Coach refuses to give me speed workouts...

Next time you are on the track with him yell the word 'speed' very loudly, kick him in the shins and take off around the track for a quick 400m. You need to time it so all three happen simultaneously.

You are a high school runner?

Your coach could be absolutely correct in his training plan. Speed work is added once you have built a strong base of anaerobic training early in the training season. Also perhaps indoor season is merely for fun in his eyes and he is developing your fitness levels for he upcoming outdoor season rather than indoor.

Rather than whining on LR show some maturity and speak to your coach about your desire to do some speed work. His response will provide you with the information you need.

Coach G wrote:

You are a high school runner?

Your coach could be absolutely correct in his training plan. Speed work is added once you have built a strong base of anaerobic training early in the training season. Also perhaps indoor season is merely for fun in his eyes and he is developing your fitness levels for he upcoming outdoor season rather than indoor.

Rather than whining on LR show some maturity and speak to your coach about your desire to do some speed work. His response will provide you with the information you need.

Idiotic. He isn't whining, he is asking for the best approach to handle a situation maturely, after having done exactly what you suggested - asked his coach to add in some speedwork.

Did you even read the post, or did you just trot out your standard response to all high school athletes?

I'd suggest you ask him the reasoning behind how he's training you and consider the possibility that he may know more than you do. Or maybe he doesn't, but your post doesn't suggest that you've considered that possibility.

A simple "speedwork should be delayed until outdoor track due to it's higher importance" would have been sufficient.

When your coach is not around, do your own speed drills. Who says you can't. It's your life. In fact why don't you coach yourself. Who needs a coach. Only you know your body better than anyone else unless your name is Ryan Hall in which case god is his master

If you are mostly running the 800 I guess he's planning on you running the 1600 in the Spring, so he's doing what's right. What he's NOT doing is a very good job explaining the purpose behind his workouts.

You need to ask him about his plans for you as an athlete.

trashntrashout wrote:

If you are mostly running the 800 I guess he's planning on you running the 1600 in the Spring, so he's doing what's right. What he's NOT doing is a very good job explaining the purpose behind his workouts.

You need to ask him about his plans for you as an athlete.

This. He said he expects me to run the 8/1500 (I'm in college btw), but it's pretty frustrating for me since I'm only running the 800 but training for mile, and am still expected to qualify for our conference in the 800. I'm just a hair off the qualifying time, but I know if I just had the chance to run some fast 200's or something, I would smash the qualifying time. Oh well.

Common sense...... wrote:

Next time you are on the track with him yell the word 'speed' very loudly, kick him in the shins and take off around the track for a quick 400m. You need to time it so all three happen simultaneously.

Definitely POTD. I needed a laugh. Thanks!

Is he approachable?

I would just have an open conversation with him. Tell him you have the upmost faith in his system, and then explain how you feel like the turnover isn't there. Tell him the truth. If you feel strong, then tell him that, just make sure to ASK not TELL.

Propose your curiosity as a question. "When will I have my legs under me?"

Start the conversation off with a positive, most coaches think they know everything, give into this.

Even for an athlete looking to run quick this spring, I am surprised as an 800 runner that you haven't had some "quick" sprinkled in. Most programs I am familiar with do a little nasty during the winter, even with no intentions of tapering for indoor.

Lurker, you are an idiiot. He's a shill coming up with idiotic threads to get numbnuts like you to fall for it. And, we know that you are the OP.

Lurker wrote:

Coach G wrote:

You are a high school runner?

Your coach could be absolutely correct in his training plan. Speed work is added once you have built a strong base of anaerobic training early in the training season. Also perhaps indoor season is merely for fun in his eyes and he is developing your fitness levels for he upcoming outdoor season rather than indoor.

Rather than whining on LR show some maturity and speak to your coach about your desire to do some speed work. His response will provide you with the information you need.

Idiotic. He isn't whining, he is asking for the best approach to handle a situation maturely, after having done exactly what you suggested - asked his coach to add in some speedwork.

Did you even read the post, or did you just trot out your standard response to all high school athletes?

Maybe he knows you can not peak three times in one year. I wouldn't have you do anaerobic workouts either until later during the outdoor season.

Look at it this way wrote:

When your coach is not around, do your own speed drills. Who says you can't. It's your life. In fact why don't you coach yourself. Who needs a coach. Only you know your body better than anyone else unless your name is Ryan Hall in which case god is his master

And when he shows up at his third meet, toasted because OP has been racing workouts, OP can thank you. Those first couple of meets have a 50/50 chance of going badly too.

OP, slow steady progress is exactly what you need. Lots of potential left this way vs. hammering a few workouts.

OP, Be patient. You should feel thankful you are seeing progress so easily.

There's some wisdom in this thread. It might just be too early for "speed" workouts (although that term is nebulous and possibly misleading). Before you get to anaerobic training, it's necessary to 1) build an aerobic base, and 2) work on improving strength -- from there, you can work on improving speed through working on pushing the lactate threshold higher and making the body more capable of buffering lactic acid. If you do this work too early, you could risk "peaking" too early, and then you'd have a situation in which you run your best race two weeks before States and are befuddled as to why the championship race went so poorly.

What CAN be done in the early stages, however, is very short (7-9 sec., or 40-60m) max-effort sprints that engage neuromuscular development and improve turnover rate while reducing ground contact time; these sprints are short enough that they avoid the lactate stimulus mentioned above and would help prepare the legs for hard repeats later in the season.

Slow800 wrote:

I'm primarily an 800 runner this indoor season, and so far I have not done any fast, anaerobic workouts yet that one would expect to do as 800 training. We do do interval workouts, but not nearly fast enough to produce the kind of stimulus I would want. I've asked him nicely if we could switch up my training and do some faster work, especially now as my times are starting are starting to fall at a slower rate, but so far he hasn't budged. What do you guys suggest I do?

You said "doo doo"

Slow800 wrote:

trashntrashout wrote:

If you are mostly running the 800 I guess he's planning on you running the 1600 in the Spring, so he's doing what's right. What he's NOT doing is a very good job explaining the purpose behind his workouts.

You need to ask him about his plans for you as an athlete.

This. He said he expects me to run the 8/1500 (I'm in college btw), but it's pretty frustrating for me since I'm only running the 800 but training for mile, and am still expected to qualify for our conference in the 800. I'm just a hair off the qualifying time, but I know if I just had the chance to run some fast 200's or something, I would smash the qualifying time. Oh well.

I don't see why you can't go do that on your own if you feel that strongly about it. However, worrying about indoor is a waste of time and effort.

Indoor is something to do to keep from getting fat between Xc and Track. Also it's kinda fun racing those off distance races on weird tracks, but it's not the place to worry about titles or times.

Being a great indoor track athlete is like being the smartest kid in summer school.