High School XC - Why so many races?

I don't believe in racing beginners too often. The stress of going up and down the hills for an inexperienced runner is too great. If I put beginning girls in 3 races in 8 days I'll have an injured runner. The key for those who are expected to race is to try to field a large team and have your JV kids race in meaningless weekday meets and save your studs for the Saturday invitationals. If your athletes are forced to race in the weekday meets have them run at tempo pace and continue to run another mile after they go through the chute.

There are lots of races because it's fun to race and not fun to train.

MTH wrote:

I guess the development of distance talent is not what

high school XC and track is about.

You are so right. High school TF and XC are about going to meets (trips are fun, especially if you get out of school for them); getting a chance to compete and be an athlete (which, at a slow-twitched 5-8/115#, was not going to happen in football or soccer); and winning and seeing improvement (frequent races provide opportunities for both).

Dude, these are high school kids. Most kids don't start HS sports so they can *practice*--they want to play in the games against other schools, or run in races against other schools. That's what HS sport *is*: competing for your school against others. Most high school competition schedules reflect that.

By contrast, in my season of HS cross you could have counted the number of meets on the fingers of one hand. For a beginning runner that really sucked, and reduced the motivation for training considerably.

So, yeah, "the [long-term] development of distance talent is not what high school XC and track is about"--any more than developing players for college or NFL teams is what high school football is (or should be) about.

Mid week races are good opportunity to work on some racing tactics. Running in packs, negative splits, fartlek, out fast...etc are easier to practice in a small "meaningless" race. Our team has 6 invitationals on our schedule and my top kids usually run only 5 Invitationals.

here's the thing that i love about the way the system is set up. The kids who are crazy fast want less meets to train better and the crappy slow kids want less meets to have to run and be humilliated. The only people who actually want to race are the guys who come out in the bottom half of the medaling field because they love the recognition more than the personal achievement. hey, not gonna deny it though, im one of those guys--i love the system they have right now, but i could definitely understand if they cut the numbers down a bit.

I couldn't agree anymore?

My college coach, who really is just a hs coach that knew the college a.d. is the same way.

Every year I die at the end of the season and so after last year I tried to get our total number of meets down. He said yes, so we dropped 1 race and went from 8 down to 7. Which isn't really bad except our coach expects a PR every race and the small no talent meets our coach expects us to win so we can increase our regoinal ranking. So now that we only have one more race till conference I already feel my legs dieing a slow painful death.

the reason is pretty much right...

here's my two cents... in my area there are about 300 teams (in our section) with several other sections not more than 2 hours away... thus for all teams to have an opportunity to go to ANY race... there must be a race held every weekend... and most likely never less than 10 options for racing during the weekend of every week of every month of the regular season... then most of these teams have league meets/conference meets 3 or 4 times during the season, usually mid-week... so that means in a 10 week season there are 10 invitationals and 3 league meets to attend plus prelims/finals/state champs.

i could have my kids race up to 16-17 times a season but i don't because that would be nuts. i don't know when we would train. i think the running community needs to leave it up to the coaches' good judgment (hopefully good!) to know when to race their athletes.

restricting the schedule in general will certainly not accomadate enough teams at least in our area (california). not to mention there actually are section rules stating how many races a student can race.

personally, i've found that racing less has improved my runners attitude toward running and there has been a subsequent improvement in our overall program. this has been our schedule so far... varsity athletes only...

week 1: time trial

week 2: invitational (relaxed in trainers)

week 3: league (relaxed in trainers)

week 4: no race

week 5: invitational (1-7 all out)

week 6: league (all out for 4-7, relaxed 1-3)

week 7: no race

week 8: invitational (1-7 all out)

week 9: league champs (1-7 all out)

week 10: prelims (relaxed, run to qualify)

week 11: finals (all out)

week 12: no race

week 13: states (duh)

the weeks we don't race, we don't just sit back and relax. i'd say that every week we do something similar to race effort. so i think when talking about developing young runners, worrying about them physically from racing too often doesn't make sense. they work hard almost every week. i think it's more of an emotional thing. 14-18 yr old kids can't be expected to give a 'guts out' type of race every single week and not suffer a little bit somewhere in their brains. i think that's the issue that needs to be discussed and navigated through. not so much about programs demanding too much physically from their students, but over-commanding coaches and maybe parents who expect their kids to want to win and break a course record every single time they toe the line. i think if you surveyed most elite distance runners they would be able to explain how they differentiate in their own minds of 'all out' races and something more 'relaxed'...

ok, so that's more like my $1.50...

We have cut our meet schedule back, we could run 14 races per season, including state. Instead we run 4 less than is allowed. It is probably still one or two more than we need, but we usually lose one or two for weather, or treat one as a buildup run for our better runners.

I think several people have made excellent points in regard to the fact that HS athletics are not designed as feeder programs for colleges. 99.999% of all HS runners are out for participation purposes, and along the way it is our job to instill an appreciation and hopefully an enjoyment of running.

It is rediculous to talk about HS athletics as though they are in place to feed college or olympic teams and should follow a training program which is suitable for that outcome. First of all, HS sports are funded by EDUCATION TAX DOLLARS. So, for starters, HS athletics should fundamentally be structured to TEACH children things that have NOTHING to do with athletics. It is simply another venue and opportunity to connect with kids and have a positive influence on them.

Most HS coaches will NEVER have an ELITE athlete on there team in a 20-30 year career. What is the point of setting up their program to best serve a kid they will never coach? That is stupid. You coach the kids you have - not the ones you wish you had.

