Was your college coach GOOD????????

Yah

mf'ing vin lannana. So yeah.

I ran for three coaches at two schools. Two were great (both as athletes and as coaches), one was mediocre (former good athlete who was still ticked at Carter for boycotting the 80s Olympics, as it was his one chance to make an Olympic team and treated coaching as a job rather than as something he was passionate about). The great coaches were worth it. As far as overtraining is concerned, you have to know your limits and control the amount of work you put in on your morning runs and how much sleep you get. Most of the people I knew in college that over trained either ran too much on their morning runs, or didn't get enough sleep. Over training doesn't always fall on the coach.

Bill Dellinger - Amazing!

Martin Smith - Horrible person and even worse of a coach.

Tony Veney - Had no business ever being anything more than a high school PE teacher.

George Watts - Great man and very good coach.

go green wrote:

mf'ing vin lannana. So yeah.

who?

Dellinger and Smith huh? So you were at Oregon around 98? That is back when I ran. Wasn't at Oregon though. Though I no doubt ran against you.

My college coach was an ignoramus AND an idiot. Got a bug up his ass after reading "LSD: The Humane Way to Train," had me doing almost entirely slow distance, stunted my (limited, I'll admit) potential, and eventually crippled me permanently when I was only 20.

I was self-coached.

Highly respected nation-wide but not that good IMO. Catered to the girls and seemed intimidated by the guys. I was a bit of a jacka$$ and felt I could get by on talent alone. He never smacked me upside the head and gave me a reality check. Should have had a closer eye on my off the track antics and had me running many more miles. He trained the Mid-D crew at 65 mpw max and this included a sub 4 miler. Mixed feelings on the guy . . . 6.5/10

My HS coach on the other hand was aces. 10/10.

changed handle wrote:

Highly respected nation-wide but not that good IMO. Catered to the girls and seemed intimidated by the guys. I was a bit of a jacka$$ and felt I could get by on talent alone. He never smacked me upside the head and gave me a reality check. Should have had a closer eye on my off the track antics and had me running many more miles. He trained the Mid-D crew at 65 mpw max and this included a sub 4 miler. Mixed feelings on the guy . . . 6.5/10

My HS coach on the other hand was aces. 10/10.

Blaming your coach because of your partying? You sound like a real champ.

I had 4 coaches at the same school in 4 years. The first one was f'n crazy, he lived in the school's art wing, got thrown in the pool during preseason with his suit on. Finally got sacked for using the school's credit card on dating websites and for sending us to a meet at Notre Dame (we were in MA) without telling the school. To cover costs for the trip he asked us to go door to door selling candy....Little did I know at the time he would be the best one.

The second coach was a lot of talk, little follow through, very arrogant, but kind of nice I guess, in a weird way. He didn't spend any time trying to individualize workouts, kind of just throw spaghetti at the wall. He was cool to me so I was sorry to see him go, but excited to get a coach that might take it serious and bring the talent out in our team, but I learned, "The devil you know, is better than the devil you do not."

The third coach sucked. Huge fat guy that coached track at a tech school high school and had no running background. He asked me to reduce my summer mileage from 70-80 to 10-20 a week for cross country. He banned the men's team from taking their shirt off during 90+ degree days. Also, tried to ban us running on roads that we had been running on for 3 years and limit us to running on the small campus. Creep to the girls. Just gave cookie cutter Rara try hard Disney cookie cutter speeches...kicked a senior off the team that disagreed with his "training". It was the first time I thought about giving up my scholarship he was such a POS, but being poor, I decided to keep going. He only coached XC and not track like the others, when he finally got sacked, it was the first time I was happy someone lost their job.

4th coach was a female track coach. She had a throwing background. However, she was open to communication and actually wanted the runners to do good and didn't have a huggggge ego, so it was a nice change of pace.

I chose my college on who gave me the most money. The school I didn't choose, but did a recruiting trip with and really liked, I saw them at a meet senior year. They had the same coach, he was going over individual race plans and his athletes were killing it. I felt like I was in a lifetime movie and was seeing what could of been. Whatever, I made the most of a shitty situation and plan on giving my kids a college fund so they don't have to go through the shit I did.

Juco coach 10/10. Everybody loved running for the guy and his teams won 16 straight conference titles as well as numerous nor-cal titles and one state title. We lost it for him on year 17 and I felt like a turd. Training probably wasn't the best, but hey, it was the 90s and everybody was going with less miles and really high intensity.

