The key is to mentally mid week races as a workout. no need to redline every single day. kids redline everything/ or never redline. They seem to have a hard time knowing what 80-90% is. Also focus on recovery runs. racing 2x week is the norm and it is essential to build fitness for most of the 9th and 10th graders. as they mature and do summer miles then they can start picking and choosing what midweek meets to do workouts on as opposed to redlining.
I have a son and a daughter who run high school cross-country. They race twice a week from the end of August through October. My son seems to handle this fine, but my daughter has been struggling psychologically with the pressure. I noticed that, at the elite college level, teams compete much less frequently.
Why is there such a difference between HS and college?
I coach at a HS with no real feeder program. My kids come to me with little or no racing experience. They need that experience. So, early season, I try to get in two meets per week, but always three days apart. Late season, I have a "bye week" and a shift to one meet per week. I am about the only one who does it this way in our area, but it seems to improve them greatly in October, when it actually matters here.
I have a son and a daughter who run high school cross-country. They race twice a week from the end of August through October. My son seems to handle this fine, but my daughter has been struggling psychologically with the pressure. I noticed that, at the elite college level, teams compete much less frequently.
Why is there such a difference between HS and college?
I agree with what you are getting at here.
I actually had my best team during covid when we were racing once per week. Our league has forced our divisional races down our throats with dual meets and if we want to race at invitationals, we end up racing twice per week.
Since when is racing twice a week a bad thing? Especially HS XC? What is the science behind this comment?
Really... just curious.
Too many efforts above threshold lowers the PH in the blood making recovery difficult. Hard days damage mitochondria. Acidosis levels measured by the corresponding lactate levels of 8-15mmol have been found to damage mitochondria by 5% which is not a problem if given adequate time to rest and heal. This is one of the reasons why over two workouts per week is not productive for the long haul.
When you count a race as a hard workout (and you should) and you are doing this twice per week, it means all the other running has to be easy. So basically, you are only doing one kind of workout per week at near VO2 Max and nothing else but recovering from it. It is why you generally see zero improvement for most high school teams between late September into November. Look at the results in your state and you will see what I am talking about unless you are in one of those states that has temperatures in the 90s in September and 60 in November. It's usually the team that screws up the least that wins.
Not true at all. We get a small stipend. 3000-4000 for the season at pretty much every school around where I live. Might come out to minimum wage for the hours, so you have to do it for more than the money. Most coaches where I live shoot for a meet every week to every other week.
I need to ask for a raise. I’m getting about $2,200 stipend for XC and less than that for track…
Not true at all. We get a small stipend. 3000-4000 for the season at pretty much every school around where I live. Might come out to minimum wage for the hours, so you have to do it for more than the money. Most coaches where I live shoot for a meet every week to every other week.
I need to ask for a raise. I’m getting about $2,200 stipe$3K for track, and $2K for XC for me.
I work with a number of HS athletes who are learning to mentally navigate the amount of meets they race in a week. Here are three good questions your daughter (and son) can use to assess performance in workouts and races and use these experiences as skill builders:
1) What did go well?
2) What did I learn?
3) What do I want to change for next time?
Instead of feeling overwhelmed, she can feel like excited that she learning and discovering. She can feel more in control like going from the passenger seat of the car to the driver's seat.
Different xc courses also offer different opportunities to work on racing skills and strategies: hills, finishing kick, passing with authority, staying engaged in the middle. She can pick a focus for each course. This will be money in the bank as she matures.
One last thing: as a high school athlete, you actually have a lot of choice. Although adolescents can feel pressure to conform to the schedule and team, it's important that they ALSO know they have the choice NOT to race, even if they don't exercise that choice.
Background: I have never coached HS track or XC as all my years coaching was at the college level mostly as a HC.
Why do HS teams race more than college teams?
My answer:
HS races are 5K's and college races tend to be 8K for the men and 5K-6K for the women during the season. Easier to recover in a 5K.
HS teams comprise of many different type of athletes with different motivations from kids who want to be a state qualifier to kids who just want to be a part of something. Where as, a larger % of your college athletes are going to be more motivated. What's the best form of motivation to run fast (a race) so HS coaches race more frequently where you can get a college team to be motivated more easily for a workout than an entire HS team.
At my college, we probably averaged a XC race every 17 days or so as we raced less frequent than our opposing teams due to I wanted to fit in a variety of workouts in between races.
Just my opinion, your HS team is racing too much. Seems like they are racing, recovering, racing, recovering etc. That may allow the beginner runner to see improvements but over the long haul it is not going to be the best training method IMO. But, I do see the point that HS runners as a whole should race more as a large % lack the motivation to run a proper workout and they need racing experience as well. I think 3 races in HS per month would probably be the best plan IMO as that would allow for a weekly LR, early season tempo runs + 200M repeats and late season LR, interval work and strides not to mention hills.
