Coach Jay- Since the season has started we have been running two or three meets
every week. It seems like we haven't done a hard workout in a long time. Am
I going to fall out of shape just running easy at practice almost every day after
meets?

- Josh

Hi Josh,

Okay, this issue's a bit tricky, and honestly I don't want to answer this for the simple reason that I'm not your coach. I think HS athletes should follow the instructions of their coaches, yet I'll be honest - I didn't have good coaching until the last four months of my HS career...and if I hadn't gotten a better coach I wouldn't have run fast enough to run at the University of Colorado (and do cool work for Nike). So please don't print this answer and take it into your coach and say, "We're racing too much and not training enough." Could that be true? Yes. Do I think it's true? I don't know enough to comment. At the end of the day it would be up to you and your parents to figure out if you're someone who needs a different training environment (and 95% of the time the answer is no).

Okay, now that's out of the way...

Racing into fitness is a perfectly sound concept for the athletes who don't train outside of the cross country and track seasons, but the flip side is that if your team qualified for NXN the you probably don't want to run a ton of meet in January. It's that simple. The first group of athletes actually gets into shape by running the races and once they've run those races then they need to run easy in between. If that sounds like you and your program then I think it's a great way to get fit.

Now, to be honest, I wouldn't advise two or three meets a week where you run your guts out, but that's where you have to simply do what your coach asks of you. And my guess is most HS coaches running athletes in two or three meets a week are having athletes run controlled paces and not running that competitively. Three maximum efforts a week would be considered excessive for any of the event areas, especially if the athlete has a lower training age (i.e. the number of years you've been seriously training in track and field) and maybe what you need to do is get a clearer understanding of what your coach wants out of each meet.

I hope this helps Josh. Remember, there are many roads to Rome and while some programs race very few times and are great, other programs race weekly and are great. Good luck this year.

Jay Johnson

*Coach Jay's advice is provided as general training information. Use at your own risk. Always consult with your own heath care provider for questions relating to your specific training and nutrition.

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