Anon wrote:
My daughter run's the 1600, 800, and 400 in the sprint medley.
The day before a track meet for the last couple of weeks he has her and others race an 800 at full speed! She is racing the day before the meet! She has some shin splints and he is going to break them (he has them do something fast about every day) and they will get slower times in the meets because they are not rested.
This week she races the 1600 on Tues and the 800 and 400 on the medley on Wed and she has a race on Saturday (all three of those) and today, Monday before the 1600 race, he had them race an 800 and then do some distance! She said she didn't go all out this time but still she won't be as rested as she could have been for tomorrow. Not sure how to approach the coach. Also, I think they rarely run anything faster than 800 pace in training even when doing shorter intervals. A little hard to lower the 800 or run a good 400 off of that.
Yet another HS coach who supports my argument that the majority know so little and often do more harm than good.
I agree with the post that she should sandbag it at practices and run at a comfortable pace that will help her prepare for the next day's race.
I will go one step further on this advice. Most high schoolers run far too many races of which most of these races mean nothing. I question why she is even running multiple events on consecutive days.
Look into how many league races each athlete must run just to qualify for the zones/regionals whatever and have the athletes run the bare minimum. Also your better athletes should tank most of these races or use them to try different strategies and scenarios (running from the back, surges, getting boxed in, etc)
Then as the season nears a close and the races count your team will be fresher and perform better. It also throws the other racers off when suddenly these guys/girls who finished at the back of the pack are now challenging for the lead.
My 2 cents.......