My friend is having 100-200 runners come out for cross country to build strength for the 400?

seems good wrote:

naw bro wrote:

If you ain't runnin' sub 23, sub 11.3, you ain't much of a sprinter anyway.

School size is important here, if he is at a smallish school that's a great move. Small schools only have a few true sprinters.

Yea, on this not I would say may 100-200m hs kids are not “sprinters” they are kids that are kids who are faster than slow kids... unless you are a pretty elite hs kid or your a high mileage XC program most kids will probably benefit from running and general fitness... of course legit sub 11 sec kids shouldn’t be running 40-50 miles but most “sprinters” will prob benefit from the general fitness of 20-30 miles of easy XC training and some strides and ploys and bw exercises

You know, I generally lean HARD on "no long runs for the sprinters", but you two make a bit of a good point in your posts. But keep in mind, age should also be included in the "analysis". So, if I've got a really green freshman who runs an 11.3/11.4 but has NO clue what he's doing, I'd make a case that he needs to be kept on a legit sprinters regime because the writing is potentially on the wall with that kid. He doesn't need to be slogging it on any kind if "mileage".

WinnytheBish wrote:

joel r wrote:

What do you mean?

I was ignoring the first couple of posts because I thought they were kidding but yes I mean 100m and 200m runners.

O.P., not only did you neglect in title to state 100 meters & 200 meters, O.P., you referred to sprinters as runners. Have you ever called a sprinter a runner to their face? One-hundred meter and 200 meter athletes on high school XC team? It is an awful idea. We can have reasonable discussions and debates in regard to 400m, 400mH and 800m athletes on high school & college XC team, 100m & 200m gals & guys? No!!! Just no!

You. But....not you. wrote:

You know, I generally lean HARD on "no long runs for the sprinters", but you two make a bit of a good point in your posts. But keep in mind, age should also be included in the "analysis". So, if I've got a really green freshman who runs an 11.3/11.4 but has NO clue what he's doing, I'd make a case that he needs to be kept on a legit sprinters regime because the writing is potentially on the wall with that kid. He doesn't need to be slogging it on any kind if "mileage".

I agree with this.

title made it seem like the biggest XC team ever assembled. 100 runners!

highhoppingworm wrote:

Not sure but in my experience a lot of "400" runners in high school were probably people that would have been fantastic 800/1600 runners if they had trained apprpriately.

I knew a guy in HS who topped out at like 53.1 in the 400 who was absolutely convinced he was a 200-400 guy. He ran junior XC season because he was friends with a few of us on the team, was a 17 high guy, continued to run 200-400 in track when we finally convinced him to run the 800 at the end of the season, first time out ran a 2:06. Second time, 2:04. Ran senior XC season, again 17 high, still ran the 200-400 predominantly and never PRd in any event, ran the mile once in 4:53 after doing sprint training. Possibly the biggest waste of talent I’ve ever known.

I don't know the details but I know Morehead st had cross country runners that were heavy as balls running 8k races over 35 minutes. I assumed if they were D1 athletes they were actually sprinters doing a long run.

I have a hard time believing doing a 3 mile run 7 or 8 times, nearly 5 month before track season, could have any negative effects. I would try to do this if I coached, and the kids didn't have any other sport or extracurricular that got in the way.

Dur wrote:

I don't know the details but I know Morehead st had cross country runners that were heavy as balls running 8k races over 35 minutes. I assumed if they were D1 athletes they were actually sprinters doing a long run.

I have a hard time believing doing a 3 mile run 7 or 8 times, nearly 5 month before track season, could have any negative effects. I would try to do this if I coached, and the kids didn't have any other sport or extracurricular that got in the way.

On this thread, no poster has claimed to be a bulky sub-23 200m guy, a 185 pound plus guy forced to run XC. On this thread, no poster has claimed to actually coach bulky sub-23 200m guys forcing them to participate in fall XC. On this thread, no poster has claimed to have or had XC teammates who were bulky & heavy sub-23 200m guy(s). It seems poster you and O.P. heard rumors of bulky sprinters who participated in XC as I am sure you and O.P. heard rumors of Big Foot and a large creature in Loch Ness. I had a F.A.T. 46.xx 400m college teammate who was forced to participate in XC, a 180 plus pound guy. After debate between said athlete and coach, said teammate's only mileage run was five mile jog on grass at 9 minutes per mile the day before XC races. I want to see a list of sub-21 200m guys and sub-23 200m gals who were forced to participate in fall XC.

