Top mistakes that HS Distance Coaches make with their athletes' training

A lot of coaches decide which athletes will and won’t be fast freshman/sophomore year and coach accordingly.

My coach usually made me train with the JV group during XC despite being our 6th guy JR year and 3rd SR year. (He’d have 10 or so guys train with the varsity group). Senior year my coach actually subbed me out for a freshman at our region race. Costed our team a team qual for state and I actually nabbed an individual qual. All cause my coach was biased and had the set of me being slow.

Also the 3 hard days plus 15-20 mpw combo. Everyone got injured or burnt out.

Serious runners bump it up to the 30s or 40s.

How'd you get such a detailed log of my high school training

CopperRunner wrote:

A lot of coaches decide which athletes will and won’t be fast freshman/sophomore year and coach accordingly.

My coach usually made me train with the JV group during XC despite being our 6th guy JR year and 3rd SR year. (He’d have 10 or so guys train with the varsity group). Senior year my coach actually subbed me out for a freshman at our region race. Costed our team a team qual for state and I actually nabbed an individual qual. All cause my coach was biased and had the set of me being slow.

Also the 3 hard days plus 15-20 mpw combo. Everyone got injured or burnt out.

Oh yes playing favorites. How can I forget this one! Especially since it happened to me way back in HS. Deciding who is going to be the best ones on day 1. I have seen a lot of terrible Freshman become pretty good with a couple of years of hard work.

cramister wrote:

How'd you get such a detailed log of my high school training

Because it's every terrible team's log.

Too many high school coaches don't have an overarching philosophy that they follow. They try to cram everything into a plan and do none of it well. I do not see enough emphasis on specificity for XC, over reliance on anaerobic intervals, the lack of a year round plan / training sessions for distance athletes, and a penchant for treating every race as an important race.

My coach had us run pace-pace-pace. 800m at pace. 1600m at pace. 3200m mile at pace.

I wound up running very well at each distance, in evenly-run races (1:55/4:16/9:21)

Never learned how to RACE in high school. Not at any meaningful level.

I think my coach put too much emphasis on saving us for college when most of the team would never step foot on a college track, save the beer mile.

Doctor Weedthrow wrote:

I think my coach put too much emphasis on saving us for college when most of the team would never step foot on a college track, save the beer mile.

You took the words right out of my mouth

My goals for next season...

1. 5 miles minimum most days

2. Yes to tempos, if only we could run long enough without walking..."easy" runs are tempos

3. Didn't have this problem, we are soft. 0 hard workouts done.

4. Are longest run was the 5k race, this also served as our tempo runs and V02max workouts. It's a v02max workout during their race because they run at goal 5k race pace for 3 - 5 minutes, then walk for equal time before going fast again during their race.

5 I wouldn't consider what we did this season to be training, so this pitfall was expertly avoided!

6. Raced every Saturday.

7. Working on this. Basketball, weightlifting, and short sprints will definitely get done.

cramister wrote:

Doctor Weedthrow wrote:

I think my coach put too much emphasis on saving us for college when most of the team would never step foot on a college track, save the beer mile.

You took the words right out of my mouth

This is another one ^^^

My coach used this as an excuse as to why we didn’t run 50-60 mpw like the powerhouses in my state, but the difference is that we’d have 0-1 athletes go D1 out of about 20-25 per class. Those powerhouses would send 4-5 of their varsity boys to D1 each year. D1 was essentially the only option as well as my state only has D1 running programs and one D2 program, that is worst than most HS programs.

CopperRunner wrote:

cramister wrote:

You took the words right out of my mouth

This is another one ^^^

My coach used this as an excuse as to why we didn’t run 50-60 mpw like the powerhouses in my state, but the difference is that we’d have 0-1 athletes go D1 out of about 20-25 per class. Those powerhouses would send 4-5 of their varsity boys to D1 each year. D1 was essentially the only option as well as my state only has D1 running programs and one D2 program, that is worst than most HS programs.

What? Your kids can't go to school out of state?

