Interviews: John Lynch of SUNY Plattsburgh
 (Photo courtesy of the SUNY Plattsburgh Athletics website)
Coach Lynch is in his second year as the men’s and women’s head cross country coach at SUNY Plattsburgh. In his first season he coached the Cardinals to a 6th place finish on the men’s side and a 7th place finish on the women’s side at the 2005 NCAA Division III Atlantic Regional Cross Country Championships. Last year the Cardinals had two All-Americans at the 2005 NCAA Division III Cross Country Championships, Matt DeShane and Allison Busby.
By: Derick Lawrence (9/13/2006)
What made you want to become a collegiate cross country coach and what steps did you take in achieving this goal?
When I started running in 7th grade I fell in love with it and decided almost right away that running in some form would be a part of the rest of my life. I remember meeting with my guidance counselor and my parents in 7th grade to plot out my future and I told them I wanted to be a collegiate cross country coach. My dad said “you better think of something else.” So I decided on Physical Education back then.
I grew up in a family dedicated to running, and joined one of the best HS programs in the nation in 7th grade. The head coach, Matt Jones at Shenendehowa HS remains to be someone who I look up to and go to for advice quite a bit. He has been my main role model in my dreams to become a collegiate coach. Jack Daniels came along later in life, and after a long adaptation period and a couple disagreements, we have become friends, colleagues and I look to him for advice quite a bit as well. I don’t think anybody can have two better people to look up to. I am quite lucky.
Basically to achieve this goal I switched my major my senior year to Kinesiology, networked quite a bit and was prepared to coach low level HS and personal train until I got an opportunity that was right for me to coach collegiate XC. At the end of my summer after graduation I decided to run in a local road race that was being hosted by the gym I wanted to personal train at. Luckily for me a former Plattsburgh athlete that I was friends with was in attendance, he had mentioned that their coach had quit recently and it was only 4 days until pre-season. I e-mailed the athletic director, interviewed and was hired on the spot. The rest is history. I could not help but feel that I was the luckiest person in the world.
In your profile on the SUNY Plattsburgh Athletics website it states you were part of school records in the distance medley relay and 1200 while participating on several indoor and outdoor SUNYAC championship teams during your undergraduate years at SUNY Cortland. Could you tell us a little bit about your collegiate running career.
I started out my collegiate career on scholarship at Canisius College in Buffalo NY. The coach quit and it just was not a good fit for me, and proved to not be a good fit at all as it was cut the year after. At Cortland I immediately assumed a leadership role. My first year there I was voted captain of the track and field team when Jack Daniels left on sabbatical to go work with the Nike Farm Team. I basically took commands from Jack in California and relayed them to the team. It was hard for my running not having a coach around, but a lot of the other guys and girls ran great. As you can probably see the first two years of my career I did not have an actual coach and had to learn how to do things for myself and how to guide others. My third year found myself running for another coach, while Jack was dealing with family affairs. This coach had a lot of similarities to my HS coach in his personality and I immediately fell in love with running for him. I worked hard in practice (too hard) and found myself running fast early in the season. But for season after season, I was always getting sick or injured, and was always peaking too early. Nothing made sense. Jack came back and took over XC my final season. This is where the basics of training just seemed to click in my mind. This same semester I was taking exercise physiology lab with Jack. It was here that I finally began a relationship with him and found his ideas methods and philosophies ingenious. Sometimes me and my friend would stay after lab for a couple hours and just listen to stories of his past runners, his Peruvian marathoners, or his physiology studies from the past 35 years done all over the world. From Jim Ryun to his daughters, it was all fascinating. I guess I am getting off track here.
In college my running career was inconsistent at best. I had a few great meets. One that stands out is when we wanted to double up on school records at the armory in the DMR and 4x800. I was to run the 1200, then anchor the relay an hour later. Duke, Army, Fordham and other D1 teams were in the DMR. I still remember every split as if it were yesterday (28,59,1:29,1:59,2:30 a 1000m p.r. by 3 seconds, then 3:03), and the pain I was in running it. But it was all worth the feeling of team accomplishment at the end when we saw our NCAA qualifying performance (at the time; missed by .01 later), school record by 12 seconds and conference record. They both still stand. Later on our best 800m runner was pulled from the 4x8 and put on the 4x4 to try and break the SR in that, the person who replaced him was sick with the flu, but we were still hungry for it. We missed the record by .5 seconds. I anchored in 1:56 and ran down a Marist runner for 2nd. I think the reason those races stand out is because it was not just myself that had so much joy, but I was able to share it with 3 other people. I want all of my athletes to be able to feel that.
