Why do non-elite programs race so much in September/ March?

Begin with the end in mind wrote:

It seems that most elite cross country and distance programs have learned to not race in September.

Flat-out wrong

Yeah, you are wrong about the races. Many have an early and late September race. Maybe a time trial too.

Also these workouts many programs do are often tougher than race efforts. Often tempos turn into race efforts. Often kids are over trained. Have you not run in college? The best efforts for most college runners come in practice.

Wisconsin tempos all of their races.

06/05-06/08/13 NCAA Division I National Championships Outdoor 5000 F 16:20.55 15

06/05-06/08/13 NCAA Division I National Championships Outdoor 10,000 F 33:45.03 6

05/23-05/25/13 NCAA Division I West Preliminary Round Outdoor 5000 P 16:11.35 11

05/23-05/25/13 NCAA Division I West Preliminary Round Outdoor 10,000 P 35:02.21 6

05/04-05/12/13 Pac-12 Track & Field Championships Outdoor 10,000 F 34:17.09 1

04/18-04/20/13 55th Mt. SAC Relays Outdoor 5000 F 15:52.41 16

03/29-03/30/13 Stanford Invitational Outdoor 10,000 F 33:04.58 7

03/08-03/09/13 NCAA Division I Indoor Championships Indoor 5000 F 15:56.35 10

02/08-02/09/13 UW Husky Classic Indoor 5000 F 16:13.99 16

11-17-12 2012 NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships XC 6K 20:07.9 29

11-09-12 NCAA Division I West Region Cross Country Championships XC 6K 19:51.5 6

10-27-12 Pac-12 Cross Country Championships XC 6K 20:24.6 7

10-12-12 Wisconsin adidas Invitational XC 6K 20:06.2 23

09-29-12 Greater Louisville Classic XC 5K 17:05.9 12

or

06/11-06/14/14 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships Outdoor 10,000 F 32:46.57 5

05/29-05/31/14 NCAA East Preliminary Round Outdoor 10,000 P 33:13.54 2

05/16-05/18/14 2014 ECAC-IC4A Outdoor Championships Outdoor 3000 F 9:10.41 1

05/02-05/03/14 CAA Track and Field Championships Outdoor 5000 F 16:30.62 2

05/02-05/03/14 CAA Track and Field Championships Outdoor 1500 F 4:24.27 2

05/02-05/03/14 CAA Track and Field Championships Outdoor 1500 P 4:36.68 3

04/17-04/19/14 Mt. SAC Relays Outdoor 10,000 F 33:31.59 4

04/03-04/05/14 2014 Colonial Relays Outdoor 5000 F 15:56.85 1

03/14-03/15/14 NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships Indoor 5000 F 17:05.30 14

03-02-14 Boston University Last Chance Meet Indoor 5000 F 15:46.92 3

02/14-02/15/14 Iowa State Classic Indoor 5000 F 16:04.29 4

02-01-14 Patriot Games Indoor Mile F 4:51.19 1

02-01-14 Patriot Games Indoor DMR F 11:53.75 1

12-07-13 CNU Holiday Open Indoor 3000 F 9:23.03 1

11-23-13 NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships XC 6K 20:22.6 11

11-15-13 NCAA Division I Southeast Region Cross Country Championships XC 6K 20:12.5 6

11-02-13 2013 CAA Cross Country Championships XC 6K 21:17.1 1

10-19-13 Pre-National Invitational XC 6K 20:24.2 12

09-28-13 Virginia Panorama Farms Invitational XC 5K 16:31.8 1

09-06-13 Richmond Spider Open XC 2M 10:17.5 1

Begin with the end in mind wrote:

It seems that most elite cross country and distance programs have learned to not race in September.

Why do other schools race in 2 or 3 times in September/ March instead of training and getting stronger for the championship part of the season (November/ May)?

What's wrong with racing?

What are your results?

because their seasons end in October.

Echoing some of the above:

1. Some programs are realistic about their teams' prospects for getting to Nationals, and want to give their runners a decent number of racing opportunities.

2. In line with that, some coaches are realistic about individual runners' prospects for getting to Nationals, and will schedule races that the top runners on the team may skip.

3. Some coaches understand that most athletes, even at the college level, don't come out for a sport so they can train--they come out for the sport so they can compete.

4. Some coaches can manage their teams' schedules so that races can be *both*

a) all-out efforts ("tempoing" a race is for the birds, IMHO), and

b) effective parts of an overall training schedule.

The earlier racing can be for younger runners down on the roster, runner coming back from injury. Lots of logical reasons. Top runners are commonly held out of early season races.

Interesting Thread

We are actually going to be racing MORE this year than in the past

http://www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/School.aspx?SchoolID=866#/S=2013

I've re-worked my training schedule so that the race days are the #1 quality day of the week this season and the other hard days would be our #2 and possibly #3 quality day of the week. I've pretty much removed all "race pace" training from our schedule, since they are going to be getting that in....well....races.

By race pace training, I mean things like 6x1k @ 5k pace or 4 x 1 mile at 5k pace.

I'll let y'all know how it works.

There is an NCAA rule requiring a minimum number of competitions a team must fulfill to meet NCAA Sports Sponsorship.

I believe the program must compete in 6 competitions to be considered a sport.

When Southern Utah believed they could do well at NCAA in 2011

http://www.suutbirds.com/SportSelect.dbml?SPSID=99467&SPID=12249&DB_OEM_ID=20100&Q_SEASON=2011

In 2013, they did not believe they could compete on a national level

http://www.suutbirds.com/SportSelect.dbml?SPSID=99467&SPID=12249&DB_OEM_ID=20100&Q_SEASON=2013

Small Schools

Texas Southern plan their season to end in October

http://athletics.tsu.edu/schedule.aspx?schedule=27&path=cross

Rice University plan their season to end in November at NCAA

http://www.riceowls.com/sports/m-xc/sched/rice-m-xc-sched.html

CoachB

I think you and your team will really like the new schedule. My son's team trains this way. They actually have more races than you do pretty much every Tues and Sat. The younger kids don't race much on Saturday until the end of the season. Most of the kids have other things going on so this way they get to race enough even if they miss a couple races. It also lets them focus on getting in mileage the other 4 or 5 days of the week.

The biggest thing that helped them was having a second coach that could be in charge of a workout or race. They achieved this by having co-head coaches for both the boys and girls teams. That means on Saturday when the varsities are doing their hardest race of the week, even the weakest JVs are at home doing a tempo. Numbers 8-14 might do either depending on schedules and current health status. On Tuesdays, the varsity tempos the race and the JVs are right their with them.