As for your daughters race jitters, that is a good/bad thing. It is good because it shows she cares about her performance. It is bad because you cannot do your best when you are over the top nervous. The best thing she can do is learn to relax and understand that it is just running, something she has been doing her whole life. Maybe in her next race have her relax, take a several deep breaths before the race and run the first mile at a controlled pace and let the race come to her. Then by mile 1 she should have settled down and then she can begin racing. Eventually this will become a non factor for her with time/experience
Good luck. I am glad to hear they are both running.
We are also forced to have these ridiculous mid-week meets. We use them as an opportunity to get in a tempo run on grass. My kids are not permitted to "race" them. They exist (at least in our area) because athletes need a certain # of meets to compete in regional championships. Some schools don't have the $ to compete in weekend invitationals, making the mid-week meets critical for those schools.
I have a son and a daughter who run high school cross-country. They race twice a week from the end of August through October. My son seems to handle this fine, but my daughter has been struggling psychologically with the pressure. I noticed that, at the elite college level, teams compete much less frequently.
Why is there such a difference between HS and college?
I coach at a HS with no real feeder program. My kids come to me with little or no racing experience. They need that experience. So, early season, I try to get in two meets per week, but always three days apart. Late season, I have a "bye week" and a shift to one meet per week. I am about the only one who does it this way in our area, but it seems to improve them greatly in October, when it actually matters here.
This logic doesnt work. You cant get the "experience" without the physical stress as well. How much experience do you need to run from start to finish? Its not Top Gun. Most competitive kids will go close to 100% if its a "race". So if you have kids racing 2x per week (or 3x, as my kids coach tried to do once) they are redlining whether you want them to or not. And if you tell them NOT to redline, then how is that "experience"? Just have them do a tempo run instead. I guess if you are running 2 races per week you could just call that your quality session for the week? Because Im not sure when you would do the other quality stuff. You are always racing the next day or the previous day?
There is no good argument based on what we know about physiology and overuse to have people race twice every 7 days. With the exception of rec kids that genuinely dont work hard in practice, these may be the only 2 workouts they get in a week and probably not even 100%.
Practically speaking for the OP, I have had to have that awkward convo with the coach and just tell them your feelings. This is XC not basketball, they will not kick them off the team. Tell them one race a week tops in as polite a way as possible. If the kid is good enough, I dare them to not run their best guys/gals on race day 1x/week. (BTW, many sports have 2 games a week, but there is intermittent rest and total playing time is fairly short and practice is easier too. XC is hard. That's why (many) people dont like it. Need to take care of the body.)
We are also forced to have these ridiculous mid-week meets. We use them as an opportunity to get in a tempo run on grass. My kids are not permitted to "race" them. They exist (at least in our area) because athletes need a certain # of meets to compete in regional championships. Some schools don't have the $ to compete in weekend invitationals, making the mid-week meets critical for those schools.
That makes sense on paper but how do you get kids to run tempo pace in a race? Most of mine would send it as soon as the race heats up. To their credit I suppose.
Since when is racing twice a week a bad thing? Especially HS XC? What is the science behind this comment?
Really... just curious.
I don't need science to tell me. I have been coaching 25+ years and running myself for a very long time. If you don't know that racing twice per week every week for a long stretch isn't a good thing then I don't know how to help you. I have my HS team racing just about every week right now and they have two races this week (it's the only week we are doing that all season) and this is a lot.
We are also forced to have these ridiculous mid-week meets. We use them as an opportunity to get in a tempo run on grass. My kids are not permitted to "race" them. They exist (at least in our area) because athletes need a certain # of meets to compete in regional championships. Some schools don't have the $ to compete in weekend invitationals, making the mid-week meets critical for those schools.
That makes sense on paper but how do you get kids to run tempo pace in a race? Most of mine would send it as soon as the race heats up. To their credit I suppose.
You get your most trusted, experienced runner to pace the other runners with clear instructions to run a certain time.
In Daniels' Running Formula he writes of doing a tempo and an Interval session on back to back days in the middle of the week. I've used that Tues/Wed strategy in the past using the race as one of those workouts.
The key of course is getting buy in from your leaders.
That makes sense on paper but how do you get kids to run tempo pace in a race? Most of mine would send it as soon as the race heats up. To their credit I suppose.
You get your most trusted, experienced runner to pace the other runners with clear instructions to run a certain time.
In Daniels' Running Formula he writes of doing a tempo and an Interval session on back to back days in the middle of the week. I've used that Tues/Wed strategy in the past using the race as one of those workouts.
The key of course is getting buy in from your leaders.
the other key is having good enough runners to all pace off each other. not realistic in all worlds. most teams do not have a tight pack time
You get your most trusted, experienced runner to pace the other runners with clear instructions to run a certain time.
In Daniels' Running Formula he writes of doing a tempo and an Interval session on back to back days in the middle of the week. I've used that Tues/Wed strategy in the past using the race as one of those workouts.
The key of course is getting buy in from your leaders.
the other key is having good enough runners to all pace off each other. not realistic in all worlds. most teams do not have a tight pack time
True, and even though in theory the runners have different tempo or interval paces they're not that far off from each other and the key is just preventing them from pushing too hard.
If you want to get real technical and have them run at the same pace the better runners can just run a bit longer.
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