What has the transition from a recent cross country and track student-athlete and graduate of SUNY Cortland (2005) to a men's and women's cross country head coach at SUNY Plattsburgh been like?
The transition has been easier than expected. In the past here the coaches have run with the team. Both of the coaches I look up to had given me great advice before I got here. DO NOT RUN WITH YOUR ATHLETES. They warned me with my age, it will break the coach/athlete barrier that is so important if I were to run with them and become buddies with them. All the athletes wanted me to run with them, but I stuck to that rule and it separated me from the athletes in a sense. Even though I was basically the same age as some of them, and have actually raced some of them (and been beaten by Matt), I was able to prove myself as a coach and guide based solely on professionalism and being stern in my beliefs.
Would you briefly describe your program's training philosophy (volume, intensity, frequency, etc.)?
Volume is based on minutes, most of my athletes run pretty high volume, anywhere from 400-600 minutes in a week (Men-70-90 mpw, women- 50-80 mpw). It depends on the individual. Intensity wise. We do two workouts a week for the most part. I like to think my workouts are a little less intense than most other coaches out there, but still achieve the same physiological goals as harder workouts. I do this to try and promote longevity and consistency. Some of the athletes we get are 17-18:30 min male 5k runners in HS and 22-23 min female 5k runners. When compared to our rival schools Cortland and Geneseo who get 15-16 min males and 18-19 min females, consistency and injury prevention is how we try to bridge the gap. In just my first year I had these males running from 26:40-27:30. A pace for an 8k that they could not even run for a 2 mile a year earlier. For the females, just look at Toni Wiszowaty, a 21 min 5k girl in HS, an inconsistent 20 min 5k runner her freshman year. Than all of a sudden a lifestyle change, consistent training over 3 seasons and she goes from 118th in the region in 2004 to 75th in the 2005 NCAA XC Championships to runner up 10k athlete in 2006 NCAA Outdoor track Championships (17:19 5k, 35:46 negative split 10k (18:10,17:36)). Consistency is what I believe in most. I am confident that if I can have 5 runners stick together over the course of a 4 year collegiate career and stay healthy, I will have a top 5 team in the nation. Intensity and volume are secondary, and are made after I figure out how to run an athlete consistently.
Who has influenced you the most in your coaching?
As I have mentioned earlier Jack Daniels (Formerly SUNY Cortland, now NAU High Altitude Center) and Matt Jones (Shenendehowa HS). I soaked in more information from these two men than I have from all of my teachers combined from kindergarten through 5 years of college.
Could you give us an example of a typical microcycle in your training program from September to mid-October of a cross country season?
I think of a microcycle as 7 days during the season. 10 days during pre-season. Typically we start VO2 Max work after I understand where everyone is at performance wise. Because of this we get a late start compared to a lot of teams, but come November we are usually a little stronger and peaking a little better.
Sunday- Long
Monday- Interval
Tuesday- Recovery, strides
Wednesday- Threshold, prolonged LT runs tapering into CI’s
Thursday- Recovery/ extra volume, strides
Friday- O.Y.O. easy/strides
Saturday Race/Workout
Could you tell us about your team this cross country season (returning upperclassmen, incoming freshmen, etc.)?
Men have perhaps the best two returnees in the region that will both be seniors in Matt DeShane and Robert Asher, Matt just ran a personal best and course record of 24:53 at our home invitational Saturday the 9th and Bobby ran 20 seconds faster than last year 26:45, Bobby comes around stronger than anyone in November (last year he ran a 35 sec p.r. on a muddy slow course that nobody ran fast on). The rest of the men's team ran great as we won with 22 points, but the times are deceivingly slow, yet everyone was faster than last year. Women are without our top runner from 2005 in Allison Busby, but Toni Wiszowaty has come a long way since last year and will be a contender at NCAA’s. She cruised a 21:54 for a 20 sec personal best on 9/9. The rest of the women’s team is young and will improve greatly throughout the year. Look out for these girls next year especially with the return of Allison and Toni for their senior year.
