Workouts with two meets a week

I think threshold workouts the day after the Tuesday meet is the way to go. This could be CV or cruise interval work. If Tuesday you shoot for under distance races I think it would work best.

why do you have 2 meets a week? i wouldn't run the whole team both meets, that would be silly. i would restore normalcy and split the team up into split squads like baseball teams do, or an A/B varsity/JV concept, or distance/sprints, or something.

if you have to get times or advance through certain meets those should obviously have preference. or you rotate athletes through the series to get their qualifying times or places.

it would also reduce the burden on you if you only had to manage and transport a split squad for the meets.

you could divvy up runners who do field and track with different meets for their events. ok, today you're just a jumper. i then want you to do a running workout on the side.

you could play around with events that are usually incompatible, 100/400; 400/800; 400/300H; 300H/200. like you could do an event per meet but they are different. like you don't load them up like a full meet each time. you just pick an event or two. and you can experiment or use the meet to test them a little.

if everyone has to do every meet, you could treat one meet as a glorified practice. kind of like some college teams do with indoor. you almost err the opposite direction. enter in multiple events. run them at practice pace. treat it like a workout.

For the 4 weeks stretch where it's every week, I think I will do two Wednesdays of medium long run and two Wednesdays of threshold work.

We have two quads where we will either dominate/get dominated so hopefully I can keep my athletes out of more events and do threshold work the following day. There are two quads where our coaches are going to go "all hands on deck" mode and plug everyone in every race possible regardless of my thoughts and concern, so probably better off to keep the following day a much lighter pace.

You all are better than me. I have few to no athletes that are willing to run 800m at tempo against opponents. If you are going to do that just don't run them. They are better off doing an actual workout. Maybe split the squad if big enough, so nobody is running more than 1 meet a week. Lets be honest, racing even every single week is technically not great but can be done for the short track season if careful. To me, and im old, track and XC have become so busy and set up for injury, that the base season is now 100% required. We used to play other sports in summer and winter, maybe run some 5/10ks.

HS does not take a cue from the pros or even colleges for racing. And those guys and gals are much more injury proofed.

The actual issue...is 2 meets a week. The meet schedule doesn't align with the sport/practice. Its stupid. You can easily play 2 baseball games a week. And the coaches are pressured to attend all the league meets. Less meets, more entries, bigger fields (fields are never too big for MD) is the answer. Asking kids to run half speed in an actual meet in front of family and friends and ego is dumb. We all do it, but its dumb. Fix the schedule. Its leached into XC too.

My kids have been at 6 practices and there is a meet already.

The obligatory 'back in my day'....

Maybe some of the older gents can chime in as well, but I remember racing 2x meets a week and a full training load back in the 90s. I believe we had 2 meets one week, 1 major invitational the next and it repeated for the most part.

I also remember doing workouts the day before dual meets.

I think a lot will depend on how many events your kids are running.

Alan

This was my experience too. Once the season started we always had two meets (Tue/Sat) and there were a couple of weeks where it was three (Tue/Th/Sat). Most every meet we were in 2 events, no wonder I left feeling burnt to a crisp. This is also why I would start every track season with some good promising performances, and then struggle to maintain it over the season. I rarely improved.

My best performances were always at the end of the season. It could also be at the end of the season I ran less races.

I also remember a 3 meet week as well! Man those were some times.

I tripled most meets my senior year. Ran the 4x800m. Ran the 1600m. Then the 3200m was usually me strolling through the first mile then taking off and winning in the second mile.

Alan

Some good advice already. Our team had a chance to win states this year. Or at least do very well so I am. Working backwards from that meet and trying to focus on specific meets. Running kids in off event is great for those smaller or JV meets. Lets an athlete try a new event and gain confidence. Meets count as a workout in the week.

With two races a week I would do NOTHING but recvover between meet; easy runs and maybe some light strides.