Getting my team to run as a pack.

Its to late now. This is something I practice at the begaining of the season during low key races and or tempo runs. I would not change anything the week before your states or championship.

We’ve done it in a few meets already and during workouts all the time. During the meets we’ve run as a pack, I knew we could win. They girls didn’t feel any pressure to run as fast as they could. It was easy for them to stay together.

I’m just looking for advice on getting them to do it now that it counts. It’s a two loop course our goal is to have 7 girls together going into the second loop. Is that a sound strategy? What do you tell them to do after that? Again, I’ve never used this tactic in a big race.

Thanks.

raceberryjam.com has packing analyses for the dII and dIII championships last year. Print them out and show the girls how far back Grand Valley's #1 finished compared to the other teams, but they were second because their whole team was packed together. Western State made up for a poor #5 because they had a low #1 and 2-4 came in together. La Crosse's #1 guy finished behind something like 12 other team's #1's, but their whole team came in relatively close together.

Remind them off workouts and even easy days where they've felt horrible. Was it easier to keep going when they were running by themselves or when they were trying to keep up with their teammates?

Let them know that if they're feeling good, it's okay to drop the hammer after the first loop, you're just asking them to stay together at the start to help pull everyone up to the front. For the girls that you expect to drop off the pack (sounds like #5-7), tell them their goal is to finish as close to the top 4 as possible. You want them to try to close the gap, so if #5 has been finishing 30 seconds behind #4, she wants to be less than 30 seconds back this time.

Gayest thread ever.

So you want whoever is feeling great that day to take it easy to stay with the slower girls? Brilliant.

Thank you Mideasterner. Exactly what I was looking for, very concrete and motivational.

you can't force them to pack....if it helps them in a race...they will do it instinctively.....

while I 'somewhat' follow the pack running thin .. to introduce an entirely new element to their racing - at this crucial time of year ... may well be suicide. To pull your faster runners back could have the opposite 'mental' effect your'e wishing for. Playin with fire on this one. If there have been 4 dif #1s then they will likely 'pack' anyway. You telling them to do that or something akin adds pressure to a likely high pressure time anyway

My take on this, which isn't worth a penny.

Pack running is only successful when the athletes naturally do it. If you as a coach talk them into it, you are basically telling the runners who are feeling good that day to not run so fast and the runners who are feeling sluggish to go out faster and thus die at the end. Some runners prefer to go out fast, some prefer to go out slow and pick runners off. They may finish within 30 seconds of each other, but their racing style may be totally different and not conducive.

Front runners dislike pack running because you have a coach telling you to run slower. Slower runners dislike pack running because your coach is telling you to go out faster than you are capable of.

I wouldn't tell anyone to pack run. Why tell your faster/feeling fresher runners to run slower? Why tell your slower runners to go out too fast? Doesn't make since to me.

Talk with each runner individually and discuss how their racing strategy has worked in their best races- how did they feel in the first mile.

If you have some who go out fast and some who go out slow, don't ask them to change that now... but if they all think their best strategy would be to go out controlled in the first mile, then running in a pack would be a good idea.

I wish that pack running had been more emphasized when I was in high school, and even college. Having the feeling of a fast tempo run in the first half mile of a race is a good thing, IMO. No one should be straining beyond their limits to keep up, but it's usually more the problem of high schoolers that they run the first mile way too fast anyway, so holding back the first mile to a more even pace shouldn't be hurting a group finishing within 30 seconds of one another. If they must have the first mile disproportionately fast to run a good time, they're lacking in aerobic development.

Have each of them run all-out in order to yield their best individual-by-individual performance. That will help your team yield its best possible finish.

I am not a fan of forcing pack running on athletes, but it does work well with the dynamics of high school girls teams. They are usually much more team oriented and less focused on individual competition than guys or college girls. This can be really annoying to any coach who has tried (and usually failed) to convince his girls that it's okay to beat their friends on the team if that friend is having a bad day. On the other hand, it can be a positive if you turn it around and inspire a slower girl run with a faster girl by saying, "Sally is having a bad day. She needs you to step it up and help her." This is where pack running can help. Guys and high level women tend to have more of a shark mentality--they smell blood and pound their competition into the ground.

Just make sure you know the personalities of your girls first, because like someone else said, it's torture for the top runners when they have to hold back at the start if they are really competitive people.

I liked running in smaller packs. Maybe having one or two other people to help with pacing, but not feel like I'm getting held back or like I'm responsible for making sure 6 other people hit their splits. You are responsible for telling them what pace to run and where they should be in the field. Don't put it on one girl's head to be responsible for her whole team's success or failure. This would be okay if you had worked the whole season on developing a team leader, but it is way too late to try that now. The whole pack should know their goal pace for the first mile, and you need to make sure you find a spot early in the course (1200-2000 meter range) where you can tell them if they are at the right place in the field or if they need to move up. Tell them exactly where you'll be and exactly what you'll be saying so they know to listen for you.

