Is my coach coaching my XC team the right way?

i mean if you don't like your coach or your teamates, xc isn't gonna be very fun...

and besides you can always train by yourself and get in a better workout than what your coach gives you so

Why is your coach having you do ladder workouts in the summer?

Sounds like your coach has assigned an easy / base building workout which is appropriate for this time of year. Which is what u should be concentrating on ESP if your only concern is the 800 which at the least is still HALF a year away. U need not worry bout pace but volume. Run the workouts w the team at their pace and end every practice w fast strides to maintain your speed and enjoy the aspect of what a team is bc I'm 33 and haven't had a training partner for over close to 10 years. Also u do realize u can do a lot of your stuff away from the coach if u feel necessary. When I was in high school my coaches workouts were usually my warmup for my own stuff bc his often wasn't challenging enough or at the volume I desired.

They will continue to drag you down. Don't waste your time with this "team" of slackers. They won't help you get 1:55.

Find a training partner in a nearby club who is serious. This will get you your 1:55.

As hard as it is to imagine, at it's best XC is a team sport. When you run for something bigger than yourself, you often find abilities you didn't know that you had. Running to achieve as a team can be that bigger than me experience.

A shared experience like an easy ladder in the middle of the summer isn't going to tax too many guys mentally or physically, but it is a shared experience that the team can build from.

I sure that you're aware that not every run needs to be balls-to-the-wall. There are many things that need to happen for a team to peak at the end of the season.

Communicate with your coach before the workout - days in advance if possible. Know what the goal of the workout is and how it fits into the larger picture. By your own admission, this is your first year of XC at the high school level. As hard as it might be to imagine, your coach might have the bigger picture in mind.

No matter who you deal with in life you can either begin by trusting or distrusting the people around you. I think you will find starting with trust, until they give you reason not to trust them, will leave you much happier in the long run. Seek to understand before you begin to operate with distrust.

hutchman wrote:

Why is your coach having you do ladder workouts in the summer?

Today was our first "speed day". We go back to school next week. Summer is basically over where I live. We've been running twice a week, but starting this week and until the end of October we're gonna be running everyday. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are speed days and Tuesday and Thursday are long recovery runs.

Good lord...23 wrote:

Sounds like your coach has assigned an easy / base building workout which is appropriate for this time of year. Which is what u should be concentrating on ESP if your only concern is the 800 which at the least is still HALF a year away. U need not worry bout pace but volume. Run the workouts w the team at their pace and end every practice w fast strides to maintain your speed and enjoy the aspect of what a team is bc I'm 33 and haven't had a training partner for over close to 10 years. Also u do realize u can do a lot of your stuff away from the coach if u feel necessary. When I was in high school my coaches workouts were usually my warmup for my own stuff bc his often wasn't challenging enough or at the volume I desired.

I understand your point about an easy base building workout, but he labeled it as a "speed workout". Our base runs are Tuesday and Thursday. We go about 5-6 miles. I run them in about 6:20-6:40 pace, depending on the day.

Train with slower people, you'll be slower.

You were the best guy out there, eh?

Did someone hand out medals after the workout? Do you get a better lane for the next workout because of your win?

Shut up and do what your coach asks of you. You were not the best guy out there because you didnt run the workout. YOU CANT WIN PRACTICE.

dialetheist wrote:

They will continue to drag you down. Don't waste your time with this "team" of slackers. They won't help you get 1:55.

Find a training partner in a nearby club who is serious. This will get you your 1:55.

The fastest guy on the team ran a 5K PR of 15:50 last year and he was a sophomore, about to be a Junior, like me. He's my best friend and we were the two best 800 guys on the track team, except his split in the 4x800 at state was 1:56 whereas mine was 2:00, so he's better then me. I was much more consistent though. I ran 2:00 3 times (twice in the open 800, once on the 4x800) and his top 3 times all year were 1:56 (relay) 1:58 (open) and 2:00 (open). We never trained together though, because he was a 800/1600 guy and I was a 400/800 guy, so I was with the mid-distance group with just one girl, that was it (there were literally 2 of us, and she was a sophomore who PRed at 2:14). He's the exact opposite of me. He's very humble, quiet, and EVERYBODY on the team loves him. I'm not cocky, but I defiantly have a louder personality and I'm not afraid to speak my opinion on anything. The problem with him is that he doesn't push himself in practice, at all. Hopefully when he gets back next week from Maryland, he'll see that I'm working my ass off, and hopefully it will trigger him to go harder, because I would love having him as my training partner.

