age group rec track - your opinion

Ahhh, club track, the bane of distance running coaches. Here's the thing, your son is only 12, let him do it, but don't have him do the longer races (1500+). If he actually likes running distance, he's going to need to put in the work there. He could use the club practices as his speed work, but if he's serious about doing well at XC, he's going to need a base.

Talk to him and explain that loads of speedwork during a base-building phase will not prepare him for XC. He may not care. This may be a time for him to just enjoy things. You don't want to kill his legs or his joy right now, so let him make the decision. As he gets older, and if he's still gung-ho about XC, then you'll have to be more honest about forgoing club/summer track so he can just get in miles.

I deal with this every year where I live. All my kids who run the 800 all want to do AAU track and it is annoying as all get up because most of them should be milers/1500m runners but don't put in any basework and think of XC as a training period for track instead of a separate sport that they could do well in. This is the first year I've been able to convince a majority of them not to do club as they saw how 2 of the kids responded by just doing miles and dropping huge PRs.

Thanks for the reply. Your comments are exactly my concern. The cc coach does not have his team do a lot of running until July anyway. But it is more or less guaranteed that he will lose conditioning during this season. He will still be running on the off days (40 minutes today) but basically 2 practices and a meet on Saturday takes away a lot of potential base building days this summer. I am running the kids pretty hard at practice (ladders and fartlek with some hill training coming up)and they are having a lot of fun. We will see how this goes.

Goofy scenario to me. You're the club track distance coach, yet you're worried how the track workouts will affect your kid for XC? Hello? YOU are the coach. You can have the kids log miles at track practice, do speed work, play checkers, practice pole valuting, or whatever. Your call, you ninny.

Besides that, he is 12. Let him have fun, experiment with other distances. Those short races will only benefit him in the long run. And what kind of base do you think a 12 year old needs. Their CC race is what? 2 miles maybe?

You think your son's middle school cross country coach has a "master plan?" Also, do I infer correctly that you think running with his future rivals is a BAD thing? There is no such thing as base for a seventh grader. At least not a productive one. You say he has made friends, is having a blast and yet you think this will lead to burnout.This is how you help him. 1) Say out of his way; it would be best if you weren't involved in the club but it looks too late for that now.2) Don't project your own experiences on to him. 3) Let him do what he enjoys doing. The odds are he is not going to be a scholarship athlete no matter what he does or you do... nothing personal that's just math. Let that take care of itself in the future, don't try to force it now.Kids enjoy sprints/relays and intermittent stuff a lot more than "base work." A middle school program starting in July is ridiculous. Everyone needs to relax because between you and that middle school coach, you are almost guaranteeing this kid doesn't have a future. At least let him enjoy himself six weeks a year.If this helps you out any, talk to any male or female at the Olympic Trials and ask them about their "base training" the summers they were in middle school. They will laugh at you. What they might say is that they learned to love to run by competing and doing fun pseudo workouts and games during that time.

Thanks again to everyone that replied. To Maurice, I am A coach not THE coach. I have input but we are all volunteers and the other coaches have opinions as well. Regardless you are right. I was being a ninny...My son joined this to hang out with a friend that goes to another school and really it has been nothing but positive. He has made a new friend that he may end up training and running 5k races with. My concern is really related to my own distrust of age group track from past personal observations and is probably unwarranted given the fun nature of this team. I have to remind myself that I was playing football and wrestling in 7th grade and did not run until later and it didn't matter. It is FUN to coach this age as there are a WIDE level of fitness and physical/mental maturity levels and really it is about them getting to the next step liking the sport. He is pretty stoked to run the shorter races like the 400 so it is all good.

Ahh, idiot distance running coaches. The bane of the future of US distance running. Let me guess how many kids you coach that go on to meets like NCAAs, Olympic Trials and beyond. I bet it's a round number. Literally.

He will "lose conditioning" during track? Then they aren't doing something right. That's hard to do for distance runners. If he is running club track then he is most likely doing club XC too right? Well then that season will be later as well so you will have time.

