Have LRers in school forgotten what a coach is for?

I'm a highschool senior whose coaches know very little. I have a separate track and Xc coach, and both communicate very little. If it were up to them I'd be doing 25 to 30 miles a week. It's gotten to a point where they know I know more about long distance running then them. My track coach literally let's me do what I want during practice.

With that being said that could possibly be why people come to these boards with those questions.

They have a passion but their coaches are unqualified.

maybe cause the coach sucks wrote:

I'm a highschool senior whose coaches know very little. I have a separate track and Xc coach, and both communicate very little. If it were up to them I'd be doing 25 to 30 miles a week. It's gotten to a point where they know I know more about long distance running then them. My track coach literally let's me do what I want during practice.

With that being said that could possibly be why people come to these boards with those questions.

They have a passion but their coaches are unqualified.

I remember being an arrogant teen who knew everything...

Not all coaches are good. The bad coaches will make runners worse than if the runners trained on their own. In fact there are considerably more bad coaches than knowledgable coaches. This is across all levels.

Three explanations:

1) clueless kids.

2) good kids with clueless coaches.

3) good kids with good but time-pressed coaches.

Kids may not be getting much advice about pacing or race tactics beyond "go out and run as fast as you can." Then they get assigned to a new distance, or they think they've reached a new level of fitness, but the coach has too many other things to worry about so they don't get the advising they need before a race. So then they post questions here.

My highschool team ran 25 mpw, with two races and one interval workout per week.

Our distance coach for track had high jumped in college and never raced longer than the 110 hurdles.

maybe cause the coach sucks wrote:

I'm a highschool senior whose coaches know very little. I have a separate track and Xc coach, and both communicate very little. If it were up to them I'd be doing 25 to 30 miles a week. It's gotten to a point where they know I know more about long distance running then them. My track coach literally let's me do what I want during practice.

With that being said that could possibly be why people come to these boards with those questions.

They have a passion but their coaches are unqualified.

I thought my HS coach was an idiot. He was nearing retirement so he didn't put a lot of effort in but I dismissed his training thinking I knew better.

Funny thing is I dug out my out HS training plans and it was brilliant. All the stuff we think as current he had on that training schedule.

Funny thing was he coached a gal who still has the US record. We had a 1:52 800 runner too. But I knew better.

It's not that the coaches are bad but they may just be happy to be successful at a very local level. I went to a small school and it was not uncommon to win our league but rare that anybody did well at the state level. I started running road races before my freshman year and saw the times other runners were running so I kept running more miles until I was running comparable times. The first xc race I ran for the team I was second runner. I always ran all the workouts with the team in xc and track but I would also tack on an extra 2 or 3 miles after the workout if it wasn't that hard. I also ran 3 or 4 miles in the morning some. The coaches actually thought that was great that I was doing extra.

The other reason is that a lot of states limit when coaches can "coach". It is a little more now but when I went to school we started xc practice toward the end of august and was done the beginning of November. We ran on our own until around feb when we started practice for a couple indoor meets and then outdoor track. Once track was over, we ran on our own for 3 months until xc again. Basically we weren't coached at all for 6 months of the year.

There are a lot of high school coaches that are very bad.

There are also a lot of punk high school kids that think they know everything.

There is your answer.