Should the regular season in XC count for anything?

Mine did. It was something weird like the 4 meets counted for 50% and the final counted for another 50%. I tend to think it's more fun when they all count for something.

It's certainly varied, but most high school conferences I've known have used the regular-season meets to determine, at least partially, who the conference champion was.

I agree, it's good for every meet to "mean" something.

Yes, they were opportunities to run a fast time, opportunities to win as an individual or as a team, opportunities to try new race strategies, and opportunities to callous up and be ready to race when the championship races came around. All of that counts for a lot.

I was pleasantly surprised to read the responses so far. I am tired of wannabes spouting off about how the only meet that matters is the state championship at the high school level.

Ultimately, does anything really matter? There's certainly an argument to be made for the answer "no"

On the other hand, I think anything that adds meaning to your life matters. One of the things I love about sports are all the little victories along the way, the process of self-discovery that helps us move along the path to becoming the person we want to be. I think every race you enter can be a great aid in this journey. Hence, I think every race is important.

However, the goal of every race doesn't have to be the same. In fact there can be multiple goals for a single race and different goals for different races.

I do subscribe to the paradigm that the best way to achieve our ultimate potential is through consecutive cycles that each end in a peaking phase. I do think that championship races toward the end of this phase are the best way to measure the success of this process. Hence, I have no problem with crowning league, district, regional, and state champions each based on a single related race.

That doesn't mean that the regular season meets don't count for anything. They just matter for other reasons.

high school coach 177 wrote:

The county in which I coach in (high school) does not do any regular season standings or champion for cross-county (or track for that matter) The county champion is determined with one meet at the end of the season, before the regional and state meet (Maryland). Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Did your high school regular season meets count for anything?

I've seen it both ways. In my day we had one conference meet, just like and NCAA conference does, and the team and individual champions were determined at this meet. I live in a different state now so my son grew up in a system where dual meets and the conference championship were used to establish points toward the individual and conference championship.

I'd recommend the single meet system every time. With the dual meet system, the coach was under pressure to run the best kids hard to accumulate points, even against weak teams. It wore out the varsity who were running invitationals on Saturdays and inconsequential dual meets on Wednesdays. I always tried to get him to rest the varsity kids for the dual meets but he said it was the AD's policy to participate at full strength.

So why not do what the colleges do? Run and invitational schedule during the year followed by a championship season with a conference meet followed by regionals and state.

I believe that it has hurt our sport significantly when our sport lost the dual meet concept at the NCAA level. I also believe it is a fallacy that you should restrict racing in order to peak on some sort of magic date; that early/mid season racing could/should be woven into the training philosophy, and I'm sure that the great runners of the dual meet era didn't spend too much time resting for those races. You showed up with what you had that day, raced hard ... and kept score. The general public wants to see a score, and know who won and lost. Since that doesn't happen much, the casual fan has lost interest. Can you imagine NCAA football teams scrimmaging and not keeping score until November?

It's fun reading Kenny Moore discuss important Oregon duals in "Bowerman", makes you wish for a little more of that.

In 1976 George Malley raced ..... (Weekly Mileage)

9/18: 5 mile TT 25:03 (116)

9/25: vs. Villanova 5 mile 24:22 (116)

10/2: vs. West Virginia 5 mile 24:40 (130)

10/8: vs. Kent State 6 mile 29:01 (125)

10/16: Penn State Open 5 mile 24:01 (145)

10/23: vs. Georgetown/William and Mary 5 mile 23:55 (130)

10/30: Central Collegiates 5 mile 24:19 (103)

11/5: vs. Pittsburgh 5 mile 24:03 (131)

Week of 11/7: (130 miles)

11/14: USTFF 10k 29:33

So, up through this race he is undefeated, having set four course records.

The next day he fell and dislocated his shoulder, keeping his weekly mileage down at 82. He still ran 10x400 two days later averaging 60 point, but notes in his log that his shoulder was "bad". On 11/22 he finished the NCAA Championship in "only" 20th place in 29:07, in large part due to his shoulder, he had been one of the pre-race favorites. That season is remarkable, and screams at how current training theory hurts how outsiders view our sport. Remember that this training didn't kill "Malmo", he would soon set the US Steeple record.

