Local high schools have 10 meets all season with a meet almost every week.
I often read on here that HS kids race too much. How often can or should a HS kid with an eye to place at state say to his or her coach, “can I skip this meet and train though it?”
If you are good enough for a state medal why not just use the easy league meets duals, quads, etc as workouts
racing non stop wrote:
Local high schools have 10 meets all season with a meet almost every week.
I often read on here that HS kids race too much. How often can or should a HS kid with an eye to place at state say to his or her coach, “can I skip this meet and train though it?”
Training through a race doesn't mean skipping it. It means running at less than 100% effort.
If an athlete is feeling fatigued or injured and an invitational has no bearing on a team's success, it's fine to talk to a coach about getting more recovery. But asking to sit out of a dual meet because you're saving yourself for a big PR at All About Me Invitational is a weak move.
A lot of high school kids could stand to race more while they're figuring out how to race all the distances and relays.
SIlver24 wrote:
If you are good enough for a state medal why not just use the easy league meets duals, quads, etc as workouts
Yeah, a 9:00 3200 guy might double with a 4:30 and 9:30 in a dual meet. Even if you run hard in dual meets it's not going to be much more difficult than an interval workout and you'll have an easy day after the meet to recover. There have been elite HS athletes like Virgin and Fernandez, that ran hard in numerous races and still didn't burn out during the season.
One meet a week is good. Meets and racing are fun. Too many meets are when there is a dual meet on Thursday and an invitational on Saturday.
Dual meets are fun if your team is competitive and taking on conference rivals. But depending on where you live, a cold/windy/wet dual meet 1600 or 3200 with limited competition may produce less gains over a season than a workout those days. At the same time, many freshman and JV runners don't get to race as many invitationals, so dual meets are their opportunity to compete and for you to be a leader.
If you have a chance to make state in an event, and it's bad weather and bad competition at a dual meet - maybe talk to your coach about a workout instead. But if you have competitive rivals, race and score some team points.
Quit thinking that a 1600/3200 runner has to run those same events at every meet. Run a 100, 200, 400 or/and 800. So what if you finish last? Who cares? Might be fun and less pressure.
When I was in hs we did at least one league meet a week. Many times two. And always an invitational on fri/sat. Your coach should be deciding how much your body can handle. Racing some scrubs on weekdays only helps you get faster.
engels not fan wrote:
Quit thinking that a 1600/3200 runner has to run those same events at every meet. Run a 100, 200, 400 or/and 800. So what if you finish last? Who cares? Might be fun and less pressure.
An 800 would be fine, but a distance runner is not a sprinter. It makes no more sense than a sprinter hopping into a 3200.
We typically run a tuesday league meet and a Fri invite. the studs use tuesday as a workout and run hard on weekends. THe average kids get really hard work on Tuesday and then maybe fill a relay on the weekend. It isn't usually a big deal. Coaches should be able to manage the workload. That is not to say they don't make errors.
30+ years ago when I was in high school we had two meets a week, every week until championships started (either two duel meets on Tues/Thur or a duel meet and invite on Wed/Sat). I ran 4x800, 3200, 800, 1600 at all duel meets and usually the 4x800 and one individual event an an invite.
Essentially you had no choice but to use the races as training. Most duel meets were pretty easy to win -- either a strong tempo effort or just sit and kick. I'd actually practice getting boxed in and working my way out so that I was used to it during more important races. I'd always run the anchor on the relay so I if the team got a big lead, which was typical, I could just cruise enough to win.
Probably not the best way to train, but I won three state titles and ran in D-1. Had a lot of fun racing. Looking back, I would not have wanted to miss any of that to maybe have slightly faster high school PRs
Some great comments so far. The mental aspect of racing is also extremely important. The best way to learn how to race is to RACE! So for younger athletes, frequent racing is crucial to developing mental toughness. In high school, I think racing 2 times a week most weeks is fine. Leading into qualifying and state championships, of course back off the mid-week meets and peak for the championship races.