My coach does not make us run very much volume in practice and with school and races almost every saturday it is next to impossible to get a good long run in (I've always taken sunday off - thoughts?) My overall weekly total is definitely suffering as well (10+ mpw drop) How can I make sure I don't lose my base training without undermining my coach or overworking myself? I plan on talking with him about it very shortly, but in the meantime, any suggestions?
My team ran 4 miles at practice today. Guess how many I ran? 10. It's easier than you think it is. My team practices start around 3:20. We get out of school at 2:45. As soon as school ends, I take a dump and then start running. I can get 3 miles in comfortably even if my dump takes 10 minutes. Then you run whatever your team does. Which for me today was 4. Then since I always have to wait a long time for the 30 minute 5k guys to come in, I went ahead and did another mile on the track. Now practice is over. When everybody started to leave, I went ahead and ran 2 more miles on my own. BAM, 10 miles.
And guess what I did at 9pm tonight? BAM, 5 more miles. That's a 15 mile day, while the rest of my team only ran 4.
You just have to be resourceful.
be friendly and don't offend him. if he cares about his job & team, he'll be concerned with what you have to say. HS coaches often create a "one size fits all" system in order to accommodate for the squares. if that's the case, your enthusiasm may excite him and cause him to rework you schedule.
if not, ridiculous warm ups and cool downs are the best way around the problem.
it takes 30-45mins to run 6miles. i assume most athletic periods are at least 1hr 1/2. you can double the work load with out the team and still shower and what not. when i was in HS we had practice from 7am-9:30am and we often ran 30-45min workouts. if i wanted to, i could have run 60-70mpw with out losing any time. i'm sure you can too.
you had practice during school?