One last advantage of packing...in high school races, people usually go out HARD. Have them imagine how mentally crushing it would be if you're dying and you see four people in the same jersey cruise by you looking good while you are left behind to struggle on alone. Then imagine that they are one of those four girls in the pack that just blew by some poor girl that's feeling crappy. Tell them to imagine that they're running hard and feeling tired, but they are confident in their ability to finish strong because they went out at the right pace and they have their teammates to help them get there.

Pack running is stupid. Teach your athletes to cover the particular course the fastest they can on a given day. This will place them the highest. A low stick is always useful in larger races. And someone should never run slower/further back than they can just so there is a pack. I never got this pack junk. If someone places better, it helps the team. They should not need better runners running slower to "pack it up" in order to run their best, or there has been a coaching problem at some point.

As a practical matter, pack running is sometimes much tougher in major (large) championship races. Just too many bodies.

[Some teams have all their runners wear a particular kind of headwear (headband or hat), which can make it easier for their teammates to spot them.]

Though there have been and will be outstanding exceptions, about the best that may be realistically possible--in a huge field--is that when one of your girls catches up to another, the two will work together for at least a couple of minutes.

Mideasterner wrote:

I am not a fan of forcing pack running on athletes, but it does work well with the dynamics of high school girls teams. They are usually much more team oriented and less focused on individual competition than guys or college girls.

[snip]

Guys and high level women tend to have more of a shark mentality--they smell blood and pound their competition into the ground.

Huh, if I had to generalize, I would have said the opposite. Usually where I've seen productive pack running has been with college guys- granted, their times are often less spread out than women's times. Women's races seem to stretch out much faster- rarely a big group from any team combination running together.

I believe that the aforementioned Grand Valley women's team does the pack running thing deliberately, and it obviously works for them.

Telling a bunch of high school girls to run all out individually to place as high as they can is usually a recipe for a 400 meter PR. Have you seen the start of a typical high school race?

I can only imagine what Coach Groves would have said to someone who proposed that the faster runners slow up to run with the slower runners! The curses would have been heard in Bellefonte.

yetanotherchick wrote:

Telling a bunch of high school girls to run all out individually to place as high as they can is usually a recipe for a 400 meter PR. Have you seen the start of a typical high school race?

Sometimes it is crucial that you get out fast in xc. At my league championships, no one on my team realized that the course narrowed very dramatically after a few hundred yards, or that the open section later in the race would be so windy that it was very hard to move up. So, we got locked into a terrible position behind many runners, it was too narrow to pass until much later in the race, and at that point we moved up a good deal but ultimately had a lot left at the end and would have placed much higher with the typical sprint start.

You seem like you are committed to this bad idea. I could try to tell you all about why it is a bad idea like others have or I can have you answer one question. Over the races you did not order them to pack, what was your 1 to 7 split? If this number is not much better than other teams then making them pack will hurt you. I can not imagine risking a championship race on the idea that the girl who is going to run #7 for you is going to have the best race of her life and allow your top 4 to be in the race after the first lap.

I think you said 4 different girls ran #1 different races, if these 4 have a low split compared to other teams in your races, pack the 4 of them if you have to. Better yet tell these 4 to not go anywhere without 2 others but if they are all 4 together they are not going fast enough.

Championship Time!!! wrote:

I think the best shot for my HS girls team during this championship season is to have them race as a pack. We’ve had four different number one girls throughout the seasons and our spread is usually around 30sec.

This is a strategy I’ve never applied till this season. In the past we’ve always had a front runner and a much larger spread.

Does anyone with experience on pack running have advice on this team tactic? Things such as selling it to the team, when should they “go” if they feel good? Who determines the pace?

I’ve seen pack running done very successfully, just never coached it.

Thanks

In my opinion, when a team finishes with less than a 30 sec gap, this is pack running. Pack running doesn't necessarily mean that everyone has to be running shoulder to shoulder.

Re-inforce to your team that whoever is in 3rd, 4th, 5th that day has to work on closing the gap with the front runners; they should not loose sight of the front team members.

Also reinforce that the scoring of cross country is not about time, but about places. So every runner they pass is a point in scoring.

Finally, this late in the season, don't try anything new. Work with what you've always been telling them. (ie: You want them to run as a pack, but tell them that the gap between the 1st and 5th runner needs to be smaller, etc.) This is essentially the same thing, but you're tweaking your current coaching methods.

Good luck.