Coach wants me to intentionally go out too fast and blow up...good idea?

Bro - Mama wrote:

You had convinced yourself that you did not want to do this from the very beginning.

You were making excuses and whining from the start.

This is actually a great training exercise.

I used to have my less experienced runner try this all the time, and many of them could run much faster than they thought they could.

It is entirely possible that his coach sucks.

Like really bad.

He ran practically even splits. This is probably his "comfortable race pace" and his coach wanted him to know what it felt like to run faster. He lost his chance to experiment and admittedly threw the experiment out the window, so chances are pretty good he'll go out in 5:55/12:00 at the next race because he doesn't have the confidence to go faster. I'm with coach on this and he blew a chance to try something out because he was worried about pain and suffering. He didn't actually go through the pain and suffering (any more than he normally does during a 5K) so he's possibly going to remain hesitant to push it.

On the other hand, kudos to the OP for coming back and letting us know how he fared. Hopefully he gets some guts to go out and run beyond his comfort zone. At that age there are real breakthroughs to be made just by changing your mentality.

I'm an 800 guy but here's some advice my coach would always give me before a race. He said, "You're gonna hurt the same whether you finish with 1:55 in last place or 1:48 in first. You might as well win if you're gonna be in pain."

No matter what the race will hurt. Stop being scared, grab the race by the balls, and own it.

tracknoob wrote:

YouGotWhatYouDeserved wrote:

So, you didn't listen to your coach, had a less than mediocre (read crappy) result and now you are making excuses? I predict you are a complete non-factor at your league championships and regionals and will be at least 50 before you "get your sh1t together", as you put it.

Thank you for that extremely helpful post, that was a really great addition to this thread.

I let my fatigue and lack of experience bring my time up, and I realize that I could have done better if I hadn't done that. Posting some callous rant isn't going to do anything beyond making you feel better about yourself for attacking some HS kid.

You still don't get it. Your coach tried being nice, I tried being mean, others are trying to reason with you, but nothing is getting through to you. Lets try clear 52nd direct.

Go. Run. Forget about time and race people. Lead the first mile. Lead the second mile. Scream like an attacking Visitgoth as you pass people. Shout "Gobble gobble, motherf×÷kers!" as you cross the line. You will never even approach your true potential until you find the balls to not give a damn if you fail. RACE.

That's pretty much right on. I took the safest approach to the race because I was too unsure of my ability to go any faster, and that was a big mistake because now I know for sure that I can. I had only run two races this season prior to this one (knee injury), neither of them very good ones. In fact, this race was actually a pretty large PR. As a result I was very under-confident and let that kill my performance.

Next week, like I posted earlier, is my league championships, and while this is more important it's not the end of the world if I don't run extremely well. At this meet, I will definitely try to get out of my comfort zone pace for the first mile, not really caring about what happens over the next 2.1 miles. You were right that I was running kind of like a pvssy, and I will have to learn to trust myself at faster paces and not let my uncertainty get the better of me again. I have all week to get the mental stuff down, so hopefully I can pull off a good race.

By the way, it may help to know that I'm not really a "distance" guy. XC is my secondary sport to track. Looking at my freshman year PRs you can see why:

800: 2:12

1600: 5:19

3200: 12:04

5k: 21:43

the point was that he had no idea what hard meant for an 800. Or, he had no idea what the second lap is going to feel like.

tracknoob wrote:

Your point is? What it sounds like you mean is that I should go out fast, like what my coach wants, and then try to continue to hold the pace and kick. That's obvious.

Ugh, you need to talk to your coach about your league championships.

He may be looking at how well your team can do so experimenting on this one might not be what he has in mind.

Your Pr's on the track do not reflect your recently worked on endurance. You may be a better distance runner than you think. Consider that you split faster than your 3200 time while running on grass and trails and still had a mile to go.

You could improve your times a ton if your work on it. This is my first year of cross country (as a junior), and my track PRs were kind of similar

800: 2:07

1600: 5:24 (if I ran the mile more than once last track season it probably would have been like 5:10 though)

So during track I hardly ever ran more than 3 or 4 miles at once, I had super low mileage, like maybe 15-20 a week at most. I increased my mileage where as now my typical weekly mileage is 25-30 a week. I ran a 16:52 last weekend.

So like you I've never really considered myself a distance guy, mainly because hockey was my main sport. But I decided screw it, if I'm going to run cross country I might as well see how good I can be. So if you can change your mentality about cross country, who knows how good you can be?

Let me make this easy for you. Your coach wanted you to go out fast because he has observed that you are a pus. Over the course of this thread, the pus factor has become very obvious. Instead of doing what your coach suggested, you pussed out again! You are correct, you are not much of a "distance guy", judging from your 800m time, you are not much of a middle distance guy either. Perhaps you should try marching band.

facticityofdasitchiashun wrote:

Let me make this easy for you. Your coach wanted you to go out fast because he has observed that you are a pus. Over the course of this thread, the pus factor has become very obvious. Instead of doing what your coach suggested, you pussed out again!

