I'm sure the thread title will make him really want to read it!
I'm sure the thread title will make him really want to read it!
Have you asked him what exactly he means by "hard" on these days? Does he give a pace/effort estimate?
Is/was he a runner?
If everything here fails, go to your AD and tell him what is going on. Emphasize the injuries that are occurring. Then emphasize how your team always flames out in championships by comparing to successful teams.
Monday: Treat it as a progressive run - start at 6:45-6:50 on the hard ones, keep jogging during the 5-10 minute breaks, and work down to say 6:15 by the last hard mile.
Tuesday: Start at 6:15 pace for the first 2 mile, jog during the 5-10 minute breaks, and work down to 6 min pace for the 2nd 2 mile and 5:45-5:50 for the last one.
Wednesday: As easy as you can possibly go
Thursday: Jog very slowly during the breaks, and take the hills easy if you need to. How long are these hills? I'm guessing pretty short if you do 70 of them. Maybe sprint the last 2 of each set to get some speed/muscular development in.
Friday: Run it hard, but not quite all out. So maybe shoot for 5k pace, so you still feel under control until the very end.
Saturday and Sunday: Easy mileage.
The thing you have going for you is you're actually doing quite a bit of mileage if you just jog a little in between those Mon/Tue workouts. Add 4-5 doubles a week and you could easily be doing 60-70 miles a week. That much volume plus some good aerobic intensity and I guarantee you'll improve. Maybe not as much as you could with a better coach, but you can't have everything. Certainly it should be enough to take you from 17:40 down to sub 17. Good luck!
Run for your life wrote:
You said a past teammate veered off last season. I would assume he tried some of the suggestions made on this board, scaling back effort at workouts, etc. How did the coach respond to him doing that. I would assume the coach would expect a valiant effort at practice and is smart enough to know when someone is sandbagging it.
I think the only answer is all the top guys stage a sit out! Power in numbers or do most of the team "believe" in this coach??
With regards to the guy who "veered off" for the most part he would. It wasn't until he started doing 800 repeats in 3:00 in XC (he was a 16:30 guy) that our coach really started to take notice. For track he just skipped altogether, he had a pretty believable excuse (that his family had financial issues and he needed to work) but he was still questioned basically every step of the way, so I don't think something like that will work again.
A sit-out is a good idea, and it's something I've definitely considered, but I'm not sure if the rest of our top guys will man up enough to do it.
And to the people giving me advice on how to do these workouts day by day- I appreciate it, but those were the workouts from the first 2 weeks of XC. I have no idea what he plans on doing for track. Except it'll be something like this
Monday: Basically the same as the Monday here (Coach: "Since these '9 mile Mondays' worked so well...)
Tuesday: Hard
Wednesday: Recovery
Thursday: Hard
Friday: Hard
Not overstating wrote:
If everything here fails, go to your AD and tell him what is going on. Emphasize the injuries that are occurring. Then emphasize how your team always flames out in championships by comparing to successful teams.
I've also considered this, however our conference/district is pretty talentless, and the meets are in late October/first week November (so we're post-peak, but most teams still aren't quite in shape) so we win those easily (though in slower times than a couple weeks earlier) then collapse at regionals and state. But it's going to be tough for any AD to take the word of a 17-year old over a coach who has won X district/conference championships.
If your fifth guy on a high school xc team is running 17:40, maybe you're doing something right?
gobbly gook wrote:
If your fifth guy on a high school xc team is running 17:40, maybe you're doing something right?
He said his school has 100+ people coming out for XC every year. If you have 50 guys (assuming it's even) and only 5 of them are 17:40 or other, that isn't very good.
If you have any potential at all, you will be able to handle this training, and will improve from it.
If not, you are never going to be a great, anyway.
He's saving you some time!
Are you kidding?
5 at 17:40 at the beginning of the season is fantastic. Now of course he said they flame out by the end of the year, but what exactly is flaming out and how bad is it?
Even if you only maintain you beginning of the year stats you can't call the guy a bad coach.
And don't give me that 50+ guys thing. You know how many unathletic kids and porkers come out for high school xc. We have no idea of the quality he's getting.
gobbly gook wrote:
If your fifth guy on a high school xc team is running 17:40, maybe you're doing something right?
That was off of base, so that didn't really have anything to do with my coach. I'll give you an example. Our girls team made it to states due to having a lot of talent and absolutely choked as predicted. The State meet was November 20th. The Pre-State meet was October 16th on the same course. However, look at the times for both
#1: Pre-State- 19:39 State- 20:01 (+21)
#2: Pre-State- 19:51 State- 19:36 (-15)
#3: Pre-State- 19:53 State- 20:26 (+33)
#4: Pre-State- 20:03 State- 20:27 (+24)
#5: Pre-State- 20:41 State- 20:47 (+6)
#6: Pre-State- 20:50 State- 20:59 (+9)
#7: Pre-State- 21:12 State- 21:29 (+17)
gobbly gook wrote:
And don't give me that 50+ guys thing. You know how many unathletic kids and porkers come out for high school xc. We have no idea of the quality he's getting.
