolutely love this sentence.
And I'd love to unpack it a little bit.
Like, how did you...
How did you use training to instill confidence in your athletes?
Because I know you could just you know you get a runner to run 100 miles a week or have him do a bunch of crazy workouts.
And If they survive them, they'll probably be a lot more confident.
But that's probably not the approach you took.
So I'm curious, like how you did this for, you know, this group of seven athletes.
Yeah.
You know, I, I think, um, I, I love training blocks.
I love training.
I think you develop more in training than you do racing at a certain level.
I think when you're a JV kid and you're a ninth and 10th grade and you're not running super fast at the high level, I think you have to race more and get more experience.
Yes.
But I think you develop in training.
And to answer your question directly I, as a coach, everyone I've been around and my mentor coaches and people and athletes that I've been around and I consider the best in the world.
At some points I think that you know you find your moments in training.
And here's what I mean.
We're doing a workout where it's like you know.
Let's say we're doing a basic workout in high school cross country four times a mile with like three and a half minutes rest.
I'm just using a generic workout.
And it's like in the middle of the workout I'm known to being like all right, we're on number three.
Say all the guys are running like 445 pace.
I'm like I want a 425 right now and they're like there's no.
I'm like i want a 425 right now.
I don't care about the last one, i'll stop you if i have to.
I want a 425 right now because there's a moment that they get when they do that and then they run the 425 or the 428 and then they come back and those are really fast times.
These are my top top guys in the country that all broke national records, but like They would do this and it's like they didn't realize they can do it.
So I'm going to give probably a better example.
In the book, I talk about this.
There was a workout where we were doing four times a mile.
It's funny I brought that up, I guess.
And I always measure with the wheel the exact distance of a workout because I want it precise.
And I have the 400 markers and we know.
And I wanted them to average under 430.
There was a small little hill on it.
There was real grass, thick grass, just like the national championships.
So it's how we worked out a lot.
And I wanted them to average under 430.
And they went out the first mile and ran 431.
And I got on them.
And I was like, damn it, guys.
I was like, stop putting this preconception in your head.
I want you to run under 430.
And they ended up averaging under 430 that day.
And I really had to get on them.
After the workout, I stopped them.
And I said, guys, listen.
I measured that long.
That was longer than a mile.
You're about three seconds, like that's three seconds slow.
And I think it blew up.
I told my assistant coach, he's like, you're freaking crazy.
And I'm like-
Let's just do this.
And we did it.
And they and they were like, because I remember after the first one, Lex Young was like coach.
I think the wheel is.
I go.
It's not broken, Lex.
Just stop and do it.
And I'm like, oh, my God, they're going to kill me.
And I'm like watching them.
And they average under because I go, I want you guys to realize.
And some and there was a group that didn't do it obviously, like I think like my four five, six were like struggled a little bit right around 430, but I'm like guys listen to me.
Do you understand?
Stop limiting yourself.
And that was a workout where you find that moment where it's like, That's where confidence is built.
And you can't do those every week.
I know that.
And people have the misconception that Newberry Park did all these hard workouts.
We ran 90 miles a week.
That's baloney.
We didn't do that.
We didn't run over 65 miles a week.
We didn't run.
We took Sundays off pretty much every week, usually.
And people didn't know that.
But those moments you find... it creates something so much bigger than just having a bigger race.
And it's like, that's what I look for.
And as a coach, I think about all the time.
And I think that's why my mind's racing.
And I think that's what people don't see about our team.
They just saw, oh, you just have talented people, you work hard, you run miles.
I don't think so, you know, because I get stressed every day when a kid walks in and they're like hey coach, my Achilles.
I'm like, oh my gosh, is my number two guy out for the seat?
Like, you have no idea.
And it's like...
And the management of it and my assistants probably the only one that knows Steve Hawkins, who had two daughters that were really good runners for me.
And he was my assistant.
He was amazing.
And it's like we what we used to go through was like, oh, my gosh.
Yeah, it's incredible.