Is there any running related training material (books, scientific journal articles, etc.) that you commonly refer to throughout a cross country season?
I would say it is important to read everything you can. I have learned so much from so many different books. But I do no like to refer to them a lot because it makes me second-guess what I am doing. Everyone tries to be different, so if you refer to different books then it just gets confusing. The only thing I refer to religiously is Jack Daniels’ Oxygen Power I use it to get V-Dots to give workout paces so my athletes do not run overly hard in a workout.
Are there any motivational techniques that you incorporate in your program to get your team fired up?
I do have some. I don’t want to reiterate them on here, but I take a lot from Coach K of Duke.
What are your thoughts about the new qualifying procedures for the 2006 NCAA Division III Men's and Women's Cross Country Championships?
I am completely in favor of them, and think they will give teams like ours a great opportunity to take our program to the national level.
What are 2 key workouts that you incorporate into the peaking period of a cross country season?
Peaking is different for everyone. I remember last outdoor season I may have had 12 kids in ECAC and 3 in NCAA, I had 10 different peaking plans. It’s a lot of work, but worth doing. With one athlete I realized in indoors his strength was his speed endurance and his weakness was his top end speed. So in outdoors we worked on Speed reps for 5 weeks and then ran 2 weeks with a primary workout of speed-endurance. Although his final two races went out slow, he said he never felt so great and actually ran his p.r. in the 800m, in his final 800m of a tied 1500m p.r. For cross country 2 weeks before the primary meet I believe in some neuromuscular work and another workout just for maintenance purposes. With a maintenance workout the week of. I have specific workouts, but a lot of work went into designing them, and are still works in progress, although I can say they are miniscule when compared to the consistency of training over the 24 weeks before XC Championships. I am really learning to dislike the word “peak” it puts extra pressure on athletes and is something that not a lot of people understand. I tell my athletes to just do the work, trust the work and everything will fall into place. If you do the work over the summer and fall I can tell you to go play kickball a couple days out of the week and run the other and I bet you will run better than last year when you didn’t have 24 weeks of great training before hand. Peaking is worthless without preparing, it‘s like a banks interest rates, what good are they if you have $5.00 in there, but if you have $50,000 in it, you will be a happy camper. Peaking is not a magic powder you sprinkle and all of a sudden you run fast.
What aspects of coaching do you feel are the most rewarding?
This is easy, improvement. I have been lucky because all of my athletes do what I ask of them and they improve. I cannot recall a meet that I had bad feelings about. At every meet the majority of my athletes run p.r.‘s or at least seasons bests. There is nothing better than seeing improvement.
For those that are aspiring to become a collegiate cross country coach, what would be the best piece of advice you would give them?
I feel that I am not in a position to give advice because I went a pretty unconventional route to becoming a head coach. But from talking with others I would have to say you must be perseverant and willing to work under people for years, network the most you can and be ready to pounce on every opportunity. I sent in a resume to every opening in the nation last summer, and NEVER got a call back, until Plattsburgh.
Thanks to Coach Lynch for a great interview.
post comment
great
11:56 PM, September 21, 2006
.. Posted by Anonymous
same interesting
Untitled Comment
3:52 PM, September 24, 2006
.. Posted by Brian Cavanagh
As a former Plattsburgh Assistant X-C & T+F coach (81-82) and runner (27:41/5mi), I'd like to welcome you to Plattsburgh and wish you the best. It sounds like you are developing a solid foundation for success. You have the philosophy which I believe in which would benefit local HS athletes looking to run X-C & T+F in college.
Running w/ Your Athletes
8:16 PM, March 21, 2007
.. Posted by Anonymous
Can you expand on what you said about not running with your athletes??? When is it ok to be buddies with them... when is it not? You are a DIII coach, right? No scholarships, all walk-ons... should that make a difference?
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