#5 guy running 17:40 off base shows that these kids put in solid base training, which the coach probably didn't have a hand in. From this and the post about the girls' times, it sounds like he's getting some pretty talented kids out there and can't develop them properly, or have them run their best times when it's important.
Another option here is simply don't run track for this guy. You seem like a smart kid. You've got a basic grasp of what you need to do to become a better runner. You are running decent times, but not the kind of times that will give you a D1 scholarship, so it's not like you need the sanctioned structure of HS track meets to determine your running future. I know it's fun being a part of a team and all, but it would suck to look back on your senior year, having had a bollocks season because of an inflexible coach who doesn't know what he's doing. There are plenty of road races, open track meets, junior olympics out there, that if you put some effort into structuring your own season, you can call all your own shots, run what you need to , and have some positive race results that you can be proud of.
Pulling a Cassidy, as it were.....
Good luck, in any case!
Your coach is getting a nice stipend for coaching from the HS and doesn't want to lose it. He could care less about development. He likely asked 2-3 coaches what their best workout is and then just repeated it on a weekly basis.
Nothing you can do at the moment, if you want to run there
Tangled up in Blue wrote:
I missed all of XC season except for the first two weeks with a stress fracture. We did speed from Day 1 and the team peaked in early-mid October and didn't make it to states, despite being the highest seeded team at regionals. (finished 8th)
....how can I continue to run good times and improve despite this terrible coaching?
Petition your state to ban any school that has a "club" team for NXN. Then your coach will be forced to give up his selfish NXN dreams and focus on getting the team to state.
I just wanted to add a little insight on the situation. I am the kid the year before who avoided this coaches training. One thing to realize is that the coach is very stubborn, and not coaching to improve the times for the kids, but to improve his own resume. He bases his running knowledge off of what he ran in college, (a 800 meter runner and slow xc runner in a Division 1 -AA school).
During my last xc season, I started off running a 16:30 off of base. I slowly got worse and through mid season I was running mid 17s. I approached another coach (who had helped a previous girl runner on this team and helped her drop her pr to 18:04) and he told me paces to hit during the main coaches workouts. I dropped from 17:30s to 16:30 again in 3 weeks.
My last track season, I would go to two practices a week, a hard one and a easy one. I would hit the paces that the better coach told me to hit for the hard workouts, and and my other hard workout would be directly from the better coach. I ended up hitting 4:28 for the mile and 4:10 for the 1500 that season.
The coach is unapproachable and has threaten to kick off anyone on the team who did what I did. The only way he is approachable is if the team as a group approaches the coach, but I don't see that happening.
I am currently an assistant coach at a school in the same class as my old school, and my team beat them decisively in the one meet we ran against them this year, as they were ranked 1st and finished 8th.
gobbly gook wrote:
If your fifth guy on a high school xc team is running 17:40, maybe you're doing something right?
I went to a HS with 140 kids in the entire school, 10 guys ran xc, and our 5th guy was consistently in the high 17s. So I'm thinking a school of 3000 with 100 kids out for xc should be quite a bit better.
Your coach is obviously terrible -- the situation sounds similar to the situation at my kids' school, where there is a bullheaded coach with authority, but who does not know anything about training, and a knowledgeable underling who does not get any respect from the head coach. Are there any parents who could help you rattle the cage? It helps if the parent(s) have some training knowledge.
heat miser wrote:
Your coach is getting a nice stipend for coaching from the HS and doesn't want to lose it. He could care less about development.
*He could NOT care less*
Cudos to you for having the balls to blaze a new trail and do the hard stuff by being the best you could be in what sounds like a terrible coaching situation. You will go far in life not allowing others to limit and stagnate your growth.
As for the original poster, I say grow some balls and "get a job", run a practice or two each week and train on your own which is not ideal without others to push and pace you but will be better than wasting your time and energy on counter productive bs workouts.
Maybe if the one from last year turns into two this year and so on, this dimwit coach may begin to see the almighty light.
Sadly it sounds like your coach is more worried about building his own resume then building successful athletes. Sounds like he is also pretty dumb if he thinks his numbers don't tell the real story about him as a coach. If you know is he respected by other coaches in his district ad region?
Now the real test will be are your balls hard or soft? Will you sell your soul to fit in or swim against the tide and continue to blaze the trail that was started in front of you. Just remember it is your choice to honor those before you and widen the trail for those who follow or just shrink into a pile of crap for the sake of keeping peace.