The nutritionist wrote:
Having high school kids run a group tempo run is crazy. First of all, tempo pace is going to be different for each runner, so how do maintain the cohesiveness of the group? Secondly, whenever you have a group of h.s. boys running together, it will always turn competitive. Thirdly, for 95% of high school runners, ten miles should be an easy, conversational long run. NOT a tempo run.
I appreciate that there are probably 100 or so high schools in the country where you have the talent level to send a group out on a 10-mile tempo training run, but there are thousands of schools where this group run is totally inappropriate.
I never said we do 10 mile tempo runs. I wish we had that level of talent, commitment, and miles on kids legs where that would be even something I'd consider. We'll usually go 6k on a 1200m section of our cross country course that can be run as a continuous loop, but is really winding and rhythm breaking. With the group I have this year, I might take it out to 7.2k because they are getting after it with the mileage pretty well this summer.
During track, our top group would do up to 6 miles tempo on the roads, but the paces were slower than the ones I've been describing. I think those runs were pretty valuable, which is why I put the 75% sheet on our pace charts.
As far as group running and pacing goes.....
Personally, the pace charts keep me from overcooking a workout. I've recently just started getting back into running shape after over a decade of injury issues. I went out and did the 6 minute run for distance just like my kids did. When I plugged my results into the pace charts, I was surprised how slow the times came out to be. The first "tempo" workout I did, my legs wanted to go way faster, but I kept telling myself not to exceed the splits. By the time I'd finished, I still had gotten in a good workout, but nothing hurt....go figure!
Someone above mentioned doing tempos on a loop course. The loop allows us to check splits and make sure the kids don't start racing. My kids have actually gotten pretty good about not racing in practice.
As far as doing tempos as a group is concerned, I think it's fine as long as the kids are grouped by ability levels. My top 6 varsity guys have mile PRs within 7 seconds of one another, so that's a nice homogeneous group right there and the workouts have been going really well with them so far this summer.