Trey McCain

The Low-Down on Trey McCain:

A lifelong athlete, Trey is inspired by athletes who push themselves beyond their natural abilities to achieve their goals and wants to help others do the same. Trey has competed in cross country and track up to the college level with great success. A firm believer in doing the miles, Trey credits his work ethic to his high school coaches who taught him that great things come to those who make the sacrifices and his teammates who were willing to run in the mornings just to get some extra miles in the heat, rain, and snow. Trey competed for Mars Hill University where he was a 3 time first team all-conference XC runner, 2 time conference champion in track at the 5,000 and 2 time conference champion at the 10,000. In 2010 he ran the 3rd fastest cross country 10k in school history.

What He Coaches

Director of the Columbia, SC Without Limits Branch and Levels 1- 3 Running Groups

Favorite Events

Trail races, 5k on the track, 8k XC

Qualities Trey Admires In His Students

Trey admires students who are willing to do the work necessary to improve.

Defining Moment In Trey’s Career

Growing up in the sport of distance running, Coach Trey was under the impression high mileage was necessary to achieve better results. While volume is important for endurance sports, appropriate volume per individual mixed with solid quality workouts is more beneficial. Coach Trey realized this as some of his best athletes have achieved highly competitive PRs in their age group while running less than 50 miles per week These PRs come from two different high school sophomores a few years apart. One ran 16:07 for a XC 5k and the other ran 4:26 for the outdoor mile

Testimonials

Darun Barazanchy experience with Without Limits Coach Trey McCain:

“I started working with Trey in April, and I have made significant improvements since then. The last couple of years I trained by myself and though I knew what I was doing. However, I was stuck at approximately 30 miles per week, anything above that would result in injuries and I did not get any faster. Unknowingly, I was going too hard on my easy days, and not hard enough on my hard days. That’s were working with Trey made a huge difference!

Trey put me on two quality workouts a week (Tuesday and Thursday), Wednesday and Friday were easy recovery runs. At these runs I would not mind the pace but try to keep my heart rate low (staying in zone 2). This allowed me to get mileage in and recover at the same time. Saturday were kept for race specific workouts (I focus on obstacle course racing), and Sundays were long run (Monday is a rest day). With these lessons in mind, increased my mileage up to 50-60 miles (and I aim to keep increasing this) a week without getting injured or being too tired to run. While the quality workout ensured I was getting faster at the same time.

Another thing about Trey I like is his flexibility. In the beginning we did intervals on Tuesday and temp on Thursday. For some reason this did not work well for me, Trey was flexible in trying different types of runs and/on different days. At the end, what works for me is doing a tempo styled workout on Tuesday and a push interval style workout on Thursday.

At last, it makes a huge difference having someone out with you to push you when you need it, and who tells/makes you go slower when needed! Most will think, if I go hard all the time I will get faster, however, sometimes you need to slow down to go fast on the next lap/day/training.

All in all, I am happy to have Trey out there with me, and I am looking forward to continuing improving my running and endurance.”