High school coach Aaron Pessah attended a VDOT Coaching Clinic last summer. He’s currently Head XC and T&F Coach at Andrew Hill HS in San Jose and he’s having great success adopting VDOT and Daniels’ Running Formula principles. Here he discusses a recent success story about his top athlete Jorge Estrella:

Jorge ended his sophomore year running a 4:23 in the 1600m and 9:44 in the 3200m. After a fairly inconsistent summer of training we began working together as he entered his Junior year. I immediately implemented Daniels’ VDOT principles and his season did improve over the previous cross-country season but not by much. He made it to State and finishing 49th motivated him to train harder over the winter. So we implemented a plan directly from Daniels’ Running Formula.

I made a 24-week plan based on about 58 miles per week. He was extremely consistent and dedicated to hitting the workouts and paces as well as taking care of his sleep, hydration, and nutrition. After 13 weeks, and phase 1, 2 and beginning of phase 3, he had his first real race with competition and ran a 4:19 in the 1600m! This was a PR of 4-seconds over last season. He then raced alone the 3200m in 9:34, a PR of 10- seconds.

A few weeks later he had another competitive meet and ran a 4:15 in the 1600m and a 9:19 in the 3200m! At the State meet Jorge ran a 4:16 in the trials and a 4:12 in the finals the following day which placed him 6th overall and first Junior in the state of California. It was also 95-degrees in Fresno, CA so this performance converts to a VDOT of 72 (according to the VDOT Calculator).

Jorge’s success is much credited to what you have guided me to help him become. I once again want to thank the VDOT O2 team for all their time and effort in answering my questions and interpreting Daniels’ Running Formula. Please thank Dr. Daniels for his efforts in guiding us, and for his research as well!

Check out Jorge’s MileSplit profile.