My HS coach never set time goals for me, he told me to get in the race and compete and the times would come. He always encouraged me and made me feel that there was always improvement to be made. I ran 20:40 as a freshman, 16:16 as a senior. I learned to train and race to the best of my ability, and I won a few races too. Great life lessons that have made me a more successful adult.
a few years ago after I had just graduated college I accepted a job from an old coach to be his assistant. It was a small school and he was both the track coach and the cross country coach there. My first day we had a slightly overweight and unathletic looking kid come to practice named Jim. That season Jim went from 28 minutes in the 5k to 22:15. Jim basically became the teams mascot and we all cheered him on as he ran at the back of the pack, slowly but surely getting better. Jim came to the first day of track next spring and went from 10th fastest distance man to 2nd over the winter. He said he wanted to be a 4 time state champion in the mile, which wasn't going to happen because our best guy placed 5th in the mile the year before and Jim was a distant 2nd behind him. Slowly but surely Jim cut time down, From 4:57 to 4:50 to 4:48 and so on. Jim kept getting faster and he was determined to win those 4 state championships. He would need to run at least 4:25 with a last lap near 60 to win state and both the head coach and I were excited about his times but worried that he would be disappointed because he couldn't possibly cut that much time off. Sure enough state came and Jim didn't win, he ran somewhere in the 4:30s, I don't remember exactly. Jim was crushed but he didn't give up. He went on to win 3 state championships in the mile and almost pulled of a distance triple his senior year, winning the mile and 2 mile but placing second in the 800. He ran in the Mid West Distance Gala (though no where near the front) and broke the school record in the 2 mile/3200 his senior year. Jim now goes to a lower Division 1 school on scholarship for running. His PRs weren't amazing compared to the rest of the country and he was in the small school division for our state. But Jim became a hero and a legend at his tiny school. A banner hangs in the Gym showing his 4 state titles. This kid dreamed big despite not being a great athlete and he accomplished some great things.
In case you don't believe me.
Torn Coach,
I think you have two possible things happening here. 1) You have an extremely motivated athlete that doesn't entirely understand training at this point 2) You have an athlete that is setting unrealistic goals, that way when he doesn't meet them no one can hold him accountable.
Which is it?
Also remember the goal setting process should not be a one way event. Talk to the athlete and reasonably try to break down this goal for him. Also, you can ammend goals throughout the season, maybe say to him something like "your not improving as fast as we expected, maybe we should shoot for sub 16 this year and then get a good summer in"
Does this sound about right to you?
I would just tell the guy this:
Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!
Then find a way to get the kid to 90-100 mpw by his senior year and see what happens. If this kid wants it bad enough, then you as a coach can make him train like a madman and he will do it.
Explain that all sessions will be set based on where he is NOW, and if he does them well and pays attention to all the small stuff (sleep, nutrition, recovery etc) then he will get the maximum adaptation out of each session, and great things are possible; and if he does stuff which is too intense for where his body is on a particular day, he'll screw up the schedule.
How about this? Don't lie to your athlete. Don't tell him the ugly truth either.
You don't know the truth (of what he's capable of). That's for both of you to find out. Ask him to set smaller more realistic goals (maybe one month at a time) and re-evaluate frequently. Inform him that he will have to work very hard for incremental improvement beyond a certain point. But don't tell him anything is impossible.
I went from 22:5? as a fresman to mid-19s as a sophomore. Sadly, I did not shave 3 minutes off every year, but I don't think it hurt me to dream that I could. What hurt me more were coaches who tried to tell me I was going to get much faster b/c of my form or proportions or whatever.
What helped me most was coaches who really broke training down into process goals and small steps.
When I was a freshman in high school I ran 6:03 in my first ever mile time trial in Cross Country. In track in the spring I ran a mile time trial in 5:15ish. My other prs at the time were 18min for 3 miles and 11min for 3200 so I had already improved a ton from a little over half a year prior. After that time trial my coach came up and told me he thought that I could make the top 7 the next year, in order to do that I'd probably have to average 5:15's. Overhearing this, one of the top 7 guys made fun of me a little, told me that Coach tells everyone that and that it was all bs. I mostly believed him but there remained that glimmer of hope, particularly because my coach seemed so sincere. Long story short, I worked really hard that summer and ran 15min for three miles and was the number one guy on the team as a sophomore (after barely make frosh/soph top 7 the year before). Its only gotten better from there and now I'm at a place I don't think anyone, not even my coach, could have foreseen way back when (scholarship, NCAA all-americans, etc).
