In 1984 I ran 15 5k cross-country races in high school is this still normal?

I ran in HS from 82-86, we regularly ran from 15-18 meet per season. Inv every Sat. a dual or quad every Tue, some weeks we would do Tue Th Sat.

It was too much. Im not one of the old guys that thinks "these kids today need to get tough!" I think we were being raced to death. It's easy to tell an older runner to "train through" a race, but when you are in HS and you put on the uni and spike up and toe the line- when the gun goes off you are going to race!

We would have been better to scale back, have some down weeks. I think our coach liked us to be "race hardened" and he knew a lot of guys would race themselves into shape.

Greg wrote:

I kind of wish I went out for football my last yr. I had played previously and knew some guys on the team.

It didn't matter, the team was provincial champs (at the highest level). Oh well the xc team I was on was prov. champs too.

I went to one of the top jock schools. We dominated in many areas, and a lot of the students were really smart too, some Rhodes scholars.

My old high school has held the aggregate city title in track for 50 years. And cross country for about 40 years, something like that.

Track star high.

Great story. Thank you for sharing this, you are so brave.

my hs team raced:

2 preseason races (though I usually missed one)

6 regular tri/quad meets

2 invitationals

3 postseason races

my dad ran xc in the 80s too and they had races on tuesdays and thursdays, so 15 in a season doesn't surprise me

This was the early-80s.

Practice started mid-August, final (state) meet was third week of October. Qualifier meet was the previous week, and everyone had the week before that off, so the regular season stopped after the first week of October.

We ran "big" meets every weekend, with dual/triangular meets on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

So something like 7 big meets, 6 'dual' meets, a state qualifier, and state.

I ran in a Midwest state, and our courses were nearly all 5K. This had changed just a few years before I got to high school, though, so some courses were still 2.6 miles, and others were clearly 2.6 mile courses with a weird loop added on.

In the late 90s we did around 15. Usually a small dual/quad meet during the week and then an invite on Saturday. We raced all out every invite and usually pretty hard on the smaller meets. It seemed typical, though some teams were better about easing off the weekday meets.

From what I see nowadays, the team may have a similar schedule, but individuals don't. I see a lot more teams training through the weekday meets. I also see a lot of teams doing split squads for invites for the first half of the season - half of the top 14 run one weekend, the other half the next weekend. All said and done, a varsity athlete may only "race" about 7 or 8 times.

2 preseason meets

4 dual meets

4 invites

league

sectionals

class

state

regional

footlocker

yep 16 meets seems about right.

bringing up their current schedule shows 10 races with no dual meets or the team trials to start the season . I dont know if they no longer do them or just dont make milesplit.

it should be pointed out that by the time you hit sections most kids arent running and top kids trained through dual meets.

In certain districts in Pennsylvania they still have way too many meets.

Then every season, without fail, the dumbfounded coaches wonder why their kids are totally burned out at Districts and fail to qualify for states.

I don't know the exact number but we usually ran a dual or tri-meet during the week and a few invitationals throughout the season - maybe something like 3 or 4 invitationals. Sometimes we would run 2 dual meets during the week if there wasn't a weekend invitational. The post-season was the league meet against 6 or 7 schools, the district meet, a regional meet if qualified from the district, and the state meet if qualified from the regional meet. When I was in high school I qualified as an individual to the regional meet one time and with the team one time. We qualified to the state meet one time as a team.

It seems like now, at least in the schools around where we live, the focus is on invitationals and dual meets are a thing of the past. Almost every weekend teams will run invitationals and then they'll taper a bit for the post-season and maybe not go to as many invitationals. I definitely ran more meets when I was in HS than most seem to run now.

A disadvantage to not running as many dual meets is that I think some kids aren't as good of racers if that makes any sense. It seems like the focus is on time only and not place. XC isn't a sport about time, it's about the place. Scores matter. One positive that did come out of covid last year, is that there seems to be a refocusing on dual meets. Many schools ran more dual meets or very small "invitational" vs maybe 5 to 10 other schools. The fields were smaller and there were none of the ridiculous invitationals with huge fields of 300 runners.

Working backwards...

National XC champs

Inter counties champs

Schools champs

Area champs

County schools champs

County AAAs champs

League 3

League 2

League 1

Other league 4

Other league 3

Other league 2

Other league 1

Open meeting maybe/early season opener

Maybe XC relays

Yikes.

A lot more than I thought.

That's 15.

I also raced on Wednesdays quite often with schools races but ran these as a tempo really... if I add those in the number is horrible.