My HS team went to a lot of races, 2 a week typically, but we didn't race all of them. Our state required that we go to dual meets because they were the official HS competitions like a football game etc. Typically we'd just show up and then either have the varsity run the race as a workout or sit out. Even when we "raced" we weren't running very hard a dual meets unless you were feeling it.

Also I tend to agree with previous posters; during my first year of running every race made a different because they were great learning experiences and naturally as i became more adept a racing I raced less.

week one: Invite(sat)

week two: Invite(sat)

week three: double dual(tues), invite(sat)

week four: double dual(tues), invite(sat)

week five: double dual(tues), invite(sat)

week six: double dual(tues), invite(sat)

Week Seven: Off

Week Eight: Conference Meet(sat)

Week Nine: Regionals (fri/sat)

Week Ten: State(sat)

All 5ks. I never thought that HS racing could be any different. You can easily get away with that sort of thing in HS if you arnt throwing workouts in. Just race yourself into shape. I considered myself to be "good" by high school standards.

Just to add my two cents...

We raced every week for 8-9 weeks every fall. My freshman year I was a basketcase all the time; I peaked mid-way through the season and, according to my dad, looked like death warmed over by the time the season was over.

Sophmore year was a little better; I wasn't fully recovered from the Saturday race until Wednesday. Junior year I was ready to go on Tuesday, and senior year I only needed one day off to feel like I was at full strength.

I suppose, if nothing else, you could argue the frequent racing gives the kids a way to feel their improvement from year to year, in addition to seeing better times and results.

My oldest son is a sophomore and in his second xc season. He's pretty ambitious about it, but if they cut his season back to 6 races or so I'm not sure he wouldn't give it up. Racing is why he's there.

I don't see a problem with having a lot of xc meets. I do see something of a problem with going straight into an indoor season with a lot of meets and then to an outdoor season with a lot of meets and I see a problem with coaches whose teams have that sort of racing schedule and who also throw significant amounts of anaerobic work into the mix (my son's coach doesn't do too much of that.)

I also see a problem with high school runners not getting in enough miles in the summer to give themselves the base to hold up under all the racing.

Reading is Fundamental wrote:

When the rare extraordinary athlete comes along, most coaches know enough to help them get to the next level.

right wrote:

Now THAT is funny. My experience has been that most high school coaches don't have the first clue as to what to do with extraordinary distance runners.

Your experience is obviously lacking.

it shouldn't really be a big deal to know how to manage a long schedule like this, i think it's actually good for a team to have that many chances to run. run your a team in 3 or 4 big meets, every other week and problem solved. also gives alot of other guys on the cusp of varsity to get some solid races in. mainly though if your varsity starts its training in june, has it's first real race at the beginning of october, you should be sitting real pretty right around the time the post season comes. just my two cents

Reading is Fundamental wrote:

Reading is Fundamental wrote:

When the rare extraordinary athlete comes along, most coaches know enough to help them get to the next level.

right wrote:

Now THAT is funny. My experience has been that most high school coaches don't have the first clue as to what to do with extraordinary distance runners.

Your experience is obviously lacking.

No, it's just radically different than yours. From what I've observed, for every high school coach that knows how to train distance runners, there are AT LEAST 10 who don't.

Its interesting points that everyone is making and I agree for fun and participation sake and for 90%+ of the runners the current system works fine and does not need to be significantly changed.

But what should the kid do who is national class (State Champ, Foot Locker Finalist) and has gotten there through a proper balance of threshold work, VO2 Max Work, Long runs and fast intervals? This system doesn't seem to work at all for this type of advanced runner unless they get special treatment and can set a significantly modified racing schedule. If the kid's school coach won't allow this someone of this calibre may be out of luck or on their own. Does Foot Locker allow runners to participate with a school affiliation?

right wrote:

No, it's just radically different than yours. From what I've observed, for every high school coach that knows how to train distance runners, there are AT LEAST 10 who don't.

Dude, you need to get out more. What are you, like 14? I'd say the actual numbers are just the opposite of what you suggest. I know, you thought you were some hot sh*t high school runner, but you didn't get a sniff from any D1 schools so you blame your high school coach. Right?

I don't know if he is in fact 14, but he is right. With the number of HS runners that participate in XC on a yearly basis there is little reason for more athletes to not be more competitive with the best in the world in their early 20's - this (in general) simply isn't happening! The entire approach to HS running is poor in the US - and even more so given the talent that actually exist. There are a number of excellent HS coaches throughout the system, but they are the exception, not the rule. The fact that club track/XC is an isolated (and often pilloried) adjunct (often seen as subservient) to the school season is a sad reflection on the priorities of the sport. Look at the few numbers of athletes who even bother to try out (run the trials) for the national Junior XC team, or even the track teams in the summer. All because the HS schedules have to predominate! Those coaches (the excptional ones) who do see the bigger picture, and are prepared to develop their athletes along these lines, will instill in their athletes the mindset that there is a world in the sport outside of HS, and that many can be a part of it. The idea that only a few can make it is a negative one, and certainly not one that I would condone in a coach of mine. As a coach I don't accept that some talented athletes - and there are some in almost any school - can't progress to a higher level, they can with the right guidance and inspiration. There are no guarantees of course, but then no one has that! Heck even Peter Coe - who hadn't ever coached anyone before - took an athlete (his son) to the highest level of the sport (Olympic Champion and World-record holder) in part because they believed that it could be done!

Most high school coaches have no idea what they are doing.

They're poor teachers trying to make more money.

Luckily my coach in HS noticed that and did everything straight out of books like Jack Daniels Running Formula.