High School Coaches, How Do You Get Your Kids To Tempo Run Dual Meets Without Being Embarrassed?

Have them run under/over distance races out of their comfort zones.

Have your 3200 runners in the 4x8, 8, 4, and 4x4

Have your 800/1600 guys rock the 4 and the 32

I think you're missing the point. You're not training a 3200 guy to run a 400. You're letting him jump in a 400 on his 3200 training. He's essentially playing track. Don't worry, he's not going to hurt himself, and he's not going to tire himself out. See, as a distance guy, he's not going to be able to "max out" a 400.

I was a 3200 guy in high school, but during indoor track I usually ran the 500 and 4x400. They were humbling experiences, but they were a blast. And even though it wasn't "true" speedwork, it sure helped when I went outdoors and ran a 3200.

Have your 3200 guys do a 500/800 double. Have your 800 guys run a 300/4x200. If you have any all-around type athletes, have them do the shot. I would stay away from the 55 and the jumps.

SlipperyPete1340 wrote:

@kdsi It's pretty simple, really. Anaerobic running has a very short shelf-life. You can improve pretty rapidly for about 3-5 weeks off of it, but after that you tend to peter out. As a result, you would ideally have an anaerobic period about 4-5 weeks before your key event.

That's pretty standard Lydiard stuff, but at the risk of opening a can of worms, the pendulum doesn't swing as wildly across the "distance vs. intensity" spectrum like it did back when Lydiard came on the scene. Lactic acid won't burn away any capillaries.

Different training philosophies for different folks, right? I don't know if I'd agree that the coaches are insecure or anything like that. My school had a long history of being undefeated in dual meets, and competed well at the state level which means that we were doing something right. At the same time we used races as threshold workouts and tempo runs. We were able to do this because of all the work we had put in during the summer and in past years. With that being said, we were no FM, York, etc., so yes I'm sure they're were ways that our training could have been improved, but were my coaches insecure? No

If I made the effort to drive my team an hr a way, only to have the other team "tempo it" I'd be kinda hacked.

If you aren't going to race, then dont.

Also, if you've ever had someone tell you after a race "Oh I was only using this race as a workout." you know what a s hit cop out it is.

race or dont race no half assing it.

Coach K wrote:

"You are wrong" is right. Typically I want my kids going all out on race day. They can do a tempo anytime, but meaningful racing only happens on meet day. There is nothing harder than racing and I want my athletes to give a maximum effort at our weekly meet. What's all the training for if not to test oneself on meet day?

bangalangadanga wrote:

"nothing is harder than racing" i think a lot of coaches would consider racing to be easy and training to be hard.

They would be wrong. Training is hard, but racing is harder.

Any advice for high school athletes who are constantly racing to the point where you are dead at the end of the season? We race a lot at my school and the coaches do not seem to understand how much it takes out of us. Physically it takes a huge toll by the last few weeks of the season but the mental toll is also tough. It takes away the excitement of racing and makes every race a grind especially knowing that you will be going at it again in a couple of hours. I am talking about racing 2-4 times a week during indoor and outdoor track for a very large part of each season.

My D would have much rather been held out from a dual meet or less important race than told to pace her slower teammates or not run all out. I give you kudos for caring about how your athletes feel, because not only was it frustrating and embarrassing for her, but sometimes it was psychologically hard to switch the competitive urge back on for the "real" races. If you have enough depth, just hold out the varsity for dual meets and have them do a workout on an adjacent field or something.

feeling all the racing wrote:

Any advice for high school athletes who are constantly racing to the point where you are dead at the end of the season? We race a lot at my school and the coaches do not seem to understand how much it takes out of us. Physically it takes a huge toll by the last few weeks of the season but the mental toll is also tough. It takes away the excitement of racing and makes every race a grind especially knowing that you will be going at it again in a couple of hours. I am talking about racing 2-4 times a week during indoor and outdoor track for a very large part of each season.

This is what some of the so-called coaches above don't seem to know how or want to deal with.

We have somewhat similar issues in D1 where there is basically a race every weekend, but a few years ago when I was coaching HS, it was TWO races every week: a dual meet on wed/thu, and an invitational on the weekend. We had two races a week, almost every week for 6 or 7 weeks in a row. Our lesser or younger athletes usually didn't get into the invitationals, so it was really only potentially 2 races a week for the top people. We tried to hold our best athletes out of duals, and sometimes had them tempo something like a 3200, which was toward the end of the meets (so we could tell if we needed people to really race it to win the meets--usually we didn't).

I would say if you have more than one meet a week, you pick your spots. Just like the top guys like Rupp and Bekele actually race few 10000s, you really can't go out doing multiple events more than once a week and expect to improve over a season. So some of the meets, you hold back because you have to. You might also hold back in some workouts if you are racing twice a week, and run recovery runs s-l-o-w-l-y.

Coach D, that's my biggest issue with having so many races, it makes it very difficult to get consistent workouts in. If you have two races in a week, plus a long run, it makes it really tough to get in any decent workouts. This is also compounded by the fact that, many of these kids are running XC, indoor, and outdoor track, so they have three seasons of this.

Thanks for the reply, some of the coaches who have posted on here don't seem to understand why this is an issue, when to me it's a huge systemic flaw in the high school track system that needs to be addressed.

