I don’t trust my coach, what should I do?

I don't understand from your post what you think the coach is doing wrong or even what you are currently doing. Your 4/1/2 could mean 7 days a week or 2 doubles and a race - not clear.

If the problem is just training choices, you are the athlete, coach is the coach. Do what coach wants, when he wants, with a good attitude. If you are getting injured, maybe quit. If you think you know better, and maybe you do, there are a lot of bad coaches, change what you can change. If you are undertrained, run more on your own. If that means you can't hit his goal times but you still believe you need more miles, keep running extra and maybe it will pay off because you knew better, maybe it won't. If you can't finish the workouts, dial it back so you finish and negative split any repeats. See if you know better. If coach won't talk to you about training, he probably won't care that you are modifying your own program.

I mean 5 hard days and 2 easy days. The hard days consist of this almost every week:

800x8 or 1000x6 @ 2 mile pace with 3 min rest

fartlek

200x20 @ mile pace with 200 jog recovery

Long run

Race

So I guess the one workout I really think is too fast are the 800s/1000s. Here is the schedule also

Sun-long run

Mon-workout

Tues-workout

Wed-easy

Thurs-workout

Fri-easy

Sat-race

So 4 hard days in a row. I feel like I am not recovering from these workouts.

I would say you can classify a long run as easy.... if you run easy! An easy long run is actually a good recovery day. While 4 days "hard" is still a big load, it's not terrible. Go with the flow and throttle your effort on workouts so you still have something left for races.

This seems fine plan. Thus is what we all did in the 1970s. Sunday 15 miles. Monday workout of repeat 800s. Tuesday cross. Lunettes dual meet. Wed easy. Thursday workout. Fri easy. Sat morning cross country invite. Sat easy easy run.

Ok thanks everyone for the input. This makes me feel less stressed about it.

sam_01 wrote:

Ok thanks everyone for the input. This makes me feel less stressed about it.

I am sorry to say and hope this does not bring the stress back but I agree with your initial assessment that this is messed up.

2 workouts a week max. A race is a workout so you are doing two more than you should be doing.

If you can't possibly make the time, that's on him. If you can and don't want to, that's on you.

My daughters coach barely has them running 3 miles and no workouts. So it could be worse lol.

citius5000 wrote:

My daughters coach barely has them running 3 miles and no workouts. So it could be worse lol.

I have a few on my team I do that with but they did not run at all over the summer. 20-30 minute runs and no workouts.

sam_01 wrote:

We do 4 workouts,1 race, and 2 easy days a week. The times he makes us hit for our workouts are too fast as well. I’ve tried to subtly bring it up but he dismisses it. What do I do in this situation?

Maybe try being less subtle when you bring it up, at least as a starting point.

The schedule seems terrible to be perfectly honest with you -- no wonder you're not recovering. There's no long term benefit to doing more than 2 hard efforts per week. Some people will run 3 hard sessions or have 2 hard and 1 moderate, but 4 is just overkill. I'm not counting the long run, which I consider to be a easy-moderate stress depending on the length.

The workouts themselves aren't inherently bad, but your weekly structure is problematic. Running two workouts back to back, especially if they're hard efforts, is just pure stupidity. There are some scenarios where you may try to practice the demands for a multi-day competition like a state track meet, but in most cases it's not advisable. Depending on the circumstances, you have a few options.

1. Run slower for the reps during your workouts. Run at tempo pace (5k pace + ~45-50 seconds/mile) for longer workouts and threshold (5k pace + 25-30 seconds/mile) or CV (30-35 minute race pace or about 5k pace + 15-20 seconds/mile) for shorter workouts.

2. Skip one or two of the workouts and just run easy, while. Limit the number of hard days you have to 2 (ideally) or 3 (including the race). Do this in combination with number 1. Your races, which I assume to be 5k XC, will serve as your Vo2max stimulus so you don't need to be running faster than that in workouts. You need to focus on endurance and stamina development by running workouts at the paces I described above.

3. Run on your own and take everything into your own hands.

The last one will really depend on the circumstances and whether or not the coach will even let you run in meets if you're not doing what they say. When I was in high school, I did number 3. From junior year to senior year, I took 3 seconds off of my 5k XC time. I never missed a practice and did everything that was asked of me. I followed my coach's instructions to the letter. I was so frustrated at the end of my senior cross country season that I wasn't improving, so I decided to write my own schedule. I read books, found online resources, and put a lot of time and effort into my plan. I would show up late to practices at the track so that I wouldn't get caught up in the team's warm-up and I could just do my own thing. I'd hop onto the track to do my workout and leave. I took 26 seconds off of my mile time by the end of the track season and became the best runner on the team. I continued to improve after that and I never would've been able to do that if I kept following a terrible training plan.