Mason Dixon wrote:

CopperRunner wrote:

This is another one ^^^

My coach used this as an excuse as to why we didn’t run 50-60 mpw like the powerhouses in my state, but the difference is that we’d have 0-1 athletes go D1 out of about 20-25 per class. Those powerhouses would send 4-5 of their varsity boys to D1 each year. D1 was essentially the only option as well as my state only has D1 running programs and one D2 program, that is worst than most HS programs.

What? Your kids can't go to school out of state?

I hate trying to put an exact number on mpw. Also the term "miles per week" seems to indicate this is done every week. I have sent my share on to run D1 and rarely did they get over 50 mpw, just in the offseason. Every athlete is different. Some do best at lower mileage like 35 and some need 70. I guess learning to know what each athlete needs should probably be on the list.

CopperRunner wrote:

cramister wrote:

You took the words right out of my mouth

This is another one ^^^

My coach used this as an excuse as to why we didn’t run 50-60 mpw like the powerhouses in my state, but the difference is that we’d have 0-1 athletes go D1 out of about 20-25 per class. Those powerhouses would send 4-5 of their varsity boys to D1 each year. D1 was essentially the only option as well as my state only has D1 running programs and one D2 program, that is worst than most HS programs.

LOLOL... That's funny if they think 50-60 miles per week is the max and you can't build off that. I got up to 70 in high school, typical was 50-60. Then guess what I did in college? I got up to 100! And then post college up to 130 for the marathon. 50-60 miles is nowhere near the maximum amount a distance runner should run. That is still pretty small mileage, especially if you're 17 years old. Plenty of room to grow to run 70-90 miles in college, or even 100+ your senior year of college training for 10k. The biggest mistake I think people make is they don't run enough. If most of these kids running 20 miles per week with workouts every day, if they just ran 50 miles per week with ZERO workouts they'd be way faster. If you're only running 2-3 miles per day how do you expect to run a 5k at a fast pace? A 5k would seem far to you because you never run further than that.

coachy wrote:

1. Not enough miles - Not sure why some coaches don't give their athletes more than 2-4 miles per day, unless they just don't understand training.

2. No Tempos - Afraid to dish these out because they might be too hard or someone might fail.

4. No long runs - You have to find a spot to get in a long run at least once and a while. Not saying it has to be every week but you need to find a spot. Should build up to triple the race distance.

7. Structures off season training. Not having something going in the offseason is a death sentence and you might as well give up as a coach because you can't fix it.

My kids (12 and 15) are on a cross country team right now and their coach seems to follow these. He used to be a respectable runner himself and knows how to train. But I think he's made a bargain in that I think he's coaching these kids to like running as a hobby they'll keep their whole lives, as opposed to training the kids hard and going for wins. The result is, they get their buts kicked every meet. They all seem to like cross country a lot, though. Lol

I'm actually ok with it, because my girls are much stronger in academics than athletics, and always have been. They don't seem driven to improve; at least not enough to put extra work into it. On the other hand, one of my friend's sons is on the team and wants to break the school record. My friend has no background in running, so they've asked, and I've given them some advice on doing extra mileage on his own, long runs, tempos, intervals, etc. He's now their fastest varsity runner.

Anyone (else) do 32x400m in 66 in high school with 400m jog?

I suppose if the coach and the high school kid agree on the goals, but don't put in the requisite work to achieving those goals, they're doing the kid a disservice.

No.8 Making a lead high school runner keep working out and racing while injured because of the incentives for the coach to have a competitive team. Wasn't able to run well in college because of such.

fromtheheart wrote:

No.8 Making a lead high school runner keep working out and racing while injured because of the incentives for the coach to have a competitive team. Wasn't able to run well in college because of such.

This one sounds like some college programs.

Yeah, it’s almost like most people can’t afford to pay 30k+ a year in tuition in order to walk onto a team out of state, especially when they can pay 3-10k in state

If you are complaining about a coach who led you to solid D2 scholarship/DI walk on times you are being ungrateful. (Clayton Murphy's HS prs were slower than yours)

A high school coach's job is to keep you healthy and get you through 75 percent of the race in scoring position without being in severe oxygen debt. It sounds like your coach did a great job of that. After that, everything is determined by your commitment and genetics.