I’ve coached a number of sprinters who chose to do xc. It always seemed to be beneficial to them and the team. For example, one year our girls team went undefeated in the league and performed well at states. One of the sprinters was our fifth runner. That winter during indoor, that runner and two others from the xc team set a meet record in the 4x200m at a statewide invitational. And in the spring that runner was conference champ in the 400m. Having sprinters do xc seemed liked a win-win.

I went to school with a dude who ran a sub 2.10 800m on a 300m grass track at 14 off tennis training (I know that because I ran 2.12 and he beat me by a few seconds), and would win cross country every year.

I remember him in a PE lesson the following year running the 800m with one group, winning it, then 2 minutes later running it again and winning it again - with me being in the second group.

Dude could dunk from standing at 16 (at 6’ ish), and was insanely strong and fast off very little training.

Seemed genetically engineered for middle distance events.

Biggest waste of athletic potential I’ve ever seen.

toozy wrote:

I went to school with a dude who ran a sub 2.10 800m on a 300m grass track at 14 off tennis training (I know that because I ran 2.12 and he beat me by a few seconds), and would win cross country every year.

I remember him in a PE lesson the following year running the 800m with one group, winning it, then 2 minutes later running it again and winning it again - with me being in the second group.

Dude could dunk from standing at 16 (at 6’ ish), and was insanely strong and fast off very little training.

Seemed genetically engineered for middle distance events.

Biggest waste of athletic potential I’ve ever seen.

I understand bringing a kid like that out for cross country, but bringing kids who run the 100 and 200 with the goal of "improving their strength" seems counterintuitive to everything I've been told about sprint training. I mean even if you're more of a Clyde Hart disciple you probably wouldn't have them train like the rest of the distance runners.

There's a smaller school in my state, maybe 500 students in the whole school, and everyone did the same training. Lots of reps of pretty fast 200's/400's with big rest. Pretty low mileage for everyone, their 3200 guys were still only running like 30 miles per week. But like I said, everything was pretty fast and not very long reps. They had an insane 4x800 for their school size, something like 7:50 or 7:52.

So this guy might have a really good 4x800 if he's got the 200 meter people running cross country, they might all end up running 400's this season and dabble in 800 and realize they're actually best at 800.

A small school in my state wrote:

There's a smaller school in my state, maybe 500 students in the whole school, and everyone did the same training. Lots of reps of pretty fast 200's/400's with big rest. Pretty low mileage for everyone, their 3200 guys were still only running like 30 miles per week. But like I said, everything was pretty fast and not very long reps. They had an insane 4x800 for their school size, something like 7:50 or 7:52.

So this guy might have a really good 4x800 if he's got the 200 meter people running cross country, they might all end up running 400's this season and dabble in 800 and realize they're actually best at 800.

My own experience with high school sprinters leads me to believe that having them do any distance type training would lead to a sprint team composed almost entirely of freshmen, every single year. Sprinters should play another sport outside of track season, but xc is not it.

I've made this work in the past, but it's far from ideal. Ideal 100/200 training is incredibly different from XC and just having them practice with the JV XC kids benefits no one. We have had good sprinters run XC before, but they did not train like an XC runner. These were self motivated kids that wanted to start working out in the fall, but all of our sprint coaches coach a fall sport so there wasn't someone available to organize offseason workouts. Usually they were given a separate workout and mostly self monitored. A typical week for them looked like this:

M - Weights + strides & injury prevent work w/ XC team

T - Drills + Hill sprints or flys while XC team is on the track + hurdle mobility

W - Easy 20 min. run w/ XC team + injury prevention work

Th - Drills + Sprint style tempo (someone like 8-10 x 200 stride w/ 1 min rest or 12-15 x 100m on the minute) while XC team worked out

F - Easy 20 min. run w/ XC team + injury prevention work

S - XC "race"

It gave them some structure and general fitness. I would say it's better than them being inactive all fall, but it doesn't maximize their potential either. I also wouldn't use it to "sell" kids on a new event, but rather give an opportunity for motivated kids to stay active.

