I attended a clinic with the top high school cross coaches in the country: ask me anything

a dad wrote:

Coach Hunter:

I started a thread earlier that didn't get much response. You mentioned basketball. Can a kid (Girl specifically) reach their running potential by running XC and outdoor track while training in the summer but playing basketball in the winter?? A big part of me thinks yes, a break is good for the body and mind and its not like a break sitting on the couch, they would be playing basketball all winter. Another part says thats 8-12 weeks where they are not training and their competition is... Would love to hear your input.

Can a girl reach her running potential by skipping the winter training? I think it is all a matter of perspective.

In the early years at GO, we had a very talented runner that happened to be the best athlete on campus. Pick a girls sport and she would have been varsity and probably one of the best on the team. She did XC, Basketball, and Track each year and was a star for all 3. Some on this board would say "she did what she wanted, contributed to all 3 sports, and had a good career." I agree, that was what she wanted to do, what our new school needed her to do, and she had a great time.

The issue from a running standpoint was that the basketball coach would push weight gain in the weight room during summer ball and winter basketball. So she came into XC 10 pounds too heavy and had to run the weight off, then when she started to get fit and really able to run well winter would hit and she would put the 10 pounds back on for basketball and have to race it off again in the spring. Long story short, she never progressed as a runner because she was basically trying to undue the weight gain after each basketball season. She ran 4 pretty solid years in the Ivy Leagues and is now a teacher. She didn't regret the schedule she ran and loved all 3 seasons while she was still in high school.

Did she meet her running potential? No she didn't, and as an adult has told me she wished she didn't do that to her body and would have actually tried to see what she could have done had she actually focused and trained for running earlier on. If your goal is to play sports and have fun and if you happen to be talented enough to run in college and you will focus on running there, then play 3 sports in high school and have a blast. If your goal is to be on the podium at State or beyond in XC/Track, then that is where your focus should be. She needs to set her goals and let those be her guide in making the decision.

I have 3 children of my own, 2 of them appear to be pretty solid athletes/runners at this point. Each one will be different, with different questions to answer and different decisions to make. If one of them really wants to be a champion in a sport, we will discuss the sacrifices it takes to get there and they will have to decide if that is something they want to do. They may just want to play and have fun, and if that is the case then I'll be in the stands cheering for them and supporting them the whole way. It will be their decision and I'll be here to help guide them. For some kids running is a fun activity they do, and for others it is a passion that drives them. We all as parents have to recognize what that is for our kids and advise them. Allowing them to make these decisions is important to their long term development as a person.

Doug

I have a question for High School Coaches who are successfully coaching large girls teams.

I currently have a group of 8 grade 9 girls. They are becoming good friends, buying into the program, and starting to show good signs of progression in their training and racing. I believe the group has a lot of potential and can have a great experience running together over the next 4 years.

Emotionally, the girls will have a hard time when one of the girls will have a breakthrough race and beat another one of the girls who usually beats her. For example, today we had a 1200m indoor race. 5 of the girls were in the race, all 5 girls set personal bests ranging from 3-10 seconds off their previous best. As a coach I was ecstatic with how all of them raced and competed. But when I went to congratulate them after the race, 3 were already in tears. 1 because she beat her friend for the first time and was worried her friend would be mad at her. 1 because she led at the beginning and got passed a few times (but she set a 10 second pb). And the third because she was beat by her friend for the first time.

In each case, we reframed this into a positive experience in our post race talk. But this has to be a common occurrence to better prepare girls in advance that they won't always be in the same 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 order and to make it safe for them to beat their friend in a race.

My question is...how do you prepare your high school girls for changing positions on the team at different races?

Some great topics in this thread.

I definitely encourage younger runners to do multiple things. Those kids don't seem to get injured and burned out as much as kids that specialize at an early age. There does come a point where many kids need to make a decision to specialize if they serious goals in the sport, but I'm a firm believer that they need to come to that conclusion themselves rather than having their coaches require it. Girls in our school have 8 sports/activities to choose from in the fall. If I required that every kid was a year round runner, I would rarely get kids out for the team. Most of our varsity and upper JV kids make the decision to run year round by the time they are 15-16.