But I've had those experiences too, where a coach has sort of asked me to do something that I thought was impossible, but then I just went and did it.
And yes, it was hard.
And maybe you don't even accomplish it exactly, but you're close enough.
And I think there's real value in even just being close enough to this outlandish goal.
Now, Sean, one of the things that you've said a couple times is that people thought we were crazy.
This might have been crazy.
I think this is crazy.
You seem to do a lot of crazy things.
Is it more that...
You just think a little differently, and it's not necessarily crazy.
It's just unique or perhaps it's a higher standard than others, because I don't want our listeners to think you have to be kind of nuts to be a good runner.
I do think you have to be a little bit bold, and I would certainly characterize your approach to training as bold.
But I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Yeah no, I mean, I think yeah, probably the word crazy, maybe it's just an expression I probably use a lot.
And I think it's because just the misconception of like, how you have to train, what you have to do, or why somebody wins, because it's not a normal thing to be the best ever and to be the best team ever in cross country which i think that 2021 team was for sure, right so it's like you know they, they either think you're running extreme, like crazy miles, or doing things wrong, and it's like no, it's like so, that's why i always say it.
It's like I've been around a lot of programs, a lot of coaches and I just think it's like sometimes I just blah.
It's just like there's no excitement.
And like, I think sometimes you just have to think outside the box.
You know, one of my biggest influences, one of my first coaches that I was around professional coaches and college coaches was a guy by the name of Scott Simmons who coached at the NAIA level and the Division II level and he coached professionals to American records.
He was a very good coach and he's coached Olympians to, um, metals.
He was Paul Shalemos coach when he won, I think, a bronze medal in the the 5000.
If I'm not mistaken, bronze or silver.
You know, out of all people there, I was watching some acting thing once and Brad Pitt was like talking about going to an audition.
And he's like, when you go into the audition, you have to be different.
He's like, wait a second.
Don't be different for the sake of being different.
If you know what I mean.
And I know that was like a silly way of hearing it, but I go, I do know what he means, because you can't just do training different.
Like if you look at it from a running standpoint, just to be different, because then you would just do crazy stuff or stuff that doesn't make sense.
But it's like, you can't be scared to be like, hey, let's go to Big Bear for a month.
Because I sat back and said, how do we get better?
We were sixth place in the national championship.
We were state champions.
I want to win the national championship next year.
Well, what a better way to do it than take all of my top guys and go to altitude for a month and get the physiological advantage and the red blood cells and that team unity and that bond right when we start training at the end of June to the end of July.
And a lot of the parents said no in the beginning, but I convinced them yes.
So I think those type of things that I might call crazy it's like because I've had coaches are like I can't go away for a month.
You're lucky you can do that.
I'm like, would you think I could have too?
Like my wife was not happy that I was leaving for a month, but like, You just have to do it.
Like, and then she became a part of it, you know, and she would come and visit and it's like you.
Just, you just make it happen.
I think you know there's there's definitely a bunch of different types of people in life, and there's people that like bring problems and there's people that solve problems.
And, you know, when I worked in sales, like it was like, okay, how do we solve this problem?
And it's like, that's what I want to do as a coach.
I want to be able to to solve a problem.
And you're right.
You don't we don't always win.
You don't always get the best that we've had disappointment at Newberry Park.
We've tried to break national records and not break them.
We've had that and people don't see that side of it.
And that's I guess that's what I mean by crazy or outside the box, I'd like to say.
Yeah, sometimes you need that outside the box thinking.
And I'd love to talk a little bit more about this process of iteration, because it seems like a big part of this process for you and the team was looking at where you were, looking at where you wanted to be, and then figuring out what can we do to kind of close that gap.
And you know, when you had gotten most of the way there, you were sixth at the national championship.
You were state champions in California, which is probably the hardest state to be state champions in.
And then you decided, let's go to altitude for a month.
Can we rewind the clock to the first year or two when you're at Newberry Park?
