Mark Coogan urges high school coaches to make recovery part of the training plan

The former Olympic marathon runner says young athletes need controlled workloads, adequate recovery and a gradual path towards higher mileage.

Mark Coogan, the Olympic marathon runner who later built Team New Balance Boston into a prominent training group, has offered a set of simple but pointed guidelines for high school cross-country coaches: keep the work controlled, give teenagers enough recovery, and do not rush athletes who are not yet ready for heavy mileage. Speaking to RunBlogRun, Coogan said the demands of a young runner can vary sharply from one school to another, but that a six-mile outing may already qualify as a long run for many teenagers. He added that for stronger squads, a weekly long run can be useful, provided coaches treat it as a demanding day and avoid stacking too many hard sessions without rest.

Coogan’s advice extended to the structure of workouts as well. He described fartlek sessions, the free-flowing style of speed work in which athletes alternate effort and recovery, as most effective when they are organised around a repeatable loop that becomes quicker and more compressed over time. He also backed short tempo runs for high school runners, but warned against allowing the pace to drift too fast. In his view, even a dual meet can serve as a controlled tempo effort for the top athletes if they approach it sensibly.

Recovery, Coogan argued, is where much of the real adaptation happens. He told RunBlogRun that easy days after racing and hard training are essential because athletes improve during rest, not simply through the strain itself. He said a race should always be regarded as a hard day, even in a week filled with meets, and suggested two or three easy days after a demanding competition. For strength work, he favours bodyweight exercises and running drills over heavy lifting, saying that high school athletes benefit more from time on the track and in training than from spending too much time in the gym.

Coogan also addressed the challenge of bringing along runners who did not train over the summer. His advice was to start slowly and use cross-training when necessary to reduce the risk of overuse injuries, which he described as a sign that the body is not yet prepared for a sudden increase in load. Reflecting on his own development, he recalled Massachusetts as a particularly strong cross-country state, with coaches who supported one another and a deep culture of competition. He said racing well at Van Cortlandt Park in high school gave him a first real sense that he could become a strong runner, and he traced his later move into coaching to encouragement from Brown University coach Bob Rothenberg, who believed Coogan would be a natural mentor once his professional career ended.