Going for it vs. Playing it safe

Do you have any examples of when you went for it and failed?

sounds to me that you are overly cautious.

How many kids come out for the squad? Could you elaborate a bit on the 'cautious' training that you are currently employing - like how many miles per week, how many workouts of various types, etc. Also what was the training like on the year that you went for it?

What are your goals? Are you dissatisfied with your results? Is there a reason this is coming up now?

How about a compromise and pushing a little harder on the Seniors?

A little more infoWell, one of the things that is bothering me is that my JV boys have won 6 straight league titles, dating back to 2010, but we have not won a varsity title in that time. Some of that is bad luck (we had a team that should have won a couple of years ago but a rival team that is always strong had a pair of twins transfer in and put them over the top. A few years before that, my #1 guy dropped out of school. Another reason we win at the JV level is that we have good numbers and can afford to leave talented sophomores on the JV squad while other teams in our league have brought them up to varsity. Don't get me wrong, if I had a soph (or frosh) that I thought could help at the varsity level, I'd bring him (her) up. We just have more depth so that helps at the lower levels.Boys and girls do fairly similar training. Girls more or less end up doing just a little less of everything. Here is a quick summary.Summer: Mileage period, 100 days, ends the day before our league opener. Usually, 60-80% of my varsity kids will make 500 total miles for that period. Some will make 700, some will end up at 300-400. Mostly easy mileage, but some biomechanics work and some tempo efforts in there. Even though the bulk of the varsity boys end up somewhere around 5 miles/day for the summer, the beginning of summer is pretty low and in through Mid July-Early August, they might get up to 45-50 mpw. My best boys have gotten up around 70mpw for periods during the summer.;Early Season: (The last 4 weeks of our summer mileage overlap with this period). For me, early season extends to the end of September. We don't transition into anything that I would consider "hard" during the early season. We live where it is very hot (we had a few weeks last year where the temps were in the 103-108 range. Last year the heat waves continued all the way to the end of September). Small, rural school, very large school district. Transportation to and from school is difficult for a lot of kids. This precludes any serious effort at morning practice (I did institute a thursday morning run for kids that could get there this past year). Because of the heat, it makes it tough to do any longer sustained efforts. Thursday morning runs last year were the only early season practices where the kids ran continuously for more than an hour. (Although some would meet up on Saturday for a longer run in the hills). As far as quality efforts during the early season, we rely a lot on cruise intervals (once again, because of the heat. I want the kids to be able to get water breaks). A really standard early workout for us is 5-6 x 1200 on the cross country course at 30-45 sec per mile slower than pace achieved on our pre-season time trial. This means if a kid comes in and runs 11 flat for 2 miles on our TT, he might run 5 x 1200 in the mid 4:30s with about a minute rest. The other "hard" efforts for the week are hill repeats. We live in a flat area and there is only one hill within running distance of the school (about 2 miles). We'll run there, do somewhere between 6-10 x 300 with a jog down recovery, then run back to school and do some core. The repeats are at about 3k-5k effort. Total volume during the early season kind of drops down when we go to after school practice because most kids really struggle with the heat. Top varsity guys kind of settle into the 35-50mpw range. A few kids will double up on their own.We may do one lactate tolerance workout before the end of september, this usually ends up being 20x200 @ about 1 mile RP, with 30 seconds recovery. That is pretty tough for the kids when the temps are near or above 100. We usually run about 4 races during this period, so if you include the pre-seaosn time trials, we are getting about 16-17 miles of race effort during the early season.I feel that, apart from the safety issues early in the season, the cautious approach we take ensures that the whole team gets a quality training stimulus (whereas a harder a continuous tempo run might give them a better stimulus, but also might result in a wasted day of training if the kids all blow up and jog the back half of the workout.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

What are your goals? Are you dissatisfied with your results? Is there a reason this is coming up now?

How about a compromise and pushing a little harder on the Seniors?

There are 2 reasons I've been thinking about this.