What were some of the things that you did at the very beginning, besides the psychological stuff of teaching them belief and things like that, to get them to that next level?
Because a lot of the times... it can be hard to bridge the gap from a training perspective.
You kind of just have to do a little bit more, do a little bit faster.
Were there specific things that you did to help progress the kids at the very beginning?
Yeah, I mean, well, I guess there's a few ways.
There's things that I did, like training wise, and there's things that I did like simple things like have the kids understand running more, have the parents.
I had so many meetings with parents.
I think they hated me because I knew that they it was the parents that were going to say yes, not the kids, like if i wanted a kid to you know run a workout and we have to drive far away on a saturday at some place because i thought it was better.
The parents need to be involved and we need volunteers and they need to say yes.
Also, letting the kids go to altitude for a month and raising money to do all these type of things too.
We need help and with the boosters and all that.
But um, you know, I I think, I dunno.
I just think those are the type of things that, like I really, I really had to look at, you know, when I was trying to get them and convince them.
And it's like the training standpoint.
You know, there's a lot of things that we did as far as, like you know, I feel like I'm maybe a little different than some coaches not all coaches but, like you know, it's not about just running miles, you know it.
To me it was like we had to put a speed developmental stuff in all the time from day one.
Um, yeah.
Like a lot of coaches now, if any running nerds are reading this or listening to this.
Rather, it's like this whole trend with double threshold.
Oh man, I could go on about five hours about that.
If we had the time, um, I'm not saying it's wrong.
I'm saying it's good, but I'm saying like, I think people overdo it and they overuse it.
And that's, that's their only aspect of training.
They do nothing but threshold, which is insane because you need to tap into the system way more than that.
I think you do.
So I taught my athletes that, and you know, we weren't scared to go hard in workouts.
But we also weren't scared to take days off.
We weren't scared to do speed developmental stuff.
And it was all progression.
My training is all progression from day one, even within the season.
We start at the end of June.
To get ready for cross country, our hardest months are October and November.
And then we're trying to peak for the beginning of December, which is a national championship, when we were at a high level.
But it's all about progressing.
And so many coaches would be like, you're doing... rope workouts in the middle of the summer.
I'm like, yeah, we're doing workouts in the middle of summer.
I was like but the ones we do in July have are are way less than what we're going to be doing in October.
And it's all progressive.
The, the body takes 12 weeks to adapt to different training.
So it's like you have, you have cycles you have to, you know, put into your training.
And I, and I always talk about that in a, And, you know, my training aspect of stuff.
But, you know, I don't know.
I think, like I said in the beginning, though I think when you ask the question, I think it's just like you know.
I had to just convince these people that it's like OK, you know, I want them to learn the sport more, respect it more, and stuff like that.
And I think when you give them all aspects of training like it becomes cool to like wear split leg shorts to practice.
It becomes cool to work hard.
And everyone's like, I got to get to bed early Friday because we have a long run on Saturday.
And it's like, I remember talking to Chris Lear.
He's like man.
This is exactly the way University of Colorado was like.
The guys didn't want to go out because they wanted to kill their long run on Saturday.
That was supposed to be hard.
And I'm like yeah that's, that's the atmosphere you build, and it snowballs, you know, and then the kid comes in who's an outcast?
That's like I don't want to do this.
It's like, well, then you're not going to survive.
They had a very good team, but they had like a B team that did nothing.
And I was like, yeah, you can join that team.
You can do nothing.
And then like I got in trouble for that.
But I was just trying to be honest.
Yeah.
That sounds like that was just sort of the kind of situation there was at the school. wasn't with high school runners.
It was with really high level professional elite athletes.
And you kind of came into a high school team and started treating them like professionals.
And you actually wrote in your book that you did treat your team like professional runners.
Now, obviously you didn't give them the mileage levels and the workouts and the race schedule that a pro runner might have.
But how do you specifically treat them like professionals?
Because I honestly try to do this as well in my coaching practice with adult runners.