Girls getting too competitive with each other is definitely fixable. What are they like in practice? Do they work together or are they competitive there too? When we get really competitive groups, we'll run with them at practice from time to time to teach good habits (simple things like no half-stepping, keeping within goal pace, verbally encouraging teammates at tough points). Those things seem simple but kids are often oblivious to them. When it comes to races, we rarely talk about PRs or time goals. We praise things like winning a battle in the final 100m or making a choice to cover a move at the 2 mi. mark and our goals for meets and races reflect that. Ultimately you need them to be less result oriented so they can focus on the process of getting better and supporting their teammates to get better. As they get more comfortable and confident with the sport, they often grow out of that competitiveness with their teammates as well. Good luck!

This is something I used to deal with and started addressing it day one of practice. My kids can quote this easily, but of course, until they hear it 20 times they don't really buy in. We start day one, "we don't compare ourselves to anyone else, only to who we were yesterday. "

Of course, not everyone buys in at the same rate to that, and it takes time before they believe it. But when they are upset you need to just ask them... do we compare ourselves to others? It takes time and is not 100% effective, but I will take the 80% effective over the constant comparing themselves to others often.

This was a great conference. One thing I would like to add to the above. (I am from a school of 350 kids). Yes, most of these coaches are from bigger schools. But for every Great Oak out there, there are 100 other 3k size schools that are not doing what Go is doing. So the credit needs to be given to the consistency that Doug and John O'Malley and Iverson and Dalby etc have created at their schools.

Our school with 350 in a college prep environment will never be able to compete on a national level with these other schools, but that is ok. We don't compare ourselves to other schools, just to who we were yesterday!

Ok as I see other posts I keep coming back to this and want to know thoughts of many coaches here especially,( but not limited to) Coaches Soles and both Hunters. I would like your thoughts on the following post.. not necessarily as it relates to Kate Tuhoy but especially the bolded part in regards to hs girls training.

RE: Tuohy loses in a HS race!!!!!!!!!!! 1/29/2018 10:11PM - in reply to Cleaver.

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I was critical of her coach in a previous post for emphasizing aerobic over speed development. Having Tuohy run that 600 was a step in the right direction. Being a pre-pubescent long distance phenom does not say a lot for future success. Our great athletes like Ruth Wysocki, Mary Decker, Kim Gallagher, Suzy Favor, Joan Benoit, Lynn Jennings, Jenny Simpson, Flanagan, Deena Kastor, Emma Coburn, Courtney Frerichs, Amy Cragg, Shannon Rowbury, Jordan Hasay and Molly Huddle have a few things in common. Except for Hasay, none of them ever won a national H.S. XC title; in high school, they were milers and never ran a serious 5K. Even athletes like Jennings, Jonie, Kastor, Goucher, Flanagan, Cragg, Hasay and Huddle who we now know as distance runners, ran relatively low mileage in high school and focused on the mile. I don't have time to get into the physiology of why a young female body developed for speed endures post-puberty better than one overly aerobically developed. However, all you need to do is look at the H.S. all-time 5K/10K/XC list, which tells you just about all you need to know. With all of that said, Tuohy looked good in that 600 even though the time wasn't spectacular. No doubt she can run a faster 600 and even a fast 800, if she focused on it. Based on Tuohy's 5K performance, I would like to see her run a sub-2:10 800 and/or a mile in the mid 4:30s 'indoors'; that will tell me more about her future than XC and 5K victories.

Not sure that the fact that this guy thinks that the reason for success is that speed was developed is true and or accurate.

If that is the case then the club kids who run track workouts all day and everyday as young kids would be killing it and where are they?

I think the reason the HS stars at the distance races disappear more often than not is because they matured and or started eating

Pretty sure Joan Benoit was not developing her speed at a young age, but had a pretty good career anyways.

Think that the cream rises to the top, the best runners are the best because of genetics, they are anatomically sound and can train without getting hurt which allows them to develop to their potential.

I don't think it's just with girls. I personally believe that all developing runners should try and maintain a broad athletic skill set at a young age. When they get to maybe 16 years old, it could be time to start focusing into specificity for longer events.

Well rounded includes

Aerobic stuff

Strength stuff

speed stuff

mobility stuff

fun stuff.

