How to get female high school runners to pack up

RacingtheCanteloupe wrote:

I have less experience than you, but there is something I've noticed about girls teams. In general, I enjoy coaching girls more but I am befuddled by one aspect of coaching them:

Girls seem to get really weird about a teammate beating them. They can be best friends off the course, but it seems that many girls would rather run a so-so race and have their teammates race poorly, finishing as the teams number 1… than to run a great race but finish behind a few teammates.

Even among my best character girls I have noticed this trait. They judge their success based on how they rank against their peers, not against how they race against their personal PR's. I've seen girls at the same ability level on our team race back and forth against each other, wasting energy, rather than working together to go get people.

Your girls may not like packing up because to them, it would make it easier for people farther back in the pecking order to pick them off. To ensure their place in the front of the pack, they probably keep trying to race ahead. They may not even be aware of this.

I would love to tell you I have found a solution to this. I have not. Even my best, most team-oriented girl I coached had issues with this.

gubyenletsrun wrote:

I coach a moderately successful DII high school program. Combined girls and boys.

I had great success packing up the boys this year and a program that should have been terrible (not a lot of talent) this year did quite well.

The girls are openly resistant to a packing mentality. They have some gaps in talent (30 seconds to a minute over 5k) but the real issue is that they do not want to do workouts together. The several times I tried packing our top four varsity girls the results were disastrous with the back two girls crying and nearly quitting the workout because the front two girls were pushing the pace. I separated them into packs of two after that and then the front girl in each duo pushed the pace.

Experienced high school coaches, what should I do for next year? Should I absolutely enforce pack running for the pre season? I'm worried it will piss the girls off and they will quit the team, that is how much they want to separate into their cliques.

I've used the boys over and over again as examples but the girls don't seem to care. The spread of our top 5 boys at districts was 10 seconds and we could get our top 7 in in about 30 seconds.

RacingtheCanteloupe wrote:

I have less experience than you, but there is something I've noticed about girls teams. In general, I enjoy coaching girls more but I am befuddled by one aspect of coaching them:

Girls seem to get really weird about a teammate beating them. They can be best friends off the course, but it seems that many girls would rather run a so-so race and have their teammates race poorly, finishing as the teams number 1… than to run a great race but finish behind a few teammates.

Even among my best character girls I have noticed this trait. They judge their success based on how they rank against their peers, not against how they race against their personal PR's. I've seen girls at the same ability level on our team race back and forth against each other, wasting energy, rather than working together to go get people.

Your girls may not like packing up because to them, it would make it easier for people farther back in the pecking order to pick them off. To ensure their place in the front of the pack, they probably keep trying to race ahead. They may not even be aware of this.

I would love to tell you I have found a solution to this. I have not. Even my best, most team-oriented girl I coached had issues with this.

HSXCcoach wrote:

I don't think you can force a pack to form; you have to meet the runners at their current ability level, and it seems to me that "forcing" a pack would entail making some runners slow down to meet the pack (since you can't really FORCE anyone to run faster than their current ability level).

Our team is running at the State Championships this Saturday, and it will be a close meet between about 5 teams that all have a legitimate shot at the title (including us). Depending on how things go, it's possible we might finish 1st, but it's just as likely that we'll finish 5th. Considering this, I've emphasized the pack mentality, as I want to make sure that as few runners finish within our "spread" as possible... but it works with my current group of guys because we have one clear front-runner, but then a pack of two about 10 sec. behind him and a pack of three about 10 sec. behind them. The 4-5-6 pack's PRs are within 2 sec. of one another. This was a happy accident, but since its our team's strength, I'm trying to get them to rely on their pack and feel the pressure to stay with their pack.

If you have girls that are legitimately separated by 30 sec., I would personally just cater workouts to their current fitness level. If they have to run totally different splits, so be it. I'm not sure you're making your team better by forcing them into packs that don't match the team's makeup. I mean, by all means, have them run in groups for unstructured workouts, but it doesn't make sense to have an athlete slow down their optimum pace just to instill a pack mentality.

Just my .02.

Baptism of Fire wrote:

gubyenletsrun wrote:

It is absolutely essential that I reduce our "spread" (the time between first finisher and 7th finisher) in order to be competitive in our state. It is the common denominator of every successful cross country team in the state. It is also the only reason that our boys team did as well as they did. There was so little talent available and they overcame this by training together and racing together, pushing each other in every workout and race.