I've told that story to a fair number of people and some of them might even recognize me on this board. The point isn't to brag about improving a bunch, just to show that it all has to start with a dream, no matter how improbable. After being around my high school coach and getting to know him really well, I can say this: if there is ever a time where you see more in your athletes than they see in themselves, you're doing it wrong. Like the man always says, "Nothing great ever happens without enthusiasm."
Teach your runner about the process of becoming great. It takes many years of consistent training before you start really running fast.
Torn Coach, you are lucky to have a kid as motivated as this one. In contrast, your runner is unlucky to have a coach as negative as you.
If your kid wants to put in the work, that is, get up every morning at 5:30 and train, great things can happen. Here is Jim Ryun's progression. It was a lot of work, a lot more than most kids are willing to put in these days, but Ryun exploited his talent fully.
From "Jim Ryun, Master of the Mile"
15 year old sophomore
- 5:38 mile time trial
- 11:51 2 mile XC first time trial
- 11:23 4th is first JV race
- won the next JV race
- 10:36 in first varsity race, eventually becoming Wichita East's top runner
- 6th at State meet, leading the team to victory.
Start running at 5:30am every day during the winter.
- 4:40 self-timed time trial during the winter of his sophomore year
- 4:32.2 loses his first mile race by 0.2 to defending State champ Charles Harper
- 4:26.5 down 15 meters with 100 to go, Ryun digs deep and finds that kick of his, winning his first mile over Harper.
- 4:21.7 leads from gun to tape for win #2
- 4:21.3 wins again, runs first 880, a leg of winning 2mi relay team
age 16
- wins another mile
- 4:16.2 wins state meet
- 4:08.2 MVAAU loses to college runner, doubles back with 1:54.5 880 (5th)
- 1:53.6 5th again, behind four college kids
- 4:07.8 USTFF 6th to college kids
During the Summer between his sophomore and junior years, Ryun ran 5 miles at 5:30am. The harder he worked, the more talented he became. Will YOU run 5 miles at 5:30 am this Summer? Will you?
The part I didn't like about your discription of the kid was that you said he wouldn't shut up about running sub 15. My experience would tell me that he is a big talker and this is not the type of kid that will run much faster.
Every early season I have a freshmen blast out a good workout often beating the Varsity runners and they get real high and mighty. I will pull them aside after the workout and explain that they need consistant effort to be great. This is a great time to help them make realistic goals.
Why the f*** would you discourage an enthusiasm like that. If i were you i would be ecstatic to first of all have that much talent running on my team and second to have someone that actually wants to be good. If i were you I would give him every bit of encouragement you can muster.
This reminds me of a story: When I was 11 I told my mother I wanted to be a professional basketball player.
"Mom, i want to be a professional basketball player when I grow up," i chimed.
"Oh no, honey, you're not tall enough for that. You should be a forensic scientist or a teacher!"
I still hold a deep resentment for my mother to this day. Don't be that man.
Torn Coach wrote:
I coach Cross Country and track at a local high school and one of the kids on the team went from a 21:50 freshman to a 17:55 sophomore. However he wont shut up about being the next high school phenom and has already set his 2011 XC goal as sub 15min. Now, do I crush his hopes and dreams and tell him that the odds are overwhelmingly against him? Or do I lie to him and say "just believe in yourself and put the work in at you'll get there"?
Politely tell him that 17:00 is a more realistic goal.
Torn Coach wrote:
I coach Cross Country and track at a local high school and one of the kids on the team went from a 21:50 freshman to a 17:55 sophomore. However he wont shut up about being the next high school phenom and has already set his 2011 XC goal as sub 15min. Now, do I crush his hopes and dreams and tell him that the odds are overwhelmingly against him? Or do I lie to him and say "just believe in yourself and put the work in at you'll get there"?