This is why I'm not opposed to kids playing winter sports. As a matter of fact, right now, my distance kids who aren't playing winter sports are really feeling the grind. Official practice starts next week, but most of the non winter sports distance runners at HHS are in my 7th period PE class.

They aren't overtraining, running too much mileage, or doing too much speed. If anything, their mileage is too low right now. They are just feeling it mentally. Tomorrow we're going to have them do a game just to break things up a bit. The physiology side of me says that this is a waste of opportunity for aerobic conditioning, but the psychology side of me says the kids need a change of vistas, mentally.

I think that when the rest of their winter sport brethren come back to the distance crew, their mojo will likely return. But this is an issue every year. It seems like January is a motivational low point for 90-95% of my kids.

Sorry I got off topic a little.

One day is not a waste of anything, Aerobic conditioning will not suffer by having fun for a day.

When I was coaching HS, the kids only ran six days per week. They did not suffer, developing bodies are working on developing, had to give them at least a day off to let growth take place without continuos stress.

My thoughts: I honestly have no idea why a young female who has trained for speed is more able to survive the changes that puberty brings...I'd like to hear the explanation. I would think genetics and diet would have a much larger role in how someone's body comes out the other side of puberty than whether they sprint or run longer stuff, but that isn't something I know a whole lot about. I think a good training recipe for pre-high school aged kids is a very general mix of aerobic training and short speed, a big mix of paces. Aerobic training doesn't just mean slogging miles and doing long intervals. I want my youth kids to enjoy their running experience so much that they look forward to running in high school. My youth kids are definitely not trained to be the best they can be at age 12! I have never coached youth kids to train seriously for 5K/10K or longer races, but have no problem with them running a 5K here and there for fun.

I also have seen too many seriously trained youth sprinters never even make it to the line in high school- stars as youngsters, but sick to death of it by the time it really matters. I also would point out that Kenyan children are doing plenty of aerobic development if the "run to school" stories are true.

I wouldn't even venture to guess why some kids continue to develop and others do not. There is no one reason. Some lose interest and find other things to do. Some can't handle the mental pressure of competition when it gets tougher. Genetics obviously plays a big role. I had a girl many years ago who was a complete natural distance runner as a 6th grader- low mileage, but loved to run fast, super competitive, just loved to run. She did not have a classic runner's frame, but was quite athletic and coordinated. She ran the 1500 as her main youth event, can't remember exactly how fast, but placed 3rd at either AAU or USATF nationals outdoors one year. We had fun with it, she only ran 3 or 4 days a week, I could barely keep up with her! But she never even made a state meet in high school- she stopped growing and became very stocky and never ran as fast as she did in 6th grade. Looking back we probably should have known that things would change- her parents definitely did not have runner somatotypes. That experience taught me to not look too far down the road and make big predictions for every fast little kid we have ever worked with.

Coach Hunter(s)-

First of all, keep it up! Your kids seem to love running for the team and for you.

1. Do you guys lift during the season?

2. How much is Tinman involved in your training plans? I know you guys have worked with him in the past and that he is coaching Drew. Is he involved in daily/weekly/season plans?

3. How do you guys afford your trips/meets? VA Showcase bill alone had to be close to $800 for entries and then hotels for the various meets. Is that school funded, team funded, or parent funded?

Love that you guys are ambassadors for the sport and more importantly for helping kids-

1. We do lift during the season, 2-3 days a week depending. This year we had too large of a team to get everyone in the weight room during cross, so our first year kids/freshmen did strictly bodyweight work while the older ones went to the weight room. We have fewer distance kids in track so all of them go to the weight room. I wish I could say I have the strength training all figured out and perfectly integrated with our weekly training, but much of the time we are forced into a fixed weight room schedule that is not ideal. I figure it is better to be consistent about getting in there even if I would prefer to do it on a different day.

2. Tom does not write our training plan, he never has. He wrote Drew's training his senior year and continues to coach him now. He has helped me figure things out when I get stuck or have a question about a particular kid's needs, or if I just want to bounce things off him. When I first started at Loudoun Valley, I definitely consulted with him more on our training, especially as the post-season championship races approached. He would help me with those workouts. I also like to talk to him about reasons to choose various training options over others, to customize training more for certain types of kids, just to understand more of the WHY behind the WHAT, but I am starting to feel like I have a pretty good grasp of this now. I really like to talk training with him and anyone else who will indulge me!

