State meet(do not have to qualify) is on Nov 19 and practice officially begins Sept 1. When should the team start racing and how many races should they run between the first meet and the state meet? Every weekend, every other weekend, every third weekend?
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My feeling is that you should run one meet per week. If you have control over your schedule (something many coaches don't have), then try to schedule one meet per week. That will give your athletes time to train and recover from races. That will also give your athletes enough races to gain experience. In addition, most high school athletes (there are exceptions) need that carrot of a race in front of them each week to stay motivated. Good luck in finding the right mix for your team.
Doesn't your team have dual meets that happen every week?
Aside from them, maybe do 1 invitational a week before the first meet, and 1 a month into the season so its like a wednesday meet, saturday invite, and wednesday meet.
Basically 1 per week, maybe slightly more and like 1-2 extra per season.
I try to schedule meets every 10-11 days, so if we have a weekday meet, we usually won't race the weekend before or the weekend after. I used to race my kids just about every Saturday, but have found over the years that they are mentally fresher if they are able to get some weekends away doing teenager stuff (sleeping in, spending time with friends and family, etc.) The week before regionals, we race our county championship on Wednesday, so we get 10 days off before regionals. This adds up to 11-12 meets a year, including regionals and state. One of these is a relay meet (two kids each run 3 x mile) and another is a mid-season two mile dual meet against a rival school.
Who is anyone to dictate how much they "should" run? It doesn't matter how many there are; just take how many you're given and adjust your training accordingly.
Thanks for the responses. According to some of the posts I must be in a somewhat unusual situation as the only preset meet for the season is the state meet. All the other meets will be local open meets that are up to me to find and register for. Unfortunatley, that means that just about all of our meets will be on Saturdays. It is also interesting to me that even the meets in the area that are called invitationals are actually open to all high school teams, which I would think makes them opens rather than invitationals.
My varsity kids run between 5 and 7. Younger kids and JV closer to 7. We don't run league meets and don't generally run local meets except for maybe one invitational. We travel twice and run the championship meets. They seem pretty happy with that.
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