What to do about irritating teammate who feels he has to 'win' every interval in practice

different guys also have different ideas as to how hard the training should be. group workouts are occasions for hard running and many use the 'competition' at workouts as motivation to run faster, to step up in quality over the course of the season. sure, you might not be able to race well with harder pace for awhile, but maybe it'll work and you won't be stuck running the same quality races every season. I run by feel and depending on the group I'm with if I can go ahead at the end, feeling good, I'll do it, but I don't try to destroy everyone by racing far ahead. So, I can understand the guy winning by a foot not necessarily being malicious.

ignore him or what wrote:

It's not like he's head and shoulders above the others but always has to win the intervals by 1 or 2 feet. If someone challenges him, he will 'ruin the workout' by going all out to keep his lead. (ie, we're doing 10 x 400m in around 65 for an avg. but if someone tries to pass him, he will be forced to run a 58 on #5 just to win it). Yes, he's an ass; but; I guess my question is: should we just ignore him and let him have his 'practice victories' or should 3 or 4 of us each take a turn and run a hard one to wipe him out in 3 or 4 reps of the workout? I'm sure this problem is widespread and as old as group workouts themselves, but just wanted to know how others have handled this 'irritating kind of teammante'.

I can't even believe what I'm hearing. Why would this bother you? I think he should have a talk with the coach about the losers on the team who are conspiring to screw up the workouts just so they can 'win' a workout rep.

There are two kinds of people in the world, Those with guns and those who dig. You dig.

ignore him or what wrote:

It's not like he's head and shoulders above the others but always has to win the intervals by 1 or 2 feet. If someone challenges him, he will 'ruin the workout' by going all out to keep his lead. (ie, we're doing 10 x 400m in around 65 for an avg. but if someone tries to pass him, he will be forced to run a 58 on #5 just to win it). Yes, he's an ass; but; I guess my question is: should we just ignore him and let him have his 'practice victories' or should 3 or 4 of us each take a turn and run a hard one to wipe him out in 3 or 4 reps of the workout? I'm sure this problem is widespread and as old as group workouts themselves, but just wanted to know how others have handled this 'irritating kind of teammante'.

I can't even believe what I'm hearing. Why would this bother you? I think your teammate should have a talk with the coach about the losers on the team who are conspiring to screw up the workouts just so they can 'win' a workout rep.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those with guns and those who dig. You dig.

I can't even believe what I'm hearing because I'm a complete idiot. Why would this bother you? Yes, I know I'm a moron, but your teammate should have a talk with the coach about the losers on the team who are conspiring to screw up the workouts just so they can 'win' a workout rep.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those with guns and those who dig. You dig.

When I was in high school I would try my hardest to beat teammates who I didn't get along with. Actually, in high school my main rivals in races were those teammates.

how clueless is the coach that he doesn't see this going on?

What's more annoying is the slow kid who lingers in the back for the whole workout not trying, then tries to beat out the top guys on the last interval. You're not fooling anyone.

jorvack wrote:

focus on your own workout. Confident runners don't give a damn who wins the workouts, and must runners who race workouts come up short in the race or get injured every season.

And therefore they should care about him doing this. Sure it doesn't effect anyone else's workout, so they could all just ignore him and focus on doing their own things. BUT he is their teammate. If a guy was doing this on my team, I would try to teach him a lesson, because if he keeps racing workouts, he's going to be coming up short in races, like you said. And if he's one of the better runners on the team, you shouldn't want that to happen. Actually, even if he's the worst guy on the team, you should still care about your teammate doing something to hurt his performance.

How does he run his races? Does he run them in an intelligent manner? If so, then it just sounds as if he's trying harder than everyone in practice. How are your races going? Are you running well this year? Is this other guy slowly catching you, got you a bit worried maybe? I don't think racing every interval is cool, but I think a previous poster called it, sounds like you may be a bit worried.

Guys, basically I just really want to beat lyle.

Later.

mmm - I would (and did) take a much different approach than those mentioned. In jr col. we had a guy on our team of high achievers (5 AA - our 7th man was a 9:15 HS two miler) who on one particular workout that we did regularly - who would destroy us. Any other workout he was average at best and never made our 'travel squad'. Instead of negative attention we treated him and talked to him like a king. He wasn't rubbing it in our noses nor did we feel like he 'felt' that way. Our hope was that he would rise to similar levels during races. I'd pull him in closer rather than make efforts to alienate/distance him. Easy to say - harder to do especially if he's a bit obnoxious. Maybe be a great running/scoring addition to your team. It might also take the sour feelings as well......