Moved states and schools, my new distance track coach only has me running 17 MPW. What should I do?

confront your coach.

if she doesn't know what she is doing she might appreciate input and opinions

run extra after every day. Do extra reps. BECOME THE FASTEST ON THE TEAM (THIS IS KEY). When you become the fastest by doing things your way, she will see the light

My HS coach had us (800/1600 runners) peak at 20mpw in early March for outdoor track and then taper for 2 months. We ran extra mileage outside of practice because we knew he was an idiot.

He then confronted us the day before our sectional meet and told us he wasn't letting us run because we didn't "trust" his workouts. So be careful with that strategy if the coach thinks you're trying to show them up.

god I hated that guy

Run on Saturday and long on Sunday, and you’ll be fine. Just don’t bring it up

Undertrained is better than overtrained , that is the bright side to everything.

17 MPW is low as hell. You should be at 25-30 miles a week as a freshman. You need the aerobic strength, and your long

run should be about 1 hour.

Training by minutes is a good thing. That is how the kenyas train, and you stop running when your time is up, instead of over-pushing yourself to run based on mileage.

Sit down with your coach, and try to have a logical discussion about your mileage. See if she is willing to get you up to 35 miles per week, If not, then do it on your own.

You could do some extra easy runs in your neighborhood to get the mileage up. You can run on your own time, and she can't do anything about it.

I ran 1:58 and 4:33 off of like 30 mpw. But my coaches new what they were doing. Running more mileage isn't everything but your coach does sound pretty terrible

You said 17mpw but said you were doing a 45 minute run and a 5 mile run. That could be 12 right there if you turn your 45 minute run into a tempo. You will be fine if you do that because you will also be racing once per week.

Your coach is similar to, but better than my coach. One time I tried to convince her to let me run more and the next day I was called to the athletic directors office and chewed out for trying to “undermine the coach.”

It probably won’t get any better. I managed to run 5:00 my freshman year with that coach, then sophomore year I started just running my own mileage and workouts. It’s tough to train on your own, often in the dark with a headlamp, and you’re more likely than the average runner to get injured or sick running this way. It’s not impossible to improve though: this is my junior year and I think I’m close to going under 4:30.

The other thing is it seriously cuts into homework/study time to do it this way- not for a freshman, but once you’re in your junior year you need it.

The reason she probably won’t change is that most incompetent people are afraid of competence. If you know more about training than she does and better than she could ever be her ingrained response is fear and to make you stop it.

Your situation is not atypical of the level of coaching at many high schools. Supplement your practices with additional running on your own.

Tough situation, but I think that the easiest thing is to just do long runs (8 - 10 miles at first) on Saturday and Sunday when your coach is out of the picture.

Also, do you have gym class? Even if people on the team can opt out of gym, you could get extra training on the treadmill in during gym.

30 minutes, every morning, in addition to whatever garbage your coach makes you do. It will be harder if you run in the morning.

Do that. Bump it up as you get older.

You won't, cause you're a lazy high schooler that enjoys complaining. You should, but you won't.

It's a good thing you're talking about a female coach and not a male coach because it looks like you're not being pushed hard enough as opposed to being burnt out through football style training. Have a solid talk with your coach, explain where you are coming from, the type of workouts and mileage you were doing at your old school and show some ambition at running a faster time. Additionally, emphasize why it's not a good idea that everyone is doing the exact same thing at training, each athlete has different needs. When it comes to coaches assigning lower-than-optimal volumes, female coaches tend to be a lot more open to suggestions than male coaches and tend to be a bit more understanding of the situation of other athletes.

When I was in HS, it was a very similar scenario in which it was a female coach and it was clear the athletes were not being pushed. I saw this not during XC, but in track where the suggested volume was even lower. That was when I knew I had to actually push myself and realized that summer that running more volume would help all around (in the span of less than 3 months, took 4:00/km pace from my 3000m pace to my 10k pace). The coach understood where I was coming from and she just let me do my own thing, knowing I had done some research beforehand. There were times where other athletes would join me in the workouts to at least understand the training that I was doing. Down the road, a couple other athletes were also doing either their own thing or doing the program of a local club coach instead.

OP, the tough part is going to be figuring out what you should be running yourself. Self-training is definitely harder to get improvements than having a good coach, but it's still better than not being pushed at all. IMO, 45 minutes should be a regular run for you, not the long run.

slightly similar situation at my school were there is a huge emphasis on the 800 meter runners, luckily i was allowed to pick higher volume more base style training in indoor but now im pushed into 300m repeats and doing other workouts isn't being a "team player" add morning runs and long runs on your own and try to do some tempo work. use break to your advantage, plus maybe reach out to your old coach for advice. for me what really helps with running on my own is tracking milage to keep myself accountable, but try not to be to rigid about it. And as people have said do you research on training there are key things to implement weekly so it's not to hard to figure out a basic schedule

As someone else said earlier, I would supplement your high school training with running on both Saturday and Sunday. I would run one day with more effort than the other. At the end of each of these workouts I would do 6-8 70-100 meter strides. Follow this up with some stretching.

If you have a race on Friday, I would make your easy run on Saturday. If you have a race on Monday I would make your easy run on Sunday.

Good luck with your season!

I had a friend in a similar situation when I was in HS. His coach had everyone run 30 minutes for practice for each and every practice. Obviously they weren't a very good team. To avoid being confrontational, he and the 2nd and 3rd fastest runners would get in his car after practice and go to the trails for an extra 45-60 minute run after practice or drive to another school's track for some intervals (to avoid getting in trouble with their coach). Those 3 guys would run easy on their own for 45 minutes on Saturdays then they'd meet on Sundays to do 12-14 mile hilly long runs in the forest. He ended up running 15:49 in xc that year and in track 4:14 1500m and 2:02 800m. His 2 teammates ran in the low 17s for 5k, while the rest of their team ran around 20-22 minutes for 5k.

I'd recommend just quietly doing what coach says to avoid getting in trouble, then just run extra on your own after practice like my friend did.

The first few weeks of the season are often pretty weird. A lot of my new athletes get lumped together with very generic training for the first bit until I get to know them better. This time of year is also overwhelming logistically for many coaches. New athlete testing, meet registration, sorting kids into event groups, setting expectations, general planning for the season... it can be a lot, and again can make sense to keep things simple. It may be the case that these few weeks have just been general group training, and it will get more specific as it goes. Right now most of my kids are in two big groups (sprints and distance), with slight modifications for more experienced athletes. They will be more and more segmented as the season progresses (sprints branches out into short sprint, long sprints, jumps, hurdles, throws; distance becomes mid-distance and long distance)

Have you had a conversation with your coach yet about your athletic history? I would encourage you to do so--a good coach should be able to explain their reasoning for any block of training. Don't come in with a combative nature. Just say: "This is what I've done in the past, I felt it really worked well for me. Are you planning for us to do anything like that in the future?" If she was planning to do so, great! If not, she has the option to take your ideas and adopt them as her own. Either way you get what you want and nobody is embarrassed ==> your coach-athlete relationship is secure (this is more important than you might think).

It doesn’t get better wrote:

The reason she probably won’t change is that most incompetent people are afraid of competence. If you know more about training than she does and better than she could ever be her ingrained response is fear and to make you stop it.

This! It may not necessarily be true in this runner's situation, but I've found it to be true across many high school coaches (various sports). These types of coaches fear questions they can't answer because due to an inner fear of being exposed as not knowing enough. But heck, that's true of most high school teachers and administrators as well!

10k in the morning and 10k after practice. What he does not know will not hurt him.