3. In our county, kids have to pay a participation fee of $150 for each sports season, which goes to the county, and we don't directly have access to it. Then, for most sports, the county pays our transportation costs to meets by school bus and our school pays our entry fees, and any travel we do is ours to fund (charter bus, hotels, etc) . In indoor track, since we are a "Tier 2" sport (a fancy way of saying the county won't pay for anything over the amount we got from those $150 pay-to-play fees), we use the money for entry fees, and we try to have parents do the transportation as much as possible since the school bus fees are crazy. We take the hotel costs out of the $150 fees too. Kids buy their own food on trips. Some kids are definitely benefitting more from their $150 fee than others, which doesn't seem fair to me, but that's how it is. Some of our indoor kids only get to participate in a couple of local polar bear meets, while our top kids get to go to a couple of big invitationals and stay overnight. Our coaches don't get paid indoors- there isn't any money left over for stipends. And some big meets will fund part of your costs if you are a high level team, thankfully. In cross we do a fundraiser each year that brings us in a lot of money, but we haven't really solved this problem for track season. In outdoor track, there won't be a whole lot of kids going to distant meets since most can find competition in local meets, but for our top kids, we are going to have to travel a bit, and I haven't figured out how we are going to pay for some of those trips yet. Somehow, it has worked out with minimal cost to the families other than the $150 fee they pay. Our parents would pay more if they had to though- they are a supportive group and want their kids to have opportunities.

Coaches Hunter,

I really appreciate your contribution to this thread!

I have a specific training question:

You explain that your training relies heavily on CV intensity for workouts. What method do you use to determine CV pace for your runners? Calculating a percentage of recent performances? Race/TT times minus some constant? Tinman's online calculator? Some other method?

Then, once you establish CV intensity for your runners, how frequently do you reassess and adjust it?

Thanks.

I use Tom's online calculator at

http://runfastcoach.com/calc2/index.php

. In cross country season, I use our kid's current 5K times, adjusted for the course, etc. For instance, if the kid runs a big 5K pr on a flat fast course, and we are going to run CV reps on a hilly course with thick grass, I know that the times probably should be a bit slower. Also, it is important to take other things into account when assigning paces, such as stress levels of the kid, fatigue, weather, whatever. I just usually tell the kids before we train, "On a perfect day where you are feeling good, this is your pace today. If today isn't a perfect day, we will adjust." Or a couple days ago, we had 25 mph wind gusts so I just said, "Don't stress over the times too much. You know what CV effort feels like, just do the best you can today." The workout went great and they actually hit the times without trouble. Might be time to bump their times up a little, but we will see after they race this weekend.

In track, if I have kids who are reasonably well balanced across events from 800-3200 meters, I use their 3200 time. If they are better at the shorter races, I would fudge their times a little when I use the calculator, because using an 800 to calculate CV pace isn't the most accurate and usually ends up producing a CV time that is a little too quick. I can usually tell just watching the kids if they are running CV effort and will slow them down if it looks too hard.

I think running a 2400 meter time trial would probably be a good compromise distance to determine CV pace for 800/1600 kids who are not your distance standouts. However, I don't see a 2400 meter option on Tom's calculator for you to plug into. He does have a 1.5 mile option which would be close and you could estimate.

Tom also has some formulas he uses to calculate CV for kids who are skewed toward the shorter events, using their 400, 800, and 1600 meter times, and he shares these in his coaching DVDs and probably in clinics he does. These methods work really well I think, but I don't feel I should share them without his permission. You also might be able to find some other ways to estimate CV pace on therunzone.com board...and this will get you very close. There are tons of very useful threads there on training.