I disagree with some of the comments above. My philosophy is to keep things light, big on encouragement and enjoyment, but to introduce trainig as appropriate given an athlete's age, so they buy into track and field as a real sport, as opposed to viewing it as a pre-real-xyz sport offseason trainig exercise.

Your kid is only entering middle school, he should be allowed to freely compete in any activity without the direction of a subsequent-season middle school coach. Should a middle school baseball coach dictate what a club basketball coach does? Remember, middle school sports are participation driven, recreationally based, and are not high school.

I recommend to those entering/attendng high school that they should complete their summer base with the high school coach, and follow his/her direction because that coach will be their primary mentor and trainer for the next 4 years. They must ensure they are in a position to be a productive member of the high school team, which may involve placating the coach, despite any differences in opinion. They should consult the coach, explaining any summer track or road races they wish to enter, but should not, unless an "elite" (term loosely applied), specifically train with us for a given summer AAU or USATF meet, at the expense of their summer high school cross country base training.

Your son has not reached this stage, and should not refrain from summer track if it is something he wants to do. In addition, the comments regarding his "weakness is short speed" and "shorter races to build confidence" is misread on your part and above poster's part.

Believe me, if you are competing in AAU or USATF, which are both recreational and competitive in nature, he will get zero confidence from getting smoked by sprinters/long sprinter types. This is a common mistake parents make. Let him run 800, 1500, 3000, and let him learn how to enjoy the challenge of the races and compete according to his level of maturity.

Your training should help him to gain the necessary endurance and speed as approriately applied in a given mid-distance race. I have parents call me all the time asking if their kid should work out with the sprinters to work on speed and kick. I always say, you can do whatever wou want, but if the kid is not entering sprints as a sprinter, he or she will get dropped aerobially over the course of the mid-d race distance, so what use is the sprint group training, only if he is outkicking the guys in the back of the race, because he is so far off the lead due to lack of aerobic traiing.

And I'm not saying we train kids like high schoolers, college athletes, or adults, but we incorporate age-appropriate training that addresses various energy systems so the kids begin to develop those componenets necessary for future serious competition in mid-distance events when they get older. Kind of an introductory version of the sport, not a full-on assault, as some youth club coaches implement, which I think strsses kids unnecessarily prior to puberty, and results in injuies and potential lack of interest. Keep it fun, give them little doses, and let them compete while keeping youth track in perspective. Good luck.

An I noticed your concern for apparent training with "cross-town rivals" on your club team. This is part of what makes it a great experience. You shouldn't look at it as possibly training athletes that may end up competing against and beating your own son's middle school and high shool team athletes in the future. These kids will be friends for life, and benefit from the good natured rivalry of past experience as teammates, and future relationship as competitors. They will chat and give eachother a hard time at high shool meets while others are stressed out, and the high school experience will be that much better.

don't know how it works in your state, but in mine (GA), youth track does more to run off potential distance runners than encourage them. The meets are obnoxiously long - sometimes 12 hours on a Saturday. There's a huge over focus on every event but distance. The USATF type stuff runs all the way into July, so you have kids racing all Spring & Summer, then running their 1st XC meet in late August. Stupid. Typical youth track coach is an idiot. For some reason it seems to always be the ex-HS sprinter wannabe or worse, some housewife who loves being in charge but is absolutely clueless. They spend 30 minutes of a 60 minute practice "warming up", i.e. standing in long lines waiting their turn to do some "drill" for 8 seconds, then spend the rest of the time doing silly stuff like 'practicing relay hand-offs'. The distance kids are usually the ones whose parents made them sign up for distance because they fancy themselves runners. It sucks..

This pretty much describes many programs in several states. They aren't all like this though and hopefully you can find a good one.

What The ? wrote:

This pretty much describes many programs in several states. They aren't all like this though and hopefully you can find a good one.

It also describes high school programs in many states.

My son could beat your son in a race, easily