Coach K wrote:

"You are wrong" is right. Typically I want my kids going all out on race day. They can do a tempo anytime, but meaningful racing only happens on meet day. There is nothing harder than racing and I want my athletes to give a maximum effort at our weekly meet. What's all the training for if not to test oneself on meet day?

That's what the invitational on Saturday is for, when they race real competition. Who cares about the dual meet?

To the original poster: I wouldn't necessarily make them tempo runs, but you could double them in the 800m and 1500m/Mile, and have them run the 800m at 1500m/Mile effort, and then come back and run the 1500m/Mile at 3000m/2 Mile effort. Or run the 3000m/2 Mile with specific instructions, like starting out around 5km pace, and making adjustments lap after lap until they get to 800m to go, at which point they take the gloves off.

Kids are only going to have so many races in the them in a given season, you want to make sure they're ready to run when it counts as you advance towards the end of the year championships. Why race solid race efforts against lackluster competition? Even if you happen to be in a highly competitive league, who care what the result is at the end of the day if it isn't helping run well at the end of the season? So many times I've seen kids belt out hard Mile/2 Mile doubles on Thursday and Saturday week in and week out and they're completely spent by the time the end of the season rolls around and they don't go anywhere.

Jeff, that's exactly what I've been trying to explain the whole time, haha. I couldn't agree more; dual meets are completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. If it was up to me, we would have our top athletes sit out most of the dual meets and only race hard 5-6 times per season in key races.

Unfortunately, I'm in a situation where I'm the distance coach and the head coach really wants to win every dual meet, so I have to find ways to keep the kids from running all-out efforts at every meet. They understandably hate doing this, because they get a slow time posted online and they lose to kids they normally beat when running at sub-maximal efforts.

So my main question was how do I get them to feel ok about doing this. I've gotten a few good responses so far.

I feel your pain. I'm the XC coach and an assistant during track. Our dual meets are scheduled on Thursday (much like you, we race against 6-10 teams) and then if you want to go to invites, those are 2 days later on Saturday.

It has taken a 2-3 years but finally the head coach is coming around about giving kids off on dual days or taking a week away from competition after a few kids each of the last few seasons have gone up to him at the end complaining about feeling spent.

Kids will always want to race, it's how they judge themselves and how they validate their participation in the sport. I try to tell my kids that unless they are just starting out they won't PR week in and week out as it's humanly impossible. I also show them results from top kids in our area but not necessarily from our league and how they don't race every darn time out, and that's why they perform well at the end of the season. Another thing I've found is that in early dual meets and in indoor, as someone else said, "we play track." Kid wants to throw the jav, go ahead. Shot, go ahead. Long jump, maybe. Run the 4x2, sure why not. One thing I've learned from our not so top kids is that this still needs to be fun and so therefore we let them do stuff like that. Not every kid is off or doing their fun event every week, but it's a way for us to rotate our kids and try to keep it fun for them and them fresh for May.

I care about dual meets more than invitationals. Fortunately we are in a very competitive league and our kids typically face top notch competition in our duals. We want to win our dual meets. Most of our kids are not going to states, so winning a league championship is a big deal to them.

I don't want my kids racing too much either. But I'd hold them out of an invitational before a dual meet. My priority has always been team competition...duals, relay meets, states. Any individual emphasis occurs after states. My top kids may race 12 times including Nationals. That means probably two weekend meets during the dual meet part of the schedule.

Don't even get me started on the whole doubling thing.

"Unfortunately, I'm in a situation where I'm the distance coach and the head coach really wants to win every dual meet,"

So your issue isn't with the athletes or the schedule, it's with the head coach.

Even if you get your kids to temp it during the week won't he recognize this? If the HC asked the runner why he jogged the 2M instead of trying to win and he says "Coach X said to." How will you deal with that? Even if you follow the advice on here and run kids out of their normal events, wont the HC recognize this?

My issue is mainly with the schedule. The head coach is a nice enough guy, he just wants to win every dual meet and score as many points as possible. If we had 8 meets instead of 15/16, there'd be no problem as all, as I think 8 hard efforts is a good amount for a season.

And yeah, he gets pissed when he sees kids tempoing the 2 mile and whatnot, but I just explain to him that Person X was doing the race as a workout so his legs will be fresh for our workout the next week. He's not happy about it, but at that point there's not a lot that can be done.

In terms of running them in different events, he generally lets me put them in whatever events I want to, so that will work out fine.

I understand. I have a girl running sub 11:00 and have had her tempo xc races and win by over a minute, then add on fartlek. During track I held her out until May, but there is no reason to run a dual meet all out when you will lap the field twice, save it for an invitational. I have used some meets as workouts typically 4x8, 1600, 800, 4x4, but even this provides too much rest. This fall I tried to opt out of an XC meet that had not league importance and my AD wouldn't let me. I had my girls run 60/90's and they still went 1-3. I told the coaches ahead of time so they knew what was going on.

If you are a coach, do what is best for your athletes. Do what you think will help them attain their and the teams goals. Do what you think will allow them to develop to the best of their ability while in HS. Forget what other people think, if you tempo a dual meet or skip a dual meet to train better or to race better in the championship season or next year, then do it.

Just don't do it! It's a race! You're supposed to run hard and beat people in a race. If you want them to tempo or "run the race like a workout," then just have them do a workout!