Your coaches may be what you say, but the workout you did today is what many successful high school, college and senior programs do on Mondays.I know this is Let's Run, so I'm sure you'll hear otherwise, but sprinting has many, many benefits for distance runners: strength, injury prevention, running economy, better muscle fiber involvement, to name just a few, besides the obvious benefit of speed development and speed endurance - the faster you are, the faster you can run.Hurdle walkovers also have many advantages for distance runners. Many programs do them after every hard workout. They build specific running strength through your hips and torso and become an excellent recovery modality once you get good at them.I don't know what the other six days of your week are like, but if you started the day with a solid active warm up, did some sharply executed running drills and did maybe a 15 minute run along with the sprints and the walkovers, today was a good day for you.Being a good distance runner means doing whatever will make you better. Refusing to do what sprinters do, despite the fact that many distance runners think this, does not make you better.And you neglected to say what your coach said when you talked to him/her about the workout. Ask. Maybe your coach gave you this excellent workout entirely by accident, or maybe you'll find out the football coach cared enough about coaching you to find out what to do.
Screw football! wrote:
I know people have had football coaches as their track coach who don't know one thing about distance running. Today they had the distance group sprint 6x100 and the thing where you lift your leg over the hurdles and then go under them. All of the distance guys meet up and we do a separate workout. It's ridiculous how ignorant they are. We have 3 guys who are capable of running 9:30 3200m, but it's all about our weak, but glorious sprinters.