Making hydration a game and keeping days easy is really easy.
Three questions, three answers
Julian Flores, Assistant Coach, Brooks Beasts Track Club
One of the biggest problems in cross country for high school athletes is injuries, and the truth is that they can be avoided. RunBlogRun spoke with Julian Flores, assistant coach at the Brooks Beasts Track Club, about hydration and recovery days. Here’s how it went.
RunBlogRun, #1. How do you get high school athletes to take hydration seriously?
Julian Flores. You need to make hydration part of the culture and keep it fun. My high school coach in New Mexico kept it fun. Please encourage them to drink water every day, all day. Get a bottle, put some stickers on it, own it and take it to school and training. Daily hydration keeps you healthy, helps with recovery and prevents injury. My coach was having fun with it and so were we.
RunBlogRun, #2. How do you approach recovery or easy days for high school athletes?
Julian Flores. Easy days should be very, very easy. Slow down and do the entire recovery at a pace where you can hold a conversation. It should be easy for your body to recover from hard days (long runs, threshold or speed days, and race days).
RunBlogRun, #3: How does Josh Kerr, an athlete you’ve run with for over a decade, handle recovery days? (Josh Kerr is the 2023 1500m World Champion, 2024 3000m World Champion, 2021 Tokyo 1500m Olympic bronze medalist, Paris 2024 1500m Olympic silver medalist).
Julian Flores (laughs); We log our slowest recovery miles. I remember after one particularly hard workout, Josh Kerr’s first cooldown mile was 13 minutes and 52 seconds. A lot of times Josh Kerr won’t wear a watch at all on his recovery run and I’ll track our entire run time and that’s it. Recovery is meant to be taken seriously.
Check out Julian Flores’ interview coming soon to #RunBlogRun as part of The Brooks Run Guide Interviews series.