NCAA DII coach. 4/10. Produced some very good runners...DII national champions. Personality could be a bit overbearing and by the end of most of our adventures at the school, most of us had a strong dislike for her. Had a friend whose father was hospitalized and the friend wanted to go back home for the weekend to spend time with dad. She gave him crap for missing a workout she had scheduled for Saturday morning in early september, wanted him to postpone driving home until after the workout was done.

I am surprised by how many people have had bad experiences with coaches at the college level. From what I've seen, it is really hard to get hired on as a college track coach. Seems like there is too much coaching talent out there for so many people to have crappy coaches. I've applied for a few jobs at juco/dII levels and been beaten out by people who've ended up doing very good jobs.

Having run for my coach for 2 years i can say he does suck. I'm a decent runner that got looked at by some decent track/xc programs but picked a lower end D1 school because of money. Have had some okay races since college because i do my own thing but whenever i have to deal with the coach it is a horrible experience.

High school I was coached by two great coaches one better than the other. HS Coach 1 was 9/10, he really cared about your progression and wanted to drive your passion into the future. HS Coach 2 knew how to train us but terrible communication, 7/10.

JUCO I had two coaches as well. Both 10/10. The assistant coach took over after one quarter to become what I consider to be my best Coach of all time. Caring, compassionate, loved the sport, personally invested in his athletes.

Small D1 school I had my worst Coach, 2/10. He thinks his over training ideology is good somehow but just leads to a few studs but otherwise many many exhausted broken athletes.

I went to a school with a massive track team that cared little about distance and XC. Our distance coach knows his stuff and had lots of success in the past as a coach though I believe under a different head track coach where he's got more freedom to run the distance program he'd be so much better. That being said, the ego driven, uncompromising, outdated attitude of our head coach keeps our distance coach from sending us to big meets out west (he doesn't get why distance runners need to run in California), training properly (due to over racing). He also only cares about conference meaning everything is geared toward that rather than post-season. Our distance coach is so invested into our head coach he just allows him to dictate how the distance program operates. Even our cross country season is decided by our head coach who knows very little about distance. Which I took issue with seeing as he's been in the game for a long time. Also scored meets during the year matter way too much considering how little they really matter in retrospect. Overall the distance coach knows his stuff but doesn't really handle things with out less than ideal head coach very well. Distance coach I'd say 7/10, head coach 4/10. Also our distance coach is really only great for 3k and up. 800/1500 he's not poor but he's lacking in the speed department. He actually switched me from being a miler to the 10k where I had success but I know my place was in the 1500.

Coach my first four years was more of a friend than a coach. He was really talented and thought that running certain times was "easy." He would get frustrated when the training wouldn't work out the way he wanted. Took it too personally. Thankfully, he was aware enough to realize his short-comings, and he resigned.

The coach my last year was much better. He's still coaching there now and has great success. My complaint is that he's not very loyal. Once you've graduated, he has no use for you anymore.

Two of them were awful, two very very good although not perfect. There are good coaches and minds around LRC so that is sustaining. Institutions and regions can have politics that interfere with good coaching. So the internet has done much in the way as to keep integrity and grassroots community and knowledge alive.

M.C. Confusing wrote:

Dellinger and Smith huh? So you were at Oregon around 98? That is back when I ran. Wasn't at Oregon though. Though I no doubt ran against you.

Where did you go? Events?

My college coach was very good. Passionate about the sport(s). You could tell he was really more of a XC coach than overall t/f. D2, so most in the top 5 were about 26 min for 5 mi xc race.

I'm going into my senior year of college and I have had two coaches. First one sucked. Had him for 1.5 years. Workouts not individualized, copy/pasted the same training year to year and completely half-assed his job. Would never measure interval courses and told us he did. I think he was mostly in it to have an easy job. He also just recruited a certain event in the NAIA just so he could say he coached all americans and get free trips to nationals. Giving this track event MAJOR $ in XC for not even coming to practice. Overall, 0/10. He couldn't communicate and didn't care.

New coach is decent. He has his parts that I don't like, but overall he listens to me. I am the front runner by a lot, so I think he gives me that freedom for a reason. Good person for sure. Good recruiter. He cares about making us better. However, he never has a plan. It's just made up week by week which leads to unsteadyness and periodizing becomes much more difficult. I always have to push him to make a plan. Plus, I ask for explanations constantly (because I like to learn, not being rude) and he just randomly says something to try and satisfy, but I see through it. Doesn't mean he is wrong, but it's kind of funny to me. He tries to sound scientific lol. But, overall, 8/10.

I had D1 potential in HS, but chose NAIA because of the full ride. Had offers from major D1 schools, but not enough to justify the trip with my frugalness. Still, I am improving and happy with how I've developed.