Just get them to look at their training a bit more like a professional, so that they can execute it in the most productive, effective way possible.
But can you talk a little bit more about that?
Because I think this is a really important point.
Yeah no, you know, it's funny, when Nico Young went to Northern Arizona his coach, Mike Smith, you know, after like about six months he had he was fourth place the cross country championships in the NCAA, his freshman year, which is like unheard of and insane.
And i remember talking to mike and i was at a race in arizona, i was putting on these races and um, which i did, and i talk about that, but i uh, mike walks up to me, we're talking about nico and he's like man.
Coaching Nico is like coaching a 30-year-old professional.
He's like, this guy is focused.
And then it's the same.
Then he got Colin Solomon.
I think it's pretty close to how we were as a program.
But when i came in, you're 100, right.
I was a little worried because i was like i don't know how to deal with like young adults or like not adults yet, where it's like not not like anything i'm saying or being derogatory or too hard, but like i was like i'm looking at workouts that are like eight and 10.
Now I'm going to have to like give them that type of workout, but dumb it down.
How do I do that?
There was definitely a couple months.
I was like, I don't know what this is for me because I don't know if I can do this.
And, and my wife was just like, I
I think you should just stay with it.
I mean, there was a point in my book, I talk about that.
Like I actually told the coach I can't do this anymore, because I was watching and he was still the old coach, was still giving workouts.
And I was like, I can't, I can't.
I can't do this because I knew it just wasn't going to get them to be the best.
And I was like, if I'm going to coach, I'm going to be all in.
And it doesn't mean we have to win, but I'm going to be all in as a coach because I want to give if there's such thing as 110 like I want to give that.
And like, then I feel like the respect will come back, but I, I just, I don't know.
I put, I gave them really high goals and like, not specifically, but like work ethic goals.
And like, I just, we just set the boundaries high.
And I think when you just do a day in and day out, eventually it becomes normal.
And you know I have kids that.
You know we started having practice twice a day, only three days a week, because technically that well, it is true, but the in the CIF, which is the governing body of California, you know athletics and um high school it, it doesn't allow you to have double practices consecutively, so you can only do them every other day.
So we would have practice at like 6 am before school Monday Wednesday Friday, and we did supplemental training and all that other stuff that I think kids need to do.
And it's nothing like we're not doing big weight bearing stuff.
It's all a lot of it's plyometrics hip glute, ankle mobility, like hip strength, glute strength um, all that type of stuff that put our injuries from like up way up high to like almost nothing.
Getting doing this hip stuff was amazing, which I learned from two really good people, Jim and Phil Wharton.
Um they're known for like rope stretching, guru type guys or Um active isolation, they would call it.
They get mad if I call it rope stretching, but um, it's so those type of things I would implement in treat them.
Like I would treat post collegiates or collegians.
And I think, but again, nothing is not as hard and it's all progressive.
So that my goal was like if any of these kids want to run in college, they're going to go and do great.
I mean, I had a girl who was one of the slowest girls on my team.
I'm talking like, I was like, oh my gosh, I don't even know if I can keep this girl on the team.
She's so slow.
She ended up running like...
I don't know 24 minutes, 23 minutes or something for three miles at the end of her high school, which isn't very good.
And then she went on to college.
A Division III school got cut, didn't make the team, tried to walk on, but still joined a club.
She contacted me.
I was like, you should join a club.
You should do it.
I think you should run.
And she called me when she ran like 21 minutes for 5K and was beside herself.
And it's like I know that's not an elite time but that to me was just as special because it's like this girl was like she was asking me about the supplemental training.
Like she wanted to do, I was like, you're doing this stuff and you're just a student.
And I'm like, this is unbelievable.
I'm like, I just think that type of mentality of the way we treated them.
It's like you just set the bar high.
I mean, I think if everybody did it, I think teams would be really good.
I always say it's not hard to be good in high school.
It is hard to be great.
You got to have everything aligned, I think.
But it's not hard to be good.
It's not that hard to win a state title.