If you don't trust your coach to do a good job, you need to get a new coach. Whether that coach is you or another person is up to you.

Look up Jim Ryun training from the 60s. It makes your schedule look like a picnic. Anyways 200s at mile pace are basically strides. That 2 mile pace workout is hard but 1-2 really hard days a week is spot on. Just don’t race your easy runs and you will be fine.

Oh, I think this is worse ahah op, don't worry, you're ok

Coach C wrote:

Look up Jim Ryun training from the 60s. It makes your schedule look like a picnic. Anyways 200s at mile pace are basically strides. That 2 mile pace workout is hard but 1-2 really hard days a week is spot on. Just don’t race your easy runs and you will be fine.

This is a really dumb take. Simply copying someone else's training is very ignorant of the differences. Is that Ryun's training his first year of running or his senior year. Ryun was obviously incredible; the OP might not be so incredible.

Luv2Run wrote:

Coach C wrote:

Look up Jim Ryun training from the 60s. It makes your schedule look like a picnic. Anyways 200s at mile pace are basically strides. That 2 mile pace workout is hard but 1-2 really hard days a week is spot on. Just don’t race your easy runs and you will be fine.

This is a really dumb take. Simply copying someone else's training is very ignorant of the differences. Is that Ryun's training his first year of running or his senior year. Ryun was obviously incredible; the OP might not be so incredible.

You are correct about copying someone else's training. But the OP's schedule is in not a copy of Ryun's. It is much, much, less demanding and I think that was the point Coach C was making and perhaps implying that it's more manageable than the OP believes, though I am only speculating.

If we really want to get into this we should get the OP to tell us what's happening with his races, what sort of progress he's making or not making.

In your shoes I would develop a schedule conflict on mondays, so you can't attend practice that day. Some sort of standing family obligation, or a re-occurring medical appointment. Without the monday intensity that schedule looks a lot more reasonable. And like some said- keep the long run at a very moderate pace.

Don't listen to these clowns, your coach is an idiot. 2 hard efforts per week max.

I am not seeing how this is a bad week. He has one "hard" workout and one race.

Sun: easy long run.

Mon: fartlek - athlete totally controls the pace here and should be a shake out to loosen from the race and distance of the days before.

Tue: 8x800 with 3 min rest is a standard Purdy workout. This is one hard run.

Wed: He said easy run.

Thur: 20x200 - as said by another poster, these are essentially strides and good prep for the race.

Fri: He said easy run.

Sat: Race - hard effort number 2 for the week.

Just because someone calls it intervals or fartlek does not mean it is hard. Context matters here. This guy "thinks" he is doing hard efforts. Maybe he is just doing it wrong.

Rabbanah wrote:

I am not seeing how this is a bad week. He has one "hard" workout and one race.

Just because someone calls it intervals or fartlek does not mean it is hard. Context matters here. This guy "thinks" he is doing hard efforts. Maybe he is just doing it wrong.

Something that I think coaches need to think about when they give interval sessions is what each runner is going to do with the session. There is a real tendency for runners doing interval sessions to want to keep up with everyone else or at least not finish last and that can result in some runners, especially slower ones, absolutely killing themselves in their early reps and having a much harder workout than is good for them. Giving a sessions of 200s at mile pace may have your 4:40 type guys running 35s but it will not follow that the 5:20 guys will not also start off at 35-36 because they don't want to look slow. And you cannot rule out your 4:40 guys wanting to run faster because it's impressive, because they don't want the 4:44 guy "beating" them in that session, etc.

A good and experienced coach will be aware of this happening and will try to control it. But from my experience and observation there are not tons of such coaches. It's more likely that a coach will react to a 5:20 guy running 35 for 10 of the reps and then dying by yelling at the kid to push harder in those later or some such thing. This is, of course, a massive over simplification, but I really believe that there is a lot of potential for interval training to be misused by coaches who do not understand it fully and in such cases it can do more harm than good.

I don't know if this is the case with the OP and his coach but it's why I think the OP needs to have a clear discussion with his coach and forget about being subtle. None of us know this kid personally so it's possible that he's simply pushing himself too hard in these sessions and not recovering as well as he would be if his effort were more appropriate to his ability. It's also possible that the OP doesn't understand that there's almost always a bit of tiredness that goes with serious training and mistakes that feeling as "not recovering." An athlete has a right and need to understand his coach's thinking and a coach has a right to expect an athlete to carry out reasonable instructions.