I've kind of been at odds with our CC coach. He seems to want to taper before every meet. We've talked about it, but I don't think it sinks in. We have a race Friday night late, and he's moved practice tomorrow so that they'll run about 3 miles at most. If the kids don't run on their own on the weekends they're getting 25 -33 mpw at most. What kind of milage did/do you run the day before a race?
I always do 5xMile at 5k pace the day before a race. This is the only way to succeed in high school athletics. You can't run hard if you don't run hard. You should get the coach fired and take over his position.
Vive la révolution
I should have said serious replies only, but this board is full of seagull's who like to crap all over any new thread. So if you feel like giving stupid responses like the one above, lie down until the feeling passes.
I like 4m, probably somewhere near 10:00 pace
^i could do 8-9 easy and be fine though, I guess if this race was end of season, all I cared about I'd do 4
Wish I could edit these haha. I guess not fine, but not really noticeably affected
The training objective should be to run as many miles as you can while still executing the key workouts each week.
Running 3 miles on a Thursday can work well if allows the kids to get there homework done early and get a good nights rest.
The mileage can be made up with a long cool down or over the weekend. If the kids are unwilling to run on their own over the weekend then I wouldn't be too concerned about the outcome if there season. 2-3 extra miles on a Friday wont matter if the weekend total is zero.
Incorrect spelling in the title does not deserve serious responses.
Read the rules.
Runners_Dad wrote:
I should have said serious replies only, but this board is full of seagull's who like to crap all over any new thread. So if you feel like giving stupid responses like the one above, lie down until the feeling passes.
With that kind of attitude, I choose not to offer the calm and reasoned response I had readied when I read your original post.
It does not surprise me that you are at odds with the coach.
Is no one gonna mention the fact that running easy the day before a race is not tapering for it? What do you want OP? Do you want the kids to run a workout the day before a meet so that they get demoralized and injured?
This coach sounds like he has a good head on his shoulders. Good for him that he doesn't listen to your trash opinion
Stop being a helicopter parent. We hate parents like that.
We used to do 3-6 miles for pre-race days depending on the time of year it was.
Pre-race day was (and still is) almost always around 5 miles. 4 at the least, 6 at the most if it's an important race (I've ran 8-10 before races I'm not too concerned with).
Runners_Dad wrote:
I've kind of been at odds with our CC coach. He seems to want to taper before every meet. We've talked about it, but I don't think it sinks in. We have a race Friday night late, and he's moved practice tomorrow so that they'll run about 3 miles at most. If the kids don't run on their own on the weekends they're getting 25 -33 mpw at most. What kind of milage did/do you run the day before a race?
Are the kids supposed to run on their own over the weekend?
An easy day before a meet is not tapering in any conventional usage of the term. If these kids are running 25 miles over 5 days, they're averaging 5 miles per day, and if they're doing proper warm-ups and cooldowns, race day is 7-9 miles (which is a massive number for someone doing 25mpw), and we'll just assume their long run is 6-7 miles. That leaves 10-12 miles over 3 other days in the week, so a 3 miler the day before a race isn't even a 'taper', its a normal distance day.
As for what others do: The lowest mileage (men) on my team do around 50mpw at this point in the season. They do 25 or 30 minutes plus some drills and strides the day before most meets (we'll train through some meets and do more the day before, but not often). Another group will do about 65mpw, and they go 40 minutes the day before an early season meet, while our 80+mpw'ers do around 50 minutes. 5 or 6 of the other days in the week, I've given my athletes a serious stimulus through volume, intensity, or both, at the very least I'm going to make sure they're most rested for the day they have to compete against people. So that's athletes doing 2, 2.5, and 3+ times your child's weekly mileage, and they're doing maybe 1.5, 2, and 2.5 times your child's pre-meet totals.
The worst coach I've ever been around was my coach while competing as an undergrad. One of their most poignant shortcomings was doing way too much the day before races where we athletes were expected to perform at a high level.
None of this is to say the training situation you describe is ideal, but what they're doing the day before the meet would be about the last thing I'd look at in their current schedule.
Thanks for the replies. There is not a lot of guidance on what they should do on their off days on the weekends. My son and I do an hour bike ride sometimes, other times he gets some additional miles. The coach has changed since last year where it seemed like the 2 days before a meet were pretty short & easy. It's very early in the season and when you have ease up this early it can affect how you close out the season. Last season they ony ran about 20-25 miles Monday - Saturday (if Saturday was a race day). This year his goal is to keep it above 30, but he tends to fall back into his comfort zone of shorter runs. When he started coaching this program he had under 20 kids total for both teams, and he coached conservatively to ensure he had enough runners to make the season. We now have 3X the number of runners. Other programs in the area tend to run more total miles (40-50 per week). Dipping too much 1-2 days before meets can really make this difficult.
Some Advice - are you training college or high school athletes at those mileages? Thanks again for your well written advice.
College
We used to do like 10x400 with *no* time goal(so naturally we, a bunch of 17-18min guys, ran like 75s) the day before a race when I was in hs. Compared to track, my team was a joke at cross.
Runners_Dad wrote:
I've kind of been at odds with our CC coach. He seems to want to taper before every meet. We've talked about it, but I don't think it sinks in. We have a race Friday night late, and he's moved practice tomorrow so that they'll run about 3 miles at most. If the kids don't run on their own on the weekends they're getting 25 -33 mpw at most. What kind of milage did/do you run the day before a race?
I always did about 70-85 a week in mileage before and during 11th and 12th grade. Not sure what you are talking about? Is that French?
Runners_Dad wrote:
I should have said serious replies only, but this board is full of seagull's who like to crap all over any new thread. So if you feel like giving stupid responses like the one above, lie down until the feeling passes.
Full of seagull's what? Don't keep us in suspense!!
I always do 5x18 the day before a 5k.
But seriously, if this is the biggest problem you have with a coach, you should count yourself lucky. And you should have a much bigger problem with the lack of weekend workouts. HS kids have most of their free time on weekends. Without structure, some will do nothing, some will overtrain, and some will do non-sensical cross-training.