Does a knowledgeable coach tell his kids to "go out hard?"

Fulton J. Sheen wrote:

I think it's a mistake because you are telling a kid to ruin their race.

Correct. A good coach would not say that.

It all depends on the course. At Holmdel (NJ) the state championship course has a wide starting line that narrows fairly quickly into an entrance in the woods that goes uphill toward the "bowl." If your team doesn't go our hard, it is tremendously unlikely that they will be in decent position to obtain a spot on the podium. So, at Holmdel the norm seems to be to go out hard. I'm from a perennial top-10 NJ XC team, and we specifically practiced running the first 400m pretty damn hard and then recovering a bit during the next 1K or so, before turning on the kick in the final K.

Coach X..... explain what you mean by "flys"? and how/when you use them in a season?/ Please and Thank You.

Holmdel? wrote:

It all depends on the course. At Holmdel (NJ) the state championship course has a wide starting line that narrows fairly quickly into an entrance in the woods that goes uphill toward the "bowl." .

You should have all your runners sprint all out so they are at the front. Then you could hog the whole course and slow the pace way down as long as you could. The other teams would have to run much slower than they wanted to as your two fastest runners built up a big lead. You could beat a lot of teams that were better than you!!!!!

The PA state course has a net downhill first mile, so no sh!t you go out hard. The effort would be closer to race pace but since you are going downhill that same effort will produce a faster mile.

PAC’s point is irrelevant.

Holmdel? wrote:

It all depends on the course. At Holmdel (NJ) the state championship course has a wide starting line that narrows fairly quickly into an entrance in the woods that goes uphill toward the "bowl." If your team doesn't go our hard, it is tremendously unlikely that they will be in decent position to obtain a spot on the podium. So, at Holmdel the norm seems to be to go out hard. I'm from a perennial top-10 NJ XC team, and we specifically practiced running the first 400m pretty damn hard and then recovering a bit during the next 1K or so, before turning on the kick in the final K.

I've got news for you. If you study high school stat sheets you will find that almost everyone runs their fastest 1/4 of the race at the beginning, the next 1/4 will be their slowest, the third 1/4 will be their second slowest, and the last 1/4 will be their second fastest. It's called "catching your second wind." It's what beginners do.

In cross country and sometimes track & field too (depending on many factors) the best way to run is even paced. Within that even paced run you also do not want to speed up and slow down constantly. Kids have a hard time with that.

I like the idea of following or staying with a couple of kids that you can locate during the race and going off them.

I've seen races that start out with a downhill. The last thing you want to do is start out super hard if hills await you later on. This is called inexperience when you do that.

I think you always have to consider where you are likely to finish in a race and go from there. If you will be 70th, why are you in 25th at the bottom of that hill?

That makes no sense whatsoever.

Actually there are knowledgeable coaches that do tell there kids to go out hard, but they do it with a solid plan. They also train their kids to do it and know that in the longer races it may not work. It's a better plan to "go out hard," for the 800/mile than the longer races. I do think there are many instances when you can come back and run even pace and win even in those races.

I also think that coaches may mean different things when they say "we go out hard." One very experienced and successful coach in my state says they always do it. However from my point of view he has few kids that actually do that. They are well coached and operate within their abilities.

You have to start at a reasonable pace. It is possible to start too slow, although it never happened to me in a race. On the other hand I started too fast hundreds of times!

So by phsyiological boundaries one can't go beyond the 7-10 seconds of anaerobic capacity so "going out hard" means that if your first mile is your fastest mile, you ran slower than you could.

Having the mental tenacity to run within your capacity on the first mile means you can have the physical tenacity to run to your capacity for the whole race.

There are several good reasons to have kids "go out hard". Here is a list; it may not be exhaustive.

1. If the field is large, the typical pacing is stupid, and the course makes passing difficult. In that case, the time lost by uneven pacing may be less than the time that would be lost by having to work through a ridiculous pack.

2. The runner's perception of "hard" is equivalent to running the pace that they can maintain evenly throughout the race. This is the case for runners who don't know what they're capable of.

3. You're going to fartlek the meet for training purposes.

Notice the following is NOT a reason to go out hard:

1. All the medalists have gone out hard, so you must go out hard to be a medalist. This is illogical to the point of absurdity.

Analogy: until the 50's, no one had won an Olympic medal using fiberglass or carbon-fiber poles, so people should have continued vaulting with bamboo, steel, and aluminum.

Better vaulting technology was a scientifically superior approach. The physics of it all determined the superior strategy. The same applies to even pacing. In the absence of weird factors like those listed above, even pacing is simply a scientifically superior way to race.

My college coach preached running hard from the gun until you die...... he had 7 national titles and 6 runner-up trophies to back up his philosphy.

TJ wrote:

Coach X..... explain what you mean by "flys"? and how/when you use them in a season?/ Please and Thank You.

