So I am in a little bit of a pickle right now. My coach has very little distance background and believes speed is key. Before I started making training plans with him, we would quite literally do speed workouts every day of practice. Now its a bit changed, but no where near ideal. Here is my ideal training week (especially because it is early in the season).
Mon - 8 x 1k @ thres with 60 sec rest Tues - Medium long Wens - Pre workout Thurs - 5 x mile @ thres with 60 sec rest or a vo2 max workout Fri - Distance run Sat - long run Sun - Off/another distance run
This is his ideal plan: 2 speed workouts a week (8 x 300, 6 x 200, 150 350 x 3) and 1 thres (only because I convinced him to let us do 1 thres a week)
To get the point of making 1 thres a week has already been a journey and took a ton of effort. To give a lil background, I am a junior who wants to make it to a competitive d1 school and am focusing on the 3200. We have 3 relay meets in the next month all of which I am running the 800 at, so my coach wants me to do these speed workouts, but I could care less about the 800 and believe doing these weird workouts will not help me at all in the 3200. I consider this pointless because I need to build a base during winter, but he thinks I need speed. I just came off breaking 16 in xc, and have huge goals this year but I am not sure I can reach it with workouts like these that will straight up burn me out.
I can't lie, I have been complaining about workouts and being a bit controlling, but is the only way to have even decent training. He has been complaining to people behind my back how controlling I have been and how he is gonna leave me with less control on workouts. How can I talk to my coach (who barely understands why I want to do thresholds, or distance runs) and actually convince him to let us do more thresholds and longer stuff without having him being offended or thinking I am trying to control the team.