The girls have a similar lack of talent. Not a ton of natural speed but the potential to have a tight spread if they could just train that way. It would have made the difference in our season to have our 5th runner within 30 seconds of our top runner, even a minute would have done the trick and we would have advanced.

Our boys team has a much tighter spread this year. Only about 20 seconds from 1st to 7th. For 3 miles they range from 15:14 to 15:37. Last year our spread was about 1:20 from 1st to 7th. Yet, our team last year was significantly better because our 1st guy was in the 14:20s and 7th guy in the 15:40s.

If they don't have the same fitness they can't train together very well. That's what I've found. Seems obvious, of course.

If you want them to run together as long as possible you can't let the fastest kids in the group lead the workout. Have the slower ones lead initially, say for the first 1200 of a 1600 repeat. Faster girls can close harder the last lap. Be creative. For instance if doing repeats on the track make the faster girls run in lanes 5-8 on the turns or something like that.

Solo wrote:

In my experience it is difficult, bordering on impossible, to get competitive women to pack up. Even more mature, confident athletes still struggle to do so. A great example of this is the UW women about 8 years ago when they went 1-6 at what was then the Pac 10 Championships. I remember watching and seeing them come in one after the other, not in a pack or packs, literally one after the other. For some reason, especially with competitive or self conscious runners convincing them it is good to pack up with runners slower than them is very damaging mentally.

Rather than convincing them pack running is the key to success I think you really need to start by heavily focusing on instilling confidence in each runner. The more confident the runner the more likely they are to trust in your coaching and the more comfortable they will be with pack running. Once you have that trust emphasizing pack running is a bit more feasible.

Helping one talent at a time. wrote:

The new math? wrote:

If it is a good idea to make some runners train at a slower than optimal pace, and other runners train faster than is best for their development, why don't training books like Daniels have adjustments to the tables and workouts and say things like, "run the paces for your vdot, except for sometimes help somebody slower than you".

I suppose the answer is that you are not trying to help each runner improve as much as possible- instead, you are trying to get them to finish near each other.

But wouldn't you get the lowest xc team score by optimizing their fitness as individuals and teaching them to race as fast as they are each capable?

Thank you!! I thought this thread had to be a joke. Who in their right mind would think coaching this way would make the team better?

Xc is a collection of individuals. While there is a team aspect, one runner can't help another runner race faster. If every runner runs the fastest they are capable of, the team will have the lowest score. Whether that means they end up near each other at the finish is purely by chance.

Coach G wrote:

"Packing up" = running as a tight group.

As a XC I understand that some coaches believe this makes for a stronger team and better result HOWEVER I believe that this strategy is flawed at the HS level.

Running as a pack only is advantageous if all the members of the team are of comparable ability. If your #1 runs a race a few minutes faster than your #5 why would you want your #1 to slow down so the #5 can keep up?

Your team scores will suffer using this strategy.

I coach running as a pack for only the first kilometer when the entire field is tightly bunched. If the course is narrow you can effectively block other teams from passing you. The danger is if you use this strategy and slow the field behind you eventually the field will thin and your top runners may be too far behind the front runners they have hurt their chances of a good personal result.

I've seen the following happen girls races where often they have less sportsmanship than the guys. Someone will run up into your tight little pack and trip one of your girls in the ensuing mayhem 2 or 3 of your girls will fall destroying your snug group[, probably a few girls will pack it in and you will fall far down in the standings.

It's very easy to "accidently on purpose" cause a group of runners to take a tumble.

My advice is let your best runners surge to the front and have your slower runners try to keep in touch to pull the slowest along.

gubyenletsrun wrote:

I coach a moderately successful DII high school program. Combined girls and boys.

I had great success packing up the boys this year and a program that should have been terrible (not a lot of talent) this year did quite well.

The girls are openly resistant to a packing mentality. They have some gaps in talent (30 seconds to a minute over 5k) but the real issue is that they do not want to do workouts together. The several times I tried packing our top four varsity girls the results were disastrous with the back two girls crying and nearly quitting the workout because the front two girls were pushing the pace. I separated them into packs of two after that and then the front girl in each duo pushed the pace.

Experienced high school coaches, what should I do for next year? Should I absolutely enforce pack running for the pre season? I'm worried it will piss the girls off and they will quit the team, that is how much they want to separate into their cliques.

I've used the boys over and over again as examples but the girls don't seem to care. The spread of our top 5 boys at districts was 10 seconds and we could get our top 7 in in about 30 seconds.