1: I have a very talented group of girls this year. State Championship is a possibility (although remote). State Podium is a possibilty, and less remote. Regional championship and league championship are very likely for the girls. The boys are senior heavy (should be 6 seniors and a junior on the varsity squad this year). Both squads are kind of at watershed moments. The girls have talent at all levels and a great performance this year could propel the program forward for the forseeable future. This group of boys has been solid since they came in as freshmen and really want to go out strong. Our league is a bit down for both genders, so we should be able to win there even with the cautious approach. For the girls, we should be able to play it safe and win region also. Doing anything beyond those levels will require some more effort and more risk.

Mid Season: We take a little break from organized training at the mid point of the season. We have a mid week meet at the end of September, then I give the kids the rest of the week off until the following Monday. Some of the kids will take the entire 4 days off if they are fried, more often than not, the kids will do some easy runs on their own or play some ultimate or something. When we resume training, the intensity comes up a bit. Between the beginning and end of October, we'll do a couple of lactate tolerance sessions. Usually something like 10 x 400 at mile pace with 1 min recovery or a Cannova style mix of hill running and other drills where the goal is to build lactate right at the beginning of each rep then hold a high level of effort for the rest of it. Each of those reps take about 3:30 - 4:00 to complete, depending on the kid and includes stuff like jump squats, lunges, high skipping, full out sprinting, bounding, and push ups mixed in with the uphill running. We'll do that session once or twice prior to league.

Our tempo efforts become continuous runs. Sometimes we do them on a 1k loop at a local park (also about 2 miles from school) with one small uphill and a bunch of bad footing and really tight turns. Our top kids will do usually 6k at about 20 sec slower per k than 5k race pace. The loop we use is pretty slow. a 17 flat kid might average 3:45 per k on that tempo.

We always race well at our league meet and at our regional meet. The last time our team laid an egg at one of those meets was almost a decade ago (which actually coincides with the time I started becoming more cautious with my approach).

So, my teams perform steady most of the year, then improve at the end. I've had 2 individual regional champions (one of whom went on to take 5th at state) during this period. I honestly don't know what I would change to be more aggressive, but the phrase "risk it to get the biscuit" comes to mind so I've been thinking.

I don't think it is a question of aggressive vs. safe. You can do very aggressive training that is not better for 5K running (Like 100+ mpw with no strength or specific work).

Work smarter, not harder.

How does your team close over the course of a race? A 16:00 5K runner is great, but it's better to get someone who goes 5:20/5:10/5:00 than someone who goes 5:00/5:10/5:10.

Sum Guy wrote:

Both squads are kind of at watershed moments. The girls have talent at all levels and a great performance this year could propel the program forward for the forseeable future. This group of boys has been solid since they came in as freshmen and really want to go out strong.

It reads like the boys are willing to put in a little more work.

Are the girls up for more work? What are their aspirations?

I'd discuss your goals with each group at the start. Try to get some parental buy-in too. I would not lead with "Let's win this thing!" talk and instead discuss getting times lower.

I'm thinking you should plan on some kids putting in the hard work and some talking about the hard work. Sometimes the reality of the hard work is not interesting to some who like the idea.

Can't run your best when you're injured.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

It reads like the boys are willing to put in a little more work.

Are the girls up for more work? What are their aspirations?

I'd discuss your goals with each group at the start. Try to get some parental buy-in too. I would not lead with "Let's win this thing!" talk and instead discuss getting times lower.

I'm thinking you should plan on some kids putting in the hard work and some talking about the hard work. Sometimes the reality of the hard work is not interesting to some who like the idea.

I don't think the girls last year were work averse. They were inexperienced. My top 4 girls were all in their first year of cross, so I didn't really want to force them to do more than they were ready to.

As far as doing the "let's win" talk, vs. "let's try to get faster", I kind of already had that talk. I have detailed stats on what kind of times it has taken over the past 12 years to win, podium, and place top 10 at our state meet. I told them that with a progression that is in the good end of the normal range, they could be in the ballpark of running a team time that is within 3 seconds per girl of the average winning team time from the past 12 years.