I want to compete for my school team but not train with them.

That's up to your coach and athletic director. If I were either, I would say no to that. No prima donnas allowed.

1) Your plan of running just 2 meets is a bad one. I don't know how competitive your state and division is, but 16:30 isn't all that, and you likely could benefit from some more races before the end of the season for race sharpness.

2) Have you ever talked to your coach about your goals and suggested some alternative training? If not, do that.

3) While bad coaching is an issue, you can do a LOT on your own if you feel it is necessary. So, do one morning run/workout on your own once a week (I assume you aren't doing twice a days every day), and then do what you feel is still lacking on Sunday.

Pretty much everything Flagpole said is right on. I had an identical situation on my HS swim team. A few of us trained exclusively with the club team in the nearest big city, but then we went to all of the HS meets to race (not just one or two meets). There was one girl who was allowed to only go to two meets, but she had an Olympic gold medal and WR.

Bad coaching happens, but when you talk to your coach, you should approach it in a way that is non-confrontational (you'll probably lose) and try to get her included in the plan for your progress. For example, ask her if it'd be okay to do some workouts on your own then ask for her input on them. That doesn't mean you have to listen to her, but she'll be more apt to support you if she feels included.

Absolutely not. What makes you think you know what you are doing? If you want to train on your own race on your own.

I'd really like to know how you choking is the fault of your coach.

if i were your coach i would say absolutely not and you're welcome to quit the team and hobbyjog road races if you insist on training on your own. do you not see how nearly everyone apart from you will view this as a self-centered and entitled move? you've got 5 practices per week to put up with, at most. there's plenty of time to run on your own outside of that. you've got a lot of years to train on your own after high school and college. band kids are fun.

lighten up, francis.

Real talk? I'd like to get paid by my employer, but show up to work whenever I feel like it. Not happening.

Also - blaming multiple poor performances on coaching rather than looking within should tell you something.

Make it a breakout season by taking a leadership role on the team, communicating with your coach and giving it all you got. Large luck.

This topic has been brought up approximately a billion times on this site through the years. I think every serious high school runner ever has been convinced that his coach was an idiot and he'd be setting the world on fire if he could only be rid of him. I know I thought exactly that way and I went to high school well before you were born.

I had high school times very similar to yours and thought I'd be the next Olympic champion if I could just make my moron coach go away. I harbored a fantasy of quitting my team, my coach begging on on his knees for me to stay, going off on my own and setting all kinds of records. He'd be sorry then!!!

Of course I never had the nerve to actually do that. Truth was I was a mediocre talent at best and if I had quit with some grand plan to train myself into an Olympian, my coach would have said, "go ahead" and rightly wouldn't have given me a second thought.

Here's what I DID do: I trained on my own as much as I could and as well as I knew how: morning and/or evening runs by myself. I suggest you do the same. Think you need threshold, intervals, or race pace training? Go do it on your own. Your coach doesn't even need to know about it.

I have bad news, though: my solo workouts did not turn me into the Olympian I thought I was destined to be. Truth be told, my times really didn't improve much at all. My "choking," as you put it, was MY fault, not his. I was destined to be a hobby jogger, nothing more.

Sounds like another know-it-all-HS kid.

However, there could be a little bit of truth to it. It's possible that he doesn't like the training that the HS coach is having him do. Great! Need to rectify that by doing additional training.

First off, your success at the State XC meet and the meets leading up to it are more predetermined not by what you did all XC season. It's more about what you did starting the day after the State T&F meet. Your summer training is more important to what you did during the XC season. You'll need to base build all summer long. In addition, you still have weekends to do additional training on your own. Your summer is your most important training time. How you use it is up to you.

You can try to ask your coach if you can train alone but you will probably not be allowed to. Or try to workout out a hybrid system where you do easy days with the school team but can workout on your own. It depends on how much ego the coach has. You can also dog the workouts and then do your own workouts on your own time, although this takes more time out of your day. People on letsrun will gaslight you into thinking you think you’re special or a Prima Donna, but they barely know anything about your situation so you can ignore them. A lot of high school coaches are bad and will limit your progress. You only have one high school career, you should try to optimize it as much as possible.

I only trained with my club team and still competed with my school.

I talked to my coach nicely and showed her the progression I made over the summer and she agreed that training with my club team, and being able to workout with people at or above my level was beneficial for my goals. I still ended up coming to some practices (usually easy days) to still be apart of the team atmosphere.

I don't get why everyone is getting their panties in a twist over this. Everyone has different goals and if 95% of the teams is just there because their parents made them and run they will be training different than someone who wants to run in college. As long as you talk to your coach and don't come off as an arrogant asshat they will probably allow it.

blak wrote:

I only trained with my club team and still competed with my school.

I talked to my coach nicely and showed her the progression I made over the summer and she agreed that training with my club team, and being able to workout with people at or above my level was beneficial for my goals. I still ended up coming to some practices (usually easy days) to still be apart of the team atmosphere.

I don't get why everyone is getting their panties in a twist over this. Everyone has different goals and if 95% of the teams is just there because their parents made them and run they will be training different than someone who wants to run in college. As long as you talk to your coach and don't come off as an arrogant asshat they will probably allow it.

No twisted panties here. Although I kidded the OP some (I was picturing the movie A Christmas Story and Ralphie's fantasy sequence of telling his parents about soap poisoning ("then they'd be sorry!"), I DID give him real advice:

If he thinks he needs training he isn't getting from his coach, he can go do it on his own at home. His coach doesn't even need to know about it. That's exactly what I did in high school - I'd run extra on my own at home, and my coach was none the wiser.

Unfortunately, I discovered that my problem wasn't bad coaching or lack of/inappropriate training; the problem was my own lack of talent. I'm guessing the OP will discover the same.

Good advice (in bold above).

It’s not always beneficial to run x number of miles at practice that end up being all junk miles then turning around and trying to get the proper training on your own and end up with injuries when you could have just done quality training once. My kids 6 weeks from the start of middle school track and there’s no coach even hired, good chance it will be someone who volunteers and knows little about running. But with that being said 16:30 as a junior just isn’t fast.