High School XC runners restricted to training on campus!?

You live in Hawaii, stop complaining. Some of us have to deal with real person problems, like weather.

Ace Hood wrote:

You live in Hawaii, stop complaining. Some of us have to deal with real person problems, like weather.

90+ degrees, 90%+ humidity, all hills, usually windy... Hawaii's no bargain when it comes to training.

Yeah, the weather's great for vacationing, but running in Hawaii has always been bizarre to me. I'm in paradise, but my workouts feel like I'm in Hell. And just about the time I start to acclimate to the conditions, it's time to go home to the mainland.

"One day a lawyer was visiting the land owner and saw the kids running on the property and quickly convinced his client to rescind the permission to run on the property so he couldnt be liable to lawsuits via injury."

Fire that lawyer. Problem solved.

Ace Hood wrote:

You live in Hawaii, stop complaining. Some of us have to deal with real person problems, like weather.

What!? Are you serious? You think this is lala land and we all live in huts drinking pina coladas? And what do you mean by "real person problems" and how is weather the only problem you could come up with? What about crime and drug use? Oh wait we have those problems too.

What exactly defines "paradise" anyways? Just because the suns shining and the palm trees are blowing doesn't mean the people aren't living real lives.

Hi, my name is Christolyn Lamoreaux. I am a cross country runner and a Senior at Kapolei High School. When hearing about the "restriction" I was very upset. So for my senior project I am going to change this. If you have any information that might help me pull this off I would be very grateful and you are right. Not allowing us to run off campus or anywhere, defeats the whole purpose of running cross country.

This happened at the school across town from me because a kid was hit by a car during practice. Ridiculous because it was the drivers fault. My school tried to implement this rule but parents complained. Now they won't give the xc vans, saying there isn't enough money,while football gets to go everywhere. The team is limited to running in town but we still miss out on all the trails our area has. Soooo stupid.

Back in the days I ran for Joe Newton at York, we did 5 out of 7 days per week on campus, with most miles done around a 400 yard circle drive in front of the school or on the track, which was also on the school campus. Day 6 was spent on our home cross country course or doing hills at a different course. Day 7 everyone we were on our own.

I point this out only to highlight that it can be done without sacrificing quality (everyone knows York's track record). While I believe that York now runs more of its miles off campus the reality was that, at least until the mid 90's, the team could expect to put in significant miles on a small grass and asphalt loop. The route wasn't nearly as important as the volume and Newton's ability to motivate people to run that volume in a monotonous environment.

When we had this issue back in the late nineties (city/county ordinance), our coach just canceled practice on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays.

Tuesday and Thursday were track or interval workouts on campus (sometimes we took a bus somewhere). We could handle warm-up and warm-downs on campus.

We had a "fit loop" that was about a mile, probably a bit less. It was soft surface and pretzeled through campus. Nothing special, but it existed.

On the days that practice was canceled (M-W-F), we just met at our cars and ran as a group. Our coach never asked us about it, but it was implied that we would bring it up at the next official practice. Our coach always said (with a smile), "you know, running off campus is not allowed and can be very dangerous." This worked for us b/c we had a good team that cared about getting better. Older guys always made sure we actually ran. Some guys never ran on M-W-F, but that was okay. We had our top 10-15 there and that was all that mattered. The other guys weren't serious anyway.