Why won’t my coach let me run what I want?

Do your best in the event your coach has picked for you. I have been in the same situation. A lot of athletes have been in your situation.

If I were in your shoes I'd let them I was running distance or nothing as I would never be a sprinter to appease a coach. You can find some road 5Ks to run if she doesn't go for it, but life's to short to do events you don't want to be in and to be pushed around by a high school coach.

Ask her if you can run it at the next small meet you go to. Or take you to a JV meet to run it if you guys go to those. The coach is there to help the athletes not control them especially on the high school level. My college coach does the same to me and I wish I woulda transferred instead I wasted my running career not enjoying it and training for an event I had no interest in.

I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask to run that event in a JV or smaller meet. I don’t know the makeup of your team. Do you have a bunch of distance runners already? Maybe she thinks you can score some points in sprints?

When you say you've talked with her but it hasn't really worked what do you mean? Do you mean she didn't agree to put you in the events you preferred? Do you mean you asked what her reasoning was and didn't get an answer? If she really is clear that she's only going to enter you in sprints the choice you're left with is whether you want to sprint or to leave the team. If you choose the latter I'd tell her that it's because you're not getting to do the things you signed up to do. My advice now is to give it a little more time. Things can change.

What a bad coach you have. I feel sorry for you.

Fire him if possible, he has no clue.

and I'm 21

I mean I talked with her just last week, she agreed to let me train a few distance days because correct me if I’m wrong, but running a few 4x800m or 6x400m will at the very least help with the events she wants me to run (400 mainly). Then, this week she sprung on me that I will be jumping twice a week instead.

I asked again this week and she said “you won’t be running anything over a 400 so it’s not really important”. It’s frustrating, to say the least.

I even talked to her about “trying every running event” at the mini meets and she agreed but I doubt she’ll stand by that.

Her daughter runs d2 and skis so ofc she KNOWS everything about running. (According to herself) or maybe she just knows how to take the fun out of it.

Get your extea miles in on your time. Show up to practice pissed off and walk to the start line, stopwatch in hand and just go Jerico Mile on your coach. By the first 400 all of your teammates will stop what they are doing and circle the track to cheer you on to a school record. Throw your watch at the wall and leave never to return.

Or you could just compromise and do a 200 in trade for a 1600. If that doesnt work just run your 200 in about 45 seconds and see if she changes her mind. Slow sprintwrs get moved up. Youre just not slow enough yet.

In all seriousness... If you really think you'd be a better 1600 runner, I don't think it would be a terrible idea to ask your coach if you can time trial a 1600 to show her you can do it.

Keep in mind, when you're on a track team, you run the event you're best at. The whole point is to do the very best possible, so you can contribute to the team's success. If all you wanna do is run the event you enjoy the most, then run unattached or on a track club. HS sports don't work the same. So, I'm assuming you think you're the best at the 1600 and that's why you wanna run it. Well, go an prove it to her!

As a side note, judging by your username, I'm assuming you're a girl? 22 minutes for a sophomore is not necessarily a time to be ashamed of. Go and give distance a shot!

You still haven't said whether she's given you a reason for not letting you race farther than a 400. If I was to guess I'd say it's because, small field and state or not, you qualified for the state meet as a sprinter and sees you as someone who can score points in the sprints. But I'm just guessing. If that is the case, and I don't know that it is, I'd say she's justified in doing what she is because part of her job is to make your team as competitive as she can. It is not unheard of in any team sport for a coach to put an athlete in Spot A when s/he would much rather be in Spot B and then it's up to that athlete to decide if s/he wants to be the best possible teammate and go where they're assigned or refuse to do that.

If you choose the latter your most likely option is leaving the team, although you might consider staying with the team but refusing to run the events you don't want to run. I expect this will get you kicked off the team but maybe it will get her to change her mind.

4 or 5th at regionals is great! Don’t knock D2. In my state the division is based on team size and school population and nothing to do with talent. Our D2 division is the most competitive in the state.

Talk to your coach. You seem to be having some success but overall you should be loving it.

Here's an easy fix for you. This may be controversial.

Run slow. In your sprint/hurdle events, just run slow. The key is to make it look like you're trying. Just be bad in the events your coach wants you to do. If you're miserable running events you're not interested in, then take them out of the equation. If you suck bad enough your coach will move you somewhere else.

The hurdles will be easy, you can run pretty hard and have really bad hurdle form. It'll be convincing, just stutter step really bad leading into every hurdle. For the sprints, that'll be harder to be convincing. I'd suggest driving your arms extra hard to make it look like you're going lactic or something.

The other solution is to have a frank conversation with them. Tell them you're starting to hate track because the events you do aren't any fun. You're frustrated. There's a difference between a coach "having a plan for you" and a coach just ignoring your needs.

Your coach needs to explain their plan for you. I think that would make this a little better. It seems like you're doing a new event every week. That's fine if you're new to track, but maybe the coach could explain their rationale. It doesn't seem fair to throw you around wherever with no explanation for what the plan is.

Tell your coach that if he wants to be known as the coach of a great runner he needs to let you run what you are motivated to run best, period.

Really, really dumb