A little more infoWell, one of the things that is bothering me is that my JV boys have won 6 straight league titles, dating back to 2010, but we have not won a varsity title in that time. Some of that is bad luck (we had a team that should have won a couple of years ago but a rival team that is always strong had a pair of twins transfer in and put them over the top. A few years before that, my #1 guy dropped out of school. Another reason we win at the JV level is that we have good numbers and can afford to leave talented sophomores on the JV squad while other teams in our league have brought them up to varsity. Don't get me wrong, if I had a soph (or frosh) that I thought could help at the varsity level, I'd bring him (her) up. We just have more depth so that helps at the lower levels.Boys and girls do fairly similar training. Girls more or less end up doing just a little less of everything. Here is a quick summary.Summer: Mileage period, 100 days, ends the day before our league opener. Usually, 60-80% of my varsity kids will make 500 total miles for that period. Some will make 700, some will end up at 300-400. Mostly easy mileage, but some biomechanics work and some tempo efforts in there. Even though the bulk of the varsity boys end up somewhere around 5 miles/day for the summer, the beginning of summer is pretty low and in through Mid July-Early August, they might get up to 45-50 mpw. My best boys have gotten up around 70mpw for periods during the summer.;Early Season: (The last 4 weeks of our summer mileage overlap with this period). For me, early season extends to the end of September. We don't transition into anything that I would consider "hard" during the early season. We live where it is very hot (we had a few weeks last year where the temps were in the 103-108 range. Last year the heat waves continued all the way to the end of September). Small, rural school, very large school district. Transportation to and from school is difficult for a lot of kids. This precludes any serious effort at morning practice (I did institute a thursday morning run for kids that could get there this past year). Because of the heat, it makes it tough to do any longer sustained efforts. Thursday morning runs last year were the only early season practices where the kids ran continuously for more than an hour. (Although some would meet up on Saturday for a longer run in the hills). As far as quality efforts during the early season, we rely a lot on cruise intervals (once again, because of the heat. I want the kids to be able to get water breaks). A really standard early workout for us is 5-6 x 1200 on the cross country course at 30-45 sec per mile slower than pace achieved on our pre-season time trial. This means if a kid comes in and runs 11 flat for 2 miles on our TT, he might run 5 x 1200 in the mid 4:30s with about a minute rest. The other "hard" efforts for the week are hill repeats. We live in a flat area and there is only one hill within running distance of the school (about 2 miles). We'll run there, do somewhere between 6-10 x 300 with a jog down recovery, then run back to school and do some core. The repeats are at about 3k-5k effort. Total volume during the early season kind of drops down when we go to after school practice because most kids really struggle with the heat. Top varsity guys kind of settle into the 35-50mpw range. A few kids will double up on their own.We may do one lactate tolerance workout before the end of september, this usually ends up being 20x200 @ about 1 mile RP, with 30 seconds recovery. That is pretty tough for the kids when the temps are near or above 100. We usually run about 4 races during this period, so if you include the pre-seaosn time trials, we are getting about 16-17 miles of race effort during the early season.I feel that, apart from the safety issues early in the season, the cautious approach we take ensures that the whole team gets a quality training stimulus (whereas a harder a continuous tempo run might give them a better stimulus, but also might result in a wasted day of training if the kids all blow up and jog the back half of the workout.
pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:
What are your goals? Are you dissatisfied with your results? Is there a reason this is coming up now?
How about a compromise and pushing a little harder on the Seniors?
There are 2 reasons I've been thinking about this.
1: I have a very talented group of girls this year. State Championship is a possibility (although remote). State Podium is a possibilty, and less remote. Regional championship and league championship are very likely for the girls. The boys are senior heavy (should be 6 seniors and a junior on the varsity squad this year). Both squads are kind of at watershed moments. The girls have talent at all levels and a great performance this year could propel the program forward for the forseeable future. This group of boys has been solid since they came in as freshmen and really want to go out strong. Our league is a bit down for both genders, so we should be able to win there even with the cautious approach. For the girls, we should be able to play it safe and win region also. Doing anything beyond those levels will require some more effort and more risk.