You are correct, you are not much of a "distance guy", judging from your 800m time, you are not much of a middle distance guy either. Perhaps you should try marching band.

I screwed up the race, I know that I did, I know what I did wrong, and I will run differently next time. Enough said. If you trolls can't get over it and stop insulting me, that's your problem. Please come back when you have something productive to say.

HS kid,

I think you are a tough kid to come back on this thread knowing some trolls will take shots at you and knowing that you didn't have your best race.

Seriously, I think most HS kids would just avoid this thread but you didn't and you even took a couple shots back at posters so good for you.

As far as your last couple few races coming up (now this might sound weird) I have advice. Embrace the tension, the unknown, the drama. Enjoy the experience and the journey that you chose to take. You could have avoided all the stress of competitive running and just stayed home and played video games. But you didn't want that.

Push yourself to your limit but promise yourself that what ever time you run, you will not beat yourself up, don't look for excuses (which is a sly way of showing dissatisfaction with run and self) but as someone else said learn from the experience. Even "bad races" we learn from.

After all, you came back here took flak from the trolls so you must be a tough kid..

Conundrum wrote:

As far as your last couple few races coming up (now this might sound weird) I have advice. Embrace the tension, the unknown, the drama. Enjoy the experience and the journey that you chose to take. You could have avoided all the stress of competitive running and just stayed home and played video games. But you didn't want that.

Push yourself to your limit but promise yourself that what ever time you run, you will not beat yourself up, don't look for excuses (which is a sly way of showing dissatisfaction with run and self) but as someone else said learn from the experience. Even "bad races" we learn from.

After all, you came back here took flak from the trolls so you must be a tough kid..

Great post. These kinds of things make wading through the rest of LRC worth it. The tension and drama in running is the most stressful part of the sport, but as you said, these are the experiences that we enjoy and remember. At the end of the day, running, if nothing else, is teaching me and all of us in the sport to be a "tough kid" through experiences like these.

I have prescribed this strategy for my runners in early season races before. My rationale has always been that if you can force yourself to experience that moment of extreme discomfort, doubt and panic that often comes mid race, you can practice dealing with it, and maybe won't be so afraid of the pain later in the year when it matters.

What this means is "practice not being a puss" as was pointed out by facticity.

Dr. Van Nostrand wrote:

I have prescribed this strategy for my runners in early season races before. My rationale has always been that if you can force yourself to experience that moment of extreme discomfort, doubt and panic that often comes mid race, you can practice dealing with it, and maybe won't be so afraid of the pain later in the year when it matters.

Your coach probably thinks you can run a lot faster than you are, I'd guess he's right.

Quip wrote:

Don't do it stupid though. There is a right way and a wrong way to go out hard.

If you want to run a 5:30 first mile, don't do something like running 400m 70-85-85-90 second 400m splits. That's what most people think when they think "go out hard!". That is setting yourself up for disaster. Running clean 82s though, will set you up much better.

There is a difference. Make sure you're not sprinting off the starting line. Don't think, "run hard!". Only think "run 5:30". If it helps, ask your coach where the first 400m is, and then start "going hard" there, to avoid being swept up in the field sprint off the line.

BIG +1

I remember a HS race a while back, season openner. I held back very early and it looked like I was in the 50s/60s/70s. By the 1st km I had broken into the top 20 and the 2nd km I had the top-10 in sight. It wasn't until the only hill 2 miles in where I lost sight of the top 5 (finished 7th that day).

OP, Run with a Hunter's mentality. Let them go in the first 400m (run at your own pace, in this case an 80-84 first 400), Then pick the runners off pack by pack at first, then one by one. Because you're in HS, this mentality will work very well.

Well guys, I went out hard on my HM as planned and died horribly after 10mi (backstory- injury left me mentally shaken, this is my second come-back race). 1min slower than my PR, but hell, I can go to bed knowing that I left nothing on the course. Anyway, OP, sometimes you have to take a chance. You may fail miserably like I did, but you will have something you can be proud of.

I tried almost the same theory on the weekend - except I'm a sprinter so the distances are shorter. I'm also old...

I'd run a really good 100m earlier in the day and was feeling on a high so I went all out in the 400m. Ran the first 200m in not far off full pace, and then hit the wall on the final bend. After being very nearly in front I ended up 2nd last by the end.

Here I was thinking I'd been a complete idiot and then I looked at the time - not quite as fast as I'd hoped to run given the way I've been training lately but my best for a couple of years.

So - as others have suggested, by going all out I ruined that race but now I know that my target times are possible if I run a bit more sensibly. I don't know if I would have had the same feeling if I'd just raced the way I normally do. A really valuable experiment, I think.

As someone earlier in the thread said, if you're putting in a good effort it's going to hurt either way, so you might as well learn something from the pain.