Simply, flys are all out sprints over a short distance. Many refer to them as "flying 30s" since 30m is a commonly used distance, though there are benefits to going out to 50-60m. The idea is to focus on that 7-10 sec of "free" energy stored in the muscles.

We would do them at least once weekly, and sometimes twice, throughout the season in the early part of a practice session. The ATP/CP recovery takes 3 min or more, so allow plenty of inactive recovery between reps. With my distance runners, we might do a set of 4-6.

The state course in Pa is misleading. The first mile is BY FAR the easiest mile. Girls can go out conservatively and still run 5:55, then average just above 6 min pace and medal. It's not that they went hard, the first mile is just the easiest mile on the course. This was particularly true of the pre 2016 course (where most of your data comes from), but still holds true to some degree now.

I'll disagree it's irrelevant. Some kids hear numbers at that first mile and freak out (I've seen it with a 4:59 female miler, who went out in 5:45 at Hershey) and then ease up way too much because they are focused on a number. If you at least prepare your kids with knowledge of the number and the other factors, you can avoid some of the mental issues.

I will agree it's a net downhill but kids don't always realize that and just hear a number that's "fast/hard" and can freak out.

I actually think that third mile is pretty easy too, it's just the Aloha Hills shred your legs in the middle.

What I am indicating is that terming a particular pace as "hard" is irrelevant on that course for the first mile if it is "hard" just because it is faster than normal. In fact, it can be misleading. I coach my kids to understand what "hard" feels like. "Hard" is not a time but an effort.

We discuss what splits might come up depending on the course in our pre-race discussion so they are prepared when they hear something faster/slower than "typical".

Not coaching kids on what paces to expect on a particular course is just as bad as telling them to go out hard.

I agree the 3rd mile is relatively easy as well, especially in new version of the course. Poop Out Hill does significantly increase the time though, especially with the "gravel" that covers it now. It can easily add 4-5 sec to the mile pace by itself!

Fulton J. Sheen wrote:

I think it's a mistake because you are telling a kid to ruin their race.

(Going out hard could mean at a reasonably fast pace for you, not anyone else.

This is hard to coach and I would never use the phrase "go out hard," with anyone I was coaching for that reason. It is a mistake to go out very slow, I am not talking about that. However I want my kids to utilize their energy expenditure in an intelligent way.)

To me teaching racing strategy is the hardest thing to teach in coaching because it has to be fitted to the individual.

Comments, suggestions, discussion or divisive arguments?

There is a difference between going "out hard" and sprinting. My high school coach was great at teaching racing strategy and it showed in the championship season. Here is what we did:

1. In very early and small meets we would intentionally go out very slow as a pack of 7-10 runners (~6:00 pace) and see how many we could reel in over the final 2 miles. This taught us to run through the finish as there were always runners in front of us and because we were running faster it was easier mentally to reel them in.

2. At a few meets we would do "fox and the hounds" where he would select one of our slower varsity guys who he thought was ready for a big jump to run the first mile AS FAST as they possibly could while the rest of us ran ~6:00 for the first mile and then tried to run the first runner down. This usually resulted in the "fox" to run at or near his PR because he was running scared, and would usually run a BIG PR the meet afterwards because he was more familiar with pushing his limits. This also screwed up our competitors since most of the other coaches were lazy and just instructed their runners to key off of our team.

3. At our larger and more important meets we would talk through race strategy the night before and knowing where our limits are and what paces feel like our team would usually be in pretty good position after the first mile, maintain position in the second mile, and be picking off runners the final mile and negative split the course in most cases.

I think one of the biggest mistakes coaches in high school and college to a lesser extent is to race every single meet. These "games" make the races less mentally taxing and allow the runners to work on specific portions of the race (eg. finishing strong, getting out comfortably hard, maintaining pace, etc.) and helps to pull all these components together when it matters most at the end of the season. Who cares if your team wins the "Joe Schmoe Invite" in September anyways?

It's incredibly important to teach the skill of restraint in the opening stages of HS cross country.

For one, if you let kids just fly out of the gate and simply learn how to suffer, their experience in more tactical races will be limited. They'll amount to being known as the runners who always fade in late stages of a a race, or who lack the essential finishing speed in contrast to similarly talented runners from other teams.

Secondly, they'll end up running superior times if they learn how to approach the first mile mindfully. They'll have the ability to make and follow moves, and feed on the mental energy gained by passing droves of inadequately coached kids mid and late race.

An argument can be made that you can learn from going out too hard in that you learn how to salvage a race in spite of making tactical errors. For championship racing, it can often be vital to go out harder than ideal. But, to have kids race too hard early on in races as a regular practice is to limit an athlete's long term development, leads to psychological as well as physiological damage, and is simple-minded for a coach to commit.

It's easy to coach smart racing. Practice race starts in practice. Identify ideal 1/2 mile and 1 mile goal times for each kid. Hold them to do it. Remind them to be calm and collected as they let those slower kids run away from them in the first quarter mile. They'll see the strategy work and embrace it.