How to get out of the 4x8 (already had a talk with coach)

Whats this thing with High School in America, why can't kids decide what they want to run? Here in Scandinavia we choose what we want to run and nobody can force us to do anything.

Its not like they are getting paid in high schools like free rides in college??

Simple solution- - - just QUIT THE DAMN TEAM! You say it's an individual sport, right? So you don't belong on a team. Problem solved! No more coach to deal with. You are the man... you know what's best for you. Run in some all-comers meets and unattached in some collegiate meets. Maybe some day you will learn about the team concept, but along with the coach, you're not ready for either.

Hey! Great idea, stop off and get a new pair of spikes- the 2:03 Special. Coach will praise your ingenuity (just leave Hillary out of it).

LOL this guy is afraid to run 2 800s???? Clearly he's some kind of hobbyjogger or maybe even one of those libruls....

But actually, who thinks they can't run 2 800s fast in one day?

Pissed off 800/1600 dude wrote:

I was entered in the open 800 this Saturday (large invitational, good place to run fast) when two kids on the 4x8 scratched and said they weren't going to the meet. Naturally, my coach decides not to just drop the 4x8 team but instead decides to put me and another kid on (both of us were looking to run PRs in our respective main events, this is one of the only opportunities we have all season to run fast). We both talked to him, saying we weren't going to try and that there was no point in running it, and he decided to be a hardass and didn't budge. How do I get out of this?

This isn't a troll

-your token high school 2:06/4:40 guy

I can’t imagine an athlete telling me they aren’t going to try; I am sorry but you lost me at that point. 2 things: Sounds like the 4x8 is going to be weak and perhaps not running it is a good idea; however, the coach gets to decide and he/she could have good reasons for running it. You can still PR will running 2 events if you get decent rest in between. I always ran 2 events at invitationals.

You call your coach a harass, I would kicked you off the team for the stunt you are pulling. You can’t always have things your way in life, that is just how life is.

Time is the best teacher wrote:

Pissed off 800/1600 runner wrote:

I'm not in the wrong here, people.

Yes, you are. You'll understand when you're older (I hope).

Yep. He is wrong, and time will hopefully help him see that.

Teenagers think they know everything when in fact they know very very little. Takes time to be the boss of your life. When in high school, you have to do what teachers and coaches say. If you are in college, you have to do what professors say and what coaches say, or you will be not be successful. When you get your first post-college job, you need to do what your bosses at work say. If you ALWAYS have a boss, you need to do what your boss says. If you are married, you need to compromise and learn to come up with win-win solutions to problems. In almost no situation for the vast majority of people is it "my way or the highway".

Pissed off 800/1600 runner, your high school career has started off very shaky...quitting CC and then telling your coach that you won't try hard in a relay.

There was a kid like you on my son's HS team. This kid was two years older than my son and is now a D1 athlete, but as a freshman and to a lesser extent as a sophomore, he was disrespectful and not coachable. He changed his tune as he got older, and he got better too. By the time he was a senior, he needed his HS coach to put in a good word for him at a couple colleges that were interested in him. One college coach wasn't quite sure, but the HS coach let him know how much this kid had grown as a person in 4 years and that he would work to get better, etc. Well, that college coach gave him D1 scholarship money. Would not have happened without the HS coach's strong recommendation.

You have a lot to learn Pissed off 800/1600 runner. I hope you get there.

Nordiccc. That doesn't work. We have 70 guys on the team and only 2 guys can compete per event in most meets.

Not to sound mean, but you seem like a huge brat right now. Nobody likes running running the 4x8 at the beginning of a meet, and your coach is probably kind of dumb for running you guys in it (or not) but you grow a sack and be a man and do it anyway with no complaints.

Just run the relay. I know how it feels, when you are giving it all for a good race. But reality is, that 2:06 doesn't matter anywhere, no matter how bad you want it to. I ran 1:54, but it didn't matter either. I would say that kind of attitude is ok with sub 1:50.

Predictor wrote:

You are being selfish. Relays are fun for average runners. This isn’t costing you a future scholarship.

Agreed. Quit being a pu$$. Go out there and hurt.

This is one of the most successful trolls threads in a while.

if the 4*800 in the first event, pretend to get there last and miss the race. If it’s after your invite, say you have to leave for a family emergency.

If you’re a receiving leg, drop the baton off the track or something similar.

Predictor wrote:

Nordiccc. That doesn't work. We have 70 guys on the team and only 2 guys can compete per event in most meets.

What, you only have school competitions with a max 2 guys in each event? Is this all year? Here we don't have school track and field, but can enter as many event and as many competitions as we like.

7/10 for quantity of responses.

OP is right. As a university coach, I base my recruiting decisions mainly on how fast a runner is as a freshman. A sub 2:05 800m in 9th grade is about what it takes for a full ride. Sure, some seniors might break 1:50, but they wouldn't even be on my radar if they weren't at least mediocre as freshmen. Even though I spend lots of time recruiting freshman in the 2:00-2:10 range, I just don't have time to check if they doubled or tripled. So it's important to race fresh.

Also, I never ask the high school coaches if the recruits are drama-queens or divas. I find that the Killary K Klinton-supporting coaches will lie. And if a runner is absolutely convinced they are right in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I see this as a good thing. I want men who stick to their guns, not wishy-washy flip-floppers.

I find the best runners are those who are fully dedicated to the individual sport of Track. So any runner who has already quit the CC team is an ideal athlete.

This site should be called LetsWriteFiction.

Did you ask who they voted for? Or did you see their bumper stickers?

If you're a real coach you should practice interviewing skills. It doesn't take much to find out who the divas are or the kids who don't want to put the work in.

Nordicc wrote:

Predictor wrote:

Nordiccc. That doesn't work. We have 70 guys on the team and only 2 guys can compete per event in most meets.

What, you only have school competitions with a max 2 guys in each event? Is this all year? Here we don't have school track and field, but can enter as many event and as many competitions as we like.

It depends on the kind and size of the meet. Most high school meets are two or three team meets and there's no limit to the number of athletes you can enter in an event. There are also much larger meets, I don't know exactly how large, but having upwards of fifteen or twenty schools entered would not be uncommon. Some of those meets don't limit the number of entrants per event but will run as many heats as necessary to allow everyone to run. But some of those meets will limit a school to two or three entrants per event.

In such a case, if a coach has six 800 meter runners that would like to run, only two could run the 800 . But he could do get a race for the other four by entering a 4 x 800 relay team and then enter two other runners in the open 800. Now, this may not be what's happening in the OP's situation, but if two of the runners who were going to run his 4 x 800 became unavailable and the team scratched, the remaining two relay runners would not get to race unless the two entered in the open 800 replaced the two who were unavailable.

I popped a 2:01.high in the 4x8 (60, 61 high... an enormous PR... had nothing left). Our team, as I said they would, staggered home in 8:51. We were never in contention after I handed off. I doubled back with a 2:07.high about 2 hours later in the open meet. So much for flagpole's claim that you can "run the 4x8 and still PR in the open 8."

I'm not racing for my school anymore, they cheesed me out of a good open race just so they could get dead last in an invitational. I told the coach afterwards that I thought there was no point to the 4x8, he responded by calling me a "whiny little ba stard"Since he was a douche about it, I am no longer racing for the school and urging my friends to do the same.