Dual/tri meets

Yes

Depends on the state. In our area now duals/tris are timed but don't keep team scores. They just give racing opportunities to JV athletes that couldn't get into the bigger meet that week.

Growing up I was on a team where duals were scored and the top athletes did run them, but on a reduced load or events/strategies were chosen with training in mind. They were rarely all out efforts in every event.

I agree with hs girls coach...depends on the state and probably the coach. I've seen nationally ranked runners run a race or two at a dula/tri and I know of some who don't run a single race in those meets. Some leagues/conferences require that to participate in the Championship meet that you run in at least 1 of those meets (I know mine does).

I've had top runners who will use the dual/tri to either work on certain race strategies or even as a workout. I've also sat them out of those meets (ours are on Thursdays). I've always made sure that I did whatever was necessary to have them eligible to compete in end of year Championship meets.

When I see posts like this I’m not sure the OP realizes how terrible some HS coaches are. They have no clue. My son runs at a big public school. Meets usually on Wednesdays. The rare invitations on weekends, because the coach won’t get off his azz. The problem is that if there is an invitational the coach will say don’t run all out in the Wednesday meet. However, there is no pre or post workout. So basically it is a wasted day.

What these coaches need to understand is that the athlete with a private coach is working harder than their athletes. They are more dedicated. They don’t have a coach that is spending 10 hours doing teaching stuff.

I am in Iowa. We have no meets with fewer than 8 teams. Most meets include 16 teams and indoor and Drake Relays include the desire state.

Decades ago, dual meets were our "regular season" and established a team's W-L record for purposes of the regular season conference championship (no different than any other sport). The dual meets also were where qualifying times for the county and state championships were established. We really didn't have large weekend "invitationals" (do teams actually receive an invitation to attend, and are some excluded?), save for a few relay carnivals.

We have 5 pointless duel meets this season. On four of those weeks we compete a second time at a much more exciting invitational.

I haven't really figured out how I am planning to do distance workouts around these duel meets.

When I was in HS in the 1980s we had dual meets all the time. The season was about 8 weeks and there were lots of times where we had meets on both Tuesday and Thursday. By my senior year I was smart enough to just run the 3200. If they stuck me in the relay we were way ahead or behind and I usually dogged my leg and it didn't have any effect. The year before I almost always ran at least the 1600 and 3200 and was frazzled by the end of the season. Some guys around our area seemed to handle the high density of races better than I did.

CrispyChicken wrote:

Decades ago, dual meets were our "regular season" and established a team's W-L record for purposes of the regular season conference championship (no different than any other sport). The dual meets also were where qualifying times for the county and state championships were established. We really didn't have large weekend "invitationals" (do teams actually receive an invitation to attend, and are some excluded?), save for a few relay carnivals.

OP here. This is how my high school is & was. We only did a couple invitationals per year. This was in Pa.

The difference for my team is that we have a lot of high quality invitationals that mean a lot more then the duel meets. It's a juggling act to make it through everything.