I really believe that.
Coaches will get mad at that.
But it will take a few years.
But if you set the precedent and you – you, you like, just get the right kids, and i don't mean like super, super talented, but get the right kids to lead the team, i think you could have it, because you don't need to have an outlier, you could just have a solid group too.
There's different ways of doing it, and i think it could be done and that that's that's what i did and i, how i kind of treated him like, like pros in a way.
Well, I think it all stems from you, Sean.
This is important to me.
I'm going to be here every day giving you everything that I have.
Those kids then in turn don't want to disappoint you.
They want to do really well.
And it's this wonderful symbiosis.
And I experienced that as a high school cross-country athlete as well.
So Sean, I just want to acknowledge you and give you credit for the amazing example that you set for the team, because no doubt that was a big part of your success.
And maybe we can wrap with a quote that you wrote in your book that really resonated with me.
And it just sums up my thoughts on what it's like being on a team.
You wrote, success was contagious.
When you see seven runners break 15 minutes, it sparks the thought, why not me?
I love that.
Just what a fantastic distillation of what it's like to be on a team.
And I've long encouraged runners to seek out other runners to surround themselves with other ambitious athletes.
And if you can do that and have those relationships, examples and role models around you, the sky is the limit.
So thank you so much for that important message.
Sean, is there anything else that you'd like to add about the cross-country teams developing young athletes, the book itself?
Your experience kind of taking a team from not doing very well in the region to being a national champion.
No, I mean, I guess the book in general.
When I first started writing this book, I was reaching out to a lot of different people authors or famous authors i thought and i respected it of like who could help me with it, right.
So it took me a while to get a hold of chris lear and i finally did, and you know i've said this before.
I spent the weekend with him and and uh, he said pretty much said no, at first he didn't think he had the time.
And then when i spent the weekend with him in uh boston, he was like i want to do this, let's figure this out.
And then we brought andrew greif on also and it was a little untraditional, like everything we i do, i guess, and we had three different people kind of going at it and obviously you know my story and working with them and collaborating with them.
But the whole point of this book is not It wasn't a training book.
There's training tidbits in it.
We talk about workouts.
So to me, if you're a running nerd, you're going to see a lot of behind the scenes stuff.
And that's the point, too.
But what I want is also other people.
I wanted to branch even maybe outside of running.
I mean, I use a lot of examples in acting and movies because I love that type of stuff too.
And when I watch a movie that has nothing to do with running and I get motivated by it to be a better coach, I'm like that's an amazing movie because I'm seeing my life through the lens of what they're doing.
I may be a little dramatic here, but I want people to read this book and I hope they give it a shot and say like to be motivated by, like.
You don't have to be a coach or a runner to read it.
Like, I want it to motivate you in a lot of things because, like, we do that in general.
And I think we just limit ourselves.
And you know, I just I think, you know, life isn't about money, right?
It's not about these things.
It's about experiences and things we do in life.
And like, I would love for people to get Yeah, give this book a shot.
And like, really, like, I don't know, give it a chance.
And I think that if it did the job that I think it will do it, it might motivate you to do something.
And and second, you know, put a second thought on something.
So Yeah well, I know I kind of compared it to the Running with the Buffaloes version of high school running, but that book in particular further reinforced my love of cross-country.
And you're right.
These kinds of books that are about a team, that are about kind of this rags-to-riches story slow to speed, we might say.
There's something really special about those stories and particularly about how you get there.
And I hope any parent who has a young runner in their house, any young runner themself, might pick up this book, because it's one of the most fun reads that I've had reading a running book recently.
And I feel like it's one of those books that has the potential to turn a lot of runners into athletes who absolutely love the sport.
And I can't think of a better service to the sport than something like that.
So Sean, thank you so much for your time today.
I appreciate you writing the book.
It's wonderful.
I hope everyone picks it up.
It's called Beyond Fast how a renegade coach and his unlikely high school team revolutionized distance running.
Thanks, Sean.
Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
What an episode.
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