I adjust my kids' CV paces as they get faster in races during the season. Since I always give them a range of times, this isn't much of a big deal- they just sort of naturally start moving towards the faster end of their range as they grow more fit, and then we create a new range of times if their race performances indicate we need to do that. You can also progress their CV workouts by shortening recovery time or jogging the recovery a bit faster (same thing for most kids, since almost all of mine jog recoveries), lengthening the reps, increasing the total volume (to a point), etc., just like any other interval workout.

probably too simple a question but here goes. Please give me a quick explanation of CV (critical velocity) and why is it used. Sounds to me it is used in place of Daniels I (interval) Training. Trying to figure out the differences and why/when someone should use one over another??

Tom would say that CV pace is supposed to correlate with a full-out effort run somewhere between 35-45 minutes. I think he used to use 35 mins as the standard but for some exercise science reason way over my head, he doesn't use that definition anymore. Therefore, it roughly correlates to 8k/10k pace for most of us (obviously, not for elites). It is supposed to be about 90% of VO2 max, so definitely slower than Daniels I pace, which is right at VO2 max I believe. Personally, I don't think much in these terms, since how the heck are we supposed to know EXACTLY what our high school kids' VO2 max pace is? We are guesstimating based on their performance. Tom says that CV pace is the "optimal means of elevating one’s lactate threshold". I think of it as the most bang for our buck, training-wise. It elevates stamina, it is fast enough for middle distance kids to not have crappy mechanics while running it (unlike tempo pace for some of them), it is easier to recover from than faster paces like VO2 pace and you can do it year round for the most part, which means you are never too far away from race fitness. I try to keep my kids training as consistently as possible, with no down time due to injury, fatigue, etc, and backing off the pace a bit down to CV instead of running 5K or faster pace work in large volume really seems to get us what we want.

Coach Hunter,

Thanks for the thoughtful and timely response--your explanation makes perfect sense. I've had the same experience with the calculator for shorter performances and understand the adjustments you suggest.

I also like your discussion of modifications to the workout pace based on conditions-I've become more comfortable doing this the last few years and spend more time looking at the runners to see how they're managing the workout and less time looking at the watch.

I had the the good fortune of making a connection with Tom years back through a now defunct site called "runinsight." I used his advice as a foundation for our program as a young coach, and I'm very interested in ways other coaches are successfully applying his methods. I'm in a period of evaluating and and improving our training, and ideas from the clinic and this thread and your contribution to Jay Johnson's High School Running Coach have been super helpful.

I'll take a look at the runzone board as well.

Regards!

come on man wrote:

One day is not a waste of anything, Aerobic conditioning will not suffer by having fun for a day.

When I was coaching HS, the kids only ran six days per week. They did not suffer, developing bodies are working on developing, had to give them at least a day off to let growth take place without continuos stress.

You would be right on the money if the kids were running on Saturday and Sunday. Many of them don't. So for a lot of the kids, giving up a thursday means they only get 4 runs in the week.

Which brings up another topic.....kids seem to really get into the summer program preparing for cross, but mustering the same enthusiasm for track pre season stuff is pretty difficult. Anyone else have the same experiences?

This has been really great and helpful, thank you.

There's been discussion on socioeconomic status and ability to pay for meets or places for kids to go. Coach Soles and Coach Hunter both talked about taking kids to bigger invites and presenting a fun, "coolness" factor to get kids to come out for XC instead of something like soccer.

When it comes to paying for those events, what type of fundraising do you do in the off-season or during the season? I'm interested in hearing what other coaches do as well.

We do a few things to fundraise. We have a board of directors (all parents) who came up with ideas. Our main fundraiser is a 24 hour relay. People can pledge a certain amount of money per mile, or just a flat amount, and they can pay online. We offer fundraising prizes if the kids raise a certain amount of money (Tshirt, backpack). We camp out in our football stadium, parents do a cook out for our dinner and bring breakfast the next morning. The kids are divided up into 3 teams (because we have a large team) and they run a mile at a time and hand off to the next group. We do this for 24 hours. In the time between the relay legs, they play outdoor games, cornhole, frisbee, etc. and just hang out. We show a running movie at night. It's a lot of fun, and we raised over $13,000.

Other fundraising things we did included getting community donors/sponsors , parking cars for a local fair, restaurant night at the local pizza place, local running shoe store gives us $5 per pair of shoes bought by our kids, etc. I think we were able to raise another several thousand dollars with these other things.