A small school in my state wrote:

There's a smaller school in my state, maybe 500 students in the whole school, and everyone did the same training. Lots of reps of pretty fast 200's/400's with big rest. Pretty low mileage for everyone, their 3200 guys were still only running like 30 miles per week. But like I said, everything was pretty fast and not very long reps. They had an insane 4x800 for their school size, something like 7:50 or 7:52.

So this guy might have a really good 4x800 if he's got the 200 meter people running cross country, they might all end up running 400's this season and dabble in 800 and realize they're actually best at 800.

You may be right, but this doesn't address whether or not there are any physiological benefits to running mileage for the 400.

Bullet the Blue Sky wrote:

Obviously not, but any training is better than no training.

Heck, you might get some who develop into strong mid distance runners.

.

No training is better than training that hurts you. XC training is getting close to that line for a pure 100m/200m guy.

You can go look at Clyde Harts 400m training for about as "high mileage" for the 400m as they come. There were a few 30-45 min runs but also a ton of shorter stuff throughout the fall. If you are willing to adapt your XC program (i.e. these kids do the races and maybe 1-2 easy runs of 30-45 mins and the other days you do more 400s specific stuff like 100m hills and 200s on track) sure. And yeah maybe it will turn out that a couple of these kids are really 800m/1500m guys.

first off, i think using cross country to move up a 100m/200m athlete up to the 400m is an awful idea. "fall track" within cross country is fine and is sometimes even better than football - we did successfully add the 400m to a 100m/200m guy's repertoire this way. but he was not doing mileage and jogged 30 minute 5ks at the meets to put cross country on his resume.

i know of one instance of a HS girl going hard at both distance and sprints. she got faster on both ends every year. but it does not fit this mold of 100m-200m trying to move up, and i think she was capable of a lot more under a traditional training plan.

this girl was shoo-in ACC D1 Lacrosse material, and ran XC and Indoor Track. on day 1 as a 14-year old freshman she was state-qualifier (but not state champion) material in any event she chose 55m-5K XC. high mileage + lacrosse camps in summer, high mileage in xc, sprint training in winter.

every year she improved on both ends, but not by a lot. and even with her incredible range, she did not excel at mid-distance, or really any particular event at all. i'm pretty sure if you plugged all of her PRs into one of those points calculators everything would be very very close.

so i don't think this kind of training will inherently "ruin" an athlete but there's certainly a long list of things that would be better suited for this purpose.

This looks good.

General fitness? Did something happen to students since I was in HS?

Our HS sprinters played football, ran 60s indoors and some indoor sprint relays, and 100s and 200s outdoors. They did weights.

In college? Weights....running a very tough and short hill near campus....doing form work...running a few intervals.

HS sprinters were very fast, although another school or two in the state had faster sprinters (not really football players).

College sprinters were very fast, and placed well at NCAAs in 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m.

beachbum wrote:

This looks good.

General fitness? Did something happen to students since I was in HS?

Our HS sprinters played football, ran 60s indoors and some indoor sprint relays, and 100s and 200s outdoors. They did weights.

In college? Weights....running a very tough and short hill near campus....doing form work...running a few intervals.

HS sprinters were very fast, although another school or two in the state had faster sprinters (not really football players).

College sprinters were very fast, and placed well at NCAAs in 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m.

Keep in mind, I coach girls so football is not a great option. On our boys team, all the sprinters play football. I would LOVE for more of my girls to play another sport in the fall and/or winter but XC is the only non-cut fall sport at our school, and we are a big enough school that most kids are not going to make a cut team if they haven't been playing that sport for a while prior to high school. I do have a lot of sprinters that play basketball, but most of my sprinters wouldn't make one of the other fall sports teams.

Many years ago I talked with a 200m runner who did some training with Tommie Smith (they raced against each other), and therefore possibly Bud Winter was coaching during that training. The 200m runner said the focus was on stride length, and back then they made sure their hip rotation was full so as to get an extra 2 inches per stride, because jumping occurs where the hips are.

I emphasize that sprinting is jumping far forward and a little upward with the fastest full hip rotation.