Grade my workout for my high school team

Looks fine to me. I like doing threshold training for time as it helps build in ability level and volume. It allows you to manage a larger group easier to from splits to moving onto the next part of the workout together etc.

How do they know when the rep is over do you blow a whistle?

Looks like an overly complicated workout that doesnt really accomplish anything.

I would suggest 1 days where you do 10x10s sprints and another separate day where you do a continuous tempo run.

I blow a whistle

Ok whats your 800m

I’m kind of at a loss, I stepped into this role about a week before the season started. I was handed a meet schedule that I didn’t create so we have 2-3 meets a week. The only reason we had room to do a full workout this week was because our meet today got cancelled due to weather. I competed at a decent level for about 7 years post high school from 800 (1:52)-half marathon (1:07) training year round, so I know a decent amount about the sport and coaching well-trained athletes but less about beginners. Most of my runners are freshman, didn’t prepare for the season with winter mileage, and have very little knowledge of the sport. I only have them running 10-25 miles a week at this point due to how little experience they have and the amount of time I’ll have with them before the season ends. If anyone has great ideas for low volume runners in this situation to get the best bang for our buck with such a short season I’d love to hear it! The plan for next year heading into cross country as I’ll be coaching them in the fall too is to have periodized training for them all before the meets start.

Yeah, tough one. You have 2-3 meets a week so here is what you do.

Have your athletes rotate out of the distance events. Throw them in a 400 or 4x400 on alternate meets. This will help speed endurance and act sort of as a workout for them. Always tell them why. I have always told my teams that professional runners can’t handle that schedule so why would anyone think anyone else can?

If they are still loaded up on meets and you have a few days in between have them do tempo. But real tempo threshold like 5k +30-60. Figure out what that is using prediction charts from their 3k times or whatever you have. Make sure they are not racing these runs. Of you are not in their faces about that they will always get competitive and race their tempo / threshold runs especially if they are boys.

Communicate the reasons why. I had a team that was forced to over race in XC. Before the season began conditioned runners were doing one or two harder workouts in a 10 day period. New runners ran no workouts at all, just running. Once the season started we were locked in. No workouts, just runs at various paces they could handle. We always outperformed our competition.

I like the psychology of the workout. They won't hammer the early 30-second reps too fast because they know the longer threshold intervals are coming. And they won't hammer the final 4 reps too hard because they are too tired.

i like the workout. It’s the type of workouts i try to do working different systems with middle school and high schoolers. The constraints of a high school system in which there are too many meets, kids are all at different developmental stages and fitness levels within a short season but you still have to coach them as a team, that works. I like workouts with younger runners at paces where short rest is standard, one thing that i think about with young runners is your training their concentration muscle as much as anything else, short rest with shorter intervals gives them a brief mental break then get after it again. Eventually as they develop that changes. There are the kids that can run at sustained hard paces like a pro from the start but they are the minority.

There’s no park nearby? If it’s not within reasonable running distance, it would be worth your while to drive to it.

If tempo is like 3200m target pace or XC race pace it is probably fine, may be a bit difficult. If by tempo you mean lactic threshold (HR 175ish or lower for most HS kids), it is a good idea to break those sessions into intervals. HS kids can't manage sustained, and with shorter intervals it doesn't kill them to go too fast. But, 12 minutes is not enough. Need at least 20 minutes at that pace (to build lactic tolerance and enjoy most of the benefits from that stimulus), even if you have to reduce or remove other aspects of the workout.

do you have to go to all those meets?

I would just ask the AD if you can cut some of them out because you don't need that many meets - might actually save some money for the school.

Get a measuring wheel and cones and you can do any workout. This one looks like something that’s going to turn into a bunch of random sprints.

i would rather do 2x10 min tempo or measure out some 200s.

I still don't understand this part. If you are actually in the middle of nowhere, there must be some rural roads nearby you can run on, even in snowy conditions.

AD won’t let runners, run on their own, if they leave the school, I have to be running/biking with the group.

Small team/limited resources so I’m also in charge of a couple of the technical events.

Plan is to go to less meets next year. Have to keep agreements for this season.

Next workout, I’m going to measure distance with the wheel, the time has allowed me to keep the team on the same page up to this point.

I'll give it a solid B+ for creativity as you could create options off of this. I would like to see some tempo effort at maybe 2 X 3 min of 5K pace - 30s before the mile effort. 30s at mile effort is not to difficult so do it under a little duress. Then how about repeat the tempo effort before the 800 effort? You could get creative with this for sure. How about the 800 effort before the mile effort? You could just have athletes do these efforts in 200s as well. Props to your coach for mixing it up. It sounds like he or she is pretty good.