First, tell him to shut up. Second, give him some perspective on running a time that makes him an average high school xc guy. Third, tell him what he has to do to get better, aka coach him.
I was flipping through Running To The Top the other day and came across this, from the chapter "The Athlete and the Coach - the Vital Relationship":
Arthur Lydiard wrote:
Motivation is the important factor in the relationship between the athlete and the coach and hope is the key word in motivation. We all have hopes. The coach, the athlete, everyone. But the goals on which hope is based have to be realistic. It's no good a coach telling an athlete he can run a four-minute mile when he knows damn well he's not going to do it.
You do not want to build up hopes unnecessarily. So we've got to use realism, otherwise both athlete and coach can be upset. The aim should be a minimum realisation rather than a maximum one. A coach should never tell an athlete he can perform better than a true evaluation of his current development shows.
I had this problem when I took a team to Europe which included one runner I had never trained but who had been trained by a coach who told him, more or less, that he could beat everyone.
The first race was an 800 m in White City and this guy, who had never run a big international race before, went out in front and led until he turned into the straight. He was a good runner but, when he ran into the straight, the whole pack went past him. Peter Snell, who I did train, won the race.
When I saw this runner after the race, he was walking off the track with his running shoes in his hands and his head down. I asked him where he was going and he said he was going back to the hotel.
"No you're not", I said, "just wait a while."
I had met the manager of the meet and his twenty-one-year-old secretary and I asked the young woman what she was doing that night.
"Nothing", she said. "Why?"
"See that guy", I said, "I'd like you to take him out to a night club tonight. Give him a good time and I'll pay for it."
I went back to the athlete and said, "See that girl over there? She's going to take you out for a nice evening."
I introduced them and I didn't see him again until about 10 o'clock the next morning when he was racing out of the hotel.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I'm going out with that girl."
"Good on you", I said. And from then on, I never had any problems.
He'd got rid of his immediate dejection and he'd realised the world was full of very good runners - there weren't just a couple in New Zealand - and that when you get up against the best in the world you can't set yourself up to run it all from the front.
He ran very well for the rest of that tour, very well indeed.
who fartleked? wrote:
First, tell him to shut up. Second, give him some perspective on running a time that makes him an average high school xc guy. Third, tell him what he has to do to get better, aka coach him.
I wouldn't tell him to shut up, I'd tell to put his money (or his ass) where his mouth is. Second advice is fine. Third, tell him what he must do to get a better coach.
Don't ever tell some one they can't do something. In 2007 at age 18 I ran a 3 hour 43 minute marathon, I set my goal for my next marathon which happened to be a year to the day of my first marathon to break 3 30, then the day before the race I posted that I was going to break 3 10. sounds foolish a 30 min PR in the marathon, well I ended up running a 2 hour 59 minute marathon. a 44 minute PR in the marathon so I guess anything is possible.
RJMxcguy0988 wrote:
Don't ever tell some one they can't do something. In 2007 at age 18 I ran a 3 hour 43 minute marathon, I set my goal for my next marathon which happened to be a year to the day of my first marathon to break 3 30, then the day before the race I posted that I was going to break 3 10. sounds foolish a 30 min PR in the marathon, well I ended up running a 2 hour 59 minute marathon. a 44 minute PR in the marathon so I guess anything is possible.
Based on the fact that you ran over forty minutes slower than a woman, "anything is possible"? Your logic is airtight.
his potential is unknowable and some people will quit if their ambitions are demonstrated to them to be improbable (some will work harder, but then some will be motivated equally by slights and praise) but most people thrive on encouragement, combined with the knowledge of what it takes to improve dramatically. many of us had no clue whatsoever what the best runners even of our age group were doing. I was considered a high mileage guy in my high school when I ran in the 30s and in my college when I ran in the 50s and 60s, so you have to let him know just how much work is required for most people to run 3 sub 4:50s without stopping. Ryun, the ultimate outlier, is a great story. I wonder why no one ever follows his high school training today. It wasn't the five mile runs that made him what he is (I don't know what pace he ran them in), but maybe they did play a key role in providing him more of the base for the insane (insanely successful) number of intervals his coach had him run.
Punch him in the face.