How often should you race the steeple chase?

Coach:

Your plan sounds good. We recently graduated a four-time A-A and two-time D. III National Champion in the steeplechaase, and I tried to not race him more than 2-3 times before Nationals, which now includes trials and finals. So we might run a rust buster early in the season, then have him steeple somewhere where there would be good weather and good competition, and if needed, one more toward the end of the year if he was chasing a National qualifying time. Like you, we do hurdle drills twice a week, and our steeplers do some of their track workouts over hurdles once a week. We also have them practice the water jump several times during the year as we approach important steeplechase efforts. The 2-3 steeple races, practice over hurdles, drills, etc. will do what you need to do to keep them sharp, and running a full 3000 meter steeple 4 days apart/4 in one year can really beat them up, not to mention risk injury, and I say this from many years experience coaching this event. Best of luck with your guys.

Thanks for the feedback. This is helpful to have someone more experienced confirm that what we are doing is on track. Last year I coached a conference champion in the steeple and he tried running it again to try to get a qualifying standard the week after conference and did very poorly and said he just felt like crap, so that makes me hesitant to do them in back to back weeks unless it's a last ditch end of season qualifying effort. Our kids also seem to recovery slowly from hurdling, so that also makes me think less is more in this situation.

I have less experience than the above poster but I would not recommend racing 4 days apart. I don't necessarily think there is anything wrong with doing back-to-back weeks maybe once during the season, but I think people usually need at least 2 weeks before an "important" race. Though obviously once you get into championship and trials/finals that isn't possible.

Another way to look at it is that your runner likely won't improve their hurdling much in the 4 days between meets, so they may not drop as much time as they did in the previous race.

agree wrote:

I have less experience than the above poster but I would not recommend racing 4 days apart. I don't necessarily think there is anything wrong with doing back-to-back weeks maybe once during the season, but I think people usually need at least 2 weeks before an "important" race. Though obviously once you get into championship and trials/finals that isn't possible.

Another way to look at it is that your runner likely won't improve their hurdling much in the 4 days between meets, so they may not drop as much time as they did in the previous race.

Thanks for sharing. I agree with your thinking. The head coach's rational for possibly racing again this Wed was that they do it at NCAA's etc with prelims & finals, but my argument against that would be that for most runners that is the last race of the season so there is nothing after it to hurt by doing that (and they have no choice in spacing prelims and finals.) The few that run NCAA's and USA's typically don't do as well at USA's after going through the NCAA rounds a few weeks before. Also, those runners tend to be stronger and are better athletes than most of our athletes here.

Non-steepler steeple coach wrote:

Thanks for sharing. I agree with your thinking. The head coach's rational for possibly racing again this Wed was that they do it at NCAA's etc with prelims & finals, but my argument against that would be that for most runners that is the last race of the season so there is nothing after it to hurt by doing that (and they have no choice in spacing prelims and finals.) The few that run NCAA's and USA's typically don't do as well at USA's after going through the NCAA rounds a few weeks before. Also, those runners tend to be stronger and are better athletes than most of our athletes here.

Yep, that's the way I see it too. Another thing you may have already done is ask their athletes what they want to do. I know that when I steepled, it took a couple days to really get back to 100%. They might not be enthusiastic about racing it again so soon. I would think that freshmen, being new to the event, would take a longer time to recover as well. But that also depends on the individual.

That's not a bad idea to ask the runners. I agree with the longer recovery necessary for newer, weaker runners. We did workout last Wed that was 8x400 alternating b/w flat 3k pace and 3k steeple pace w/ hurdles on every other repeat (2 repeats had water barriers) and it went well, but I think it was harder for them to recover from that than I intended and half of them ran kinda flat on Sat and ran the same time as 2 weeks ago. Last year we did that workout and the guys ran great after it, but given that these kids this year seem to be struggling to recover from even that mile of hurdling 3 days before the race, I don't think they would do well racing back to back steeples that close together (and we probably will not do that workout again the same week as a steeple race.)

You should not have them run any hard race the week before conference. Throw them in the 1500 or 400 hurdles (if anything at all) and have them work on form over hurdles during the week (4 X 1 mile repeats at a little faster than race pace over hurdles is a great workout).

joedirt wrote:

You should not have them run any hard race the week before conference. Throw them in the 1500 or 400 hurdles (if anything at all) and have them work on form over hurdles during the week (4 X 1 mile repeats at a little faster than race pace over hurdles is a great workout).

Thanks for the insight. Some of them want to run an 800 the week before conference, so I will probably let them do just that or take that week off.

The other group I'm trying to decide how much racing is appropriate is the 5k group. This one freshman girl has run it 3 weeks in a row and wants do run it again on Wed night (ran it last sat, meet this wed, meet following thur, and then conf following fri/sat). I want to give her one more shot at it to try to PR before conference, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to run two 5k's four days apart and four in a row nor do I think it's a great idea to run the 5k hard the week before conference where I'm trying to convince her to do the 10k. This girl is kind of afraid of the speed of the 1500 and probably won't agree to do the 10k if she can't run one more 5k to try to PR first, so I'm not sure if it would be better to run it wed night and then take a week off or do a 1500 the next meet or run a 1500 this meet and 5k the week before conference. (Ideally I wouldn't have this meet schedule or would skip a meet, but I'm not head coach.) Or third option is make her unhappy and just do a 1500, week off, and then 10k which would be more idea, not I'm not sure it's worth upsetting her over this since she might be more of a contributor next year so I want her to have a good experience this year.

Less racing is probably the better approach, especially at the longer distances. The smartest coach I have witnessed over the years is Wetmore. He really tries to minimize the number of races he puts his athletes in (I was amazed that he actually put a dmr team together this year for nationals, because he typically does not stress the relays). It has worked out pretty well. The only reason you might make an exception is if she is close to getting a qualifier for nationals and you don't think the conference meet will be fast enough to let her chase a time. Other than that, you should reign her in and explain the reasoning.

Nice humble brag Leduke

I would concur with the above opinions that you're on the right track. An all-out steeple takes a little time to recover from. Even with trials and finals, it's best that athletes do as little work in the prelims as they can get away with. I once worked with an athlete that ran 4 steeples in ten days while chasing a standard. Though she ultimately made it to the championships, race #4, you can imagine how that went. She was pretty spent and I wouldn't recommend it. If you can spare a week or two in between to be able to work on skills and fitness that's the way to go. I usually recommend steeple athletes work on their 1500 speed on "off" weeks, but occasionally an open 3k or 5k could be beneficial too. That way they continue to get race experience and can contribute to team scoring without the wear and tear of back to back steeples.

I ran the steeple all 4 years at a DII school. I ended up with a PR just over 9:00. I loved the event and my junior year I was the fastest DII guy to not qualify for NCAAs. My first two years I ran 4 steeples in the season, a couple of 1500s and one 5,000. My 3rd or 4th steeple was my season best. My junior and senior years I ran 5 steeples chasing NCAA qualifiers and my 5th steeple was slower than my 3rd or 4th in both seasons.

I'm not LeDuc you troll. If you read the name I posted, you might guess that I was his coach, and I can tell you that Mike is/was the last guy to talk about himself.