No you weren't wrote:

You were the best guy out there, eh?

Did someone hand out medals after the workout? Do you get a better lane for the next workout because of your win?

Shut up and do what your coach asks of you. You were not the best guy out there because you didn't run the workout. YOU CANT WIN PRACTICE.

If you think I was bragging at how well I ran the workout you missed the entire point of what I was getting at. I believe that if I have more skill and speed then the rest of the team, I should push myself to run harder instead of holding back and running in the pack with them. Again just one guy on our team that was there today could run a mile under 5 minutes. It's not like they're all really good runners who were listening to coaches instructions and were doing the workout properly. They just aren't as fast as me.

I love the aspects of team sports. I love going to IHOP as a team and getting breakfast, or playing volleyball at 11:00 at night. But when it comes to training and running, you need to be competitive and work to your full potential. Just my thought. And we're also the biggest HS in the state. We have about 3,800 students, and 60ish people on the XC team, and last year we didn't even qualify for state. I'm not saying it's the coaches fault, but I do feel like he's not competitive enough and would rather have the "family" aspect to the sport instead of the "winning" aspect. The track team last year got 3rd in state, but only 1/10 of our points came from the distance team. Us sprinters worked hard in practice, and we had fun together afterwards and off the track.

Was this same coach the coach of the 15:50s guy last year?

i see no problem with the workout and I am a proponent of him telling the team to run together.

You won't get worse doing this training. You will, however, have issues if you continue the "it hurts to run so slowly" mindset.

1. It's one workout. Relax.

2. It's a team sport. Placing 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 is better than 1,10, 15, 20, 25,

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

1. It's one workout. Relax.

2. It's a team sport. Placing 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 is better than 1,10, 15, 20, 25,

Alan

10+11+12+13+14=60 winning team

1+10+15+20+25= 71

Sounds like the complete opposite of what we have at my school, we distance runners are the only ones who work hard and score most of the points as a result of it.

Lenny Leonard wrote:

Was this same coach the coach of the 15:50s guy last year?

i see no problem with the workout and I am a proponent of him telling the team to run together.

You won't get worse doing this training. You will, however, have issues if you continue the "it hurts to run so slowly" mindset.

Good question.

OP, your times dont matter for a thing in XC. Its a race, a team race.

Believe it or not, there will come a day when,you realize that you didnt really know everything at the age of 16.

If its an every day thing, I agree with you, its a problem.

Our coach is really into the 'everyone runs together so we're more teamly' thing, and that means the varsity kids who've been running year around for four years, with kids who just showed up last week and aren't sure they are really interested. So that means, we all run at the pace of the totally out of shape kids for our daily runs, day after day of running at 5k pace plus 4 to 5 minutes. Stopping every time someone has to tie a shoelace, gets a side stitch, needs to go potty, etc.

Coach does break us into groups for speed workouts once a week but that's it, and the result is that only the kids who really train well outside of cross country, actually improve. Its the 'no child left behind' version of cross country. So if this is what your coach is doing, I'd encourage you to talk to your coach and tell him you would really like to be allowed to run faster, you enjoy it more, etc (come from the aspirational rather than complaining side of things), and then go out of your way to be extra teamly otherwise. If this doesn't work, do the running you want to do outside of practice, which is an age old tradition.

If he makes you run as a group only here and there, then you shouldn't worry about it.

Lenny Leonard wrote:

Was this same coach the coach of the 15:50s guy last year?

i see no problem with the workout and I am a proponent of him telling the team to run together.

You won't get worse doing this training. You will, however, have issues if you continue the "it hurts to run so slowly" mindset.

Yes he is the same coach. The kid is a stud and has been since Jr High. Won the 800 and 1600 at the city meet in 8th grade. I however just got 5th in the 400. That's all. But he's the only guy on our team that ran at the state meet for XC last season.