First, in Maryland does even the county meet count for anything? From results, it seems like most anyone can run regionals

Second, one thing that needs to be accounted for is that different types of teams are better at dual meets when compared to the end of the year larger meets.

This could be changed if the later meets were scored as multiple dual meets. If invitationals were also scored as multiple dual meets then win/loss records across the year could be used to crown winners and the same type of team.

WQRokamv-9ih34 wrote:

First, in Maryland does even the county meet count for anything? From results, it seems like most anyone can run regionals

No, the county meet doesn't mean anything, except determining the county champion. Every team in Maryland qualifies for the Regional meet and then the top half at the regional meet go through to State. It's not terribly difficult to run at the State meet in Maryland like it is in other, bigger states.

In CT (at least in my conference) the regular season meets count towards what teams are the divisional champs (there are 4 divisions. Then the conference championship meet at the end of the season determines what team is the overall champ.

If you race the league meets you would have to do less invites. Nobody wants to give up invites . Racing hard too much during the season will prevent a good peak at the end

I can't speak to how popular track was in 1976 vs. today but there is also a difference when comparing college competition to high school which was the original question. In my area high school dual meets are very lopsided. One team is always up and the other down. They are also held on Wednesday afternoons and the only people that attend are the team parents. On the other hand the weekend invitationals are a pretty big draw. You only need to get 6-8 teams together to give everyone some competition.

The result is that the top teams sandbag the dual meets and only run fast enough to get the win while keeping their guys fresh for the weekend. This could be alleviated if you use the conference meet model and have a single event to crown your champions.

Ballsweat42 wrote:

If you race the league meets you would have to do less invites. Nobody wants to give up invites . Racing hard too much during the season will prevent a good peak at the end

Spot on. Check out the race schedules of the best teams in the country—they usually race once every ~2 weeks for most of the fall.

Racing every 2 weeks might make sense for certain fragile varsity runners. However, everyone who places higher than #10 at the time trial should be racing once a week. For those places learning to race correctly is much more important than long training blocks during which they forget how to race. That is not to say HS freshmen should start racing at the end of their first week of practice if they didn't run all summer.

As others have said, I don't think dual meets are the issue. The issue is too many meets and in some cases multiple meets in a given week. Stacking meets together works for a team that comes into the season out of shape and needs races for training. However the better teams and individuals need the heart of the season for hard training sessions. There is a saying I like to use....'you don't race to train, you train to race...'

Please give examples of "hard training sessions"

There's always a big hullabaloo when our city's metropolitan area rankings come out of the end of the season and they are very largely weighted based on the state meet. The coaches who don't peak their runners properly and are picking up wins at podunk meets in September when the other teams are training through do not like this approach.

iowakidscanrun wrote:

.. There is a saying I like to use....'you don't race to train, you train to race...'

What you said is very true, BUT you don't "train to train" either.

So often we get all caught up on the one or two big meets at the end. Winning a big invitational during the season can be big too. And for those guys running in HS that will never run again after HS, is it fair to them to spend all of July-Oct training w/o giving them a chance to really compete except for districts/region/state?

Just asking the question.

I'm suggesting 7-8 meets for a HS runner with no more than 1 meet per week gives them enough changes to race. Not suggesting this is a schedule like in D1 where the top runners run 4x including Regionals and Nats.

Am suggesting the core of the training (in Sept through early Oct) needs to be 1 long run per week x 2 quality sessions. Quality session --for example-- is 6-7 x 1000 at prescribed intensity with prescribed rest + couple miles of warm up and cool down + core work and/or strength work.

With 2 races in a week, you have 6 days of the week devoted to 2x premeet (ie. nothing) + 2 x race + 2 x recovery day. You sacrifice both mileage and total training stimulus unless you stack days together or do a post race workout.

iowakids,

This is the problem. 6-7 x 1000 at prescribed pace in practice takes more out of most kids than a race.

Why would you cut miles premeet? 6-8 easy miles is a great day for before meets and helps teach them to run easy.