The race to 74 (Boys) or 76 (Girls) points. Win the relay or waste an event. Top three score for individuals. Short rest. Large workloads. Stretching athletes ranges to eek out some extra points. Racing the competition, not the clock. Later today is the annual Boulder vs. Fairview dual meet.
We as coaches spend a lot of time evaluating our strengths and weaknesses (and our competitions). We try to predict where the competition will put their strongest runners. And where they might be vulnerable. I don't wish to reveal all my tricks for this year's meet, so I'll highlight some aspects of last years meet to illustrate the strategy.
Example 1 In Colorado the first distance event is the 4 x 800m. Since 4 runners race, we warmed up 5. This serves two purposes: 1) if the other team is watching they don't know who they'll be racing against. Either the "A" squad or a watered down version. 2) We can then make a "game time" decision on who to race. Last year, on the boys side after 2 legs it seemed apparent the competition was not racing their best team. We started with our top two 800m boys and were then able to hold out our 3rd best 800m runner for the 1600m and 3200m he had later in the day. Bam! Fresher legs...
Example 2 One the girls side we only had one 400m runner we thought could score, so we focused our sprinters on other events. Noticing this I entered one of the distance runners into it on the outside chance the competition only entered 2 athletes in it. I was wrong. They only entered 1. And our distance runner beat her. Bam! 3 extra points we didn't think we had a shot at!
Example 3 Then in the girls 3200m, we raced tactically. That's the nice term for it. Our head coach would probably call it "pimping". Our top two girls would utterly dominate, thus no reason for them to worry about the race. So I told them to sit behind the competition's top runner through 4 laps, then make a big strong move past her. For four laps, she thought she was having the race of her life, trying to push the pace to hold onto the lead. (They came through the mile in about 6:05, but my athletes had already run 11:40 and 11:00 the year before so not at all fast for them). They made their big move, and it demolished her, demoralized her. As they opened the gap she kept slowing, and slowing. Our third runner was running a very paced race, about 25 seconds back at the mile. As they kept going she narrowed the gap, and finally our crowd got into the race. With 200m to go she was still easily 30m behind 3rd place, but she could FEEL the crowd, ABSORB their Energy. She unleashed a kick I never thought she had in her and with 20m to go passed the girl and beat her to the tape before she could comprehend what had happened (It was sort of a "Look and Mills! Look at Mills! moment). 1st, 2nd, and 3rd! 9 Points! Capping our title even before the 4x400 started.
We'll see what I've got cooked up for this meet. This year (as opposed to year's past) I think it's pretty obvious we're the underdogs. It's going to take a great day of competing for us to win.
Speaking of competing (and further adding to my stress!). Fairview's coaches have issued a challenge to the Boulder coaches. A medley relay (200m, 200m, 400m, 800m) at the end of the meet. As the only male distance coach I have been drafted to run the anchor leg. I'll be led out by some fast 20 yr old coaches, and a high 46/ low 47 by our world class sprint coach. Fairview's distance coach is pretty quick though. Will the 7-10 second lead my sprint guys give me, be enough for my old/slow/semi-fat butt to anchor us to the win? I honestly don't know. I sure hope the race goes more like this, than this.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Bar Raising and Entry Changing
A special two for one post here today for my committed readers (and by committed I mean both faithful and hospitalized).
Bar Raising
How much is enough? Or more importantly, how much is too much? That's always the difficult question with volume. Asking the kids how they're feeling isn't much of a good indicator - the motivated ones always say "I'm fine. Can I do more?" and the slackers say after the first repetition "My leg just fell off, can I be done?". When I was in high school I commonly remember doing 16 (and by my junior and senior year 20) x 400ms for workouts. When I came to BHS as an assistant, our first couple years the athletes could barely make it through 8 x 400m. Sure the rest may have been a bit shorter, perhaps the repetitions a little faster, but I never left the workouts feeling plussed. I chalked it up to "Hippie kids are weak". Then when I became the head distance coach, I started raising the expectation. 8 became the minimum, strong freshmen were doing 10, upperclassmen 10-12. Because of the ice Monday, today's workout (Wednesday) became the one workout of the week, so we upper the expectation even more. 16 for many of the strong juniors and seniors, at least 10 for everybody else. Know what? They rose to it! Sure, I did an adequate job of scaring them, "Start these out on the slower end of your range, then get faster through the workout if you feel good. If you don't, by the end your legs will fall off, your head will explode, and tuberculosis will spew forth from all your pores." Doing this, nearly all of them felt good and started running faster and faster by the end. Thus not only did they do a ton, but they all left the workout feeling like they'd just set a new record on Whac-a-Mole. We'll see how tired/ sore everyone is tomorrow though...
Entry Changing
"I only am willing to race the 1600." - says 12 athletes (when I've only got 3- 6 spots available). "I have to work. I would have needed to request off one month ago to have gotten it off." (when the meet schedule has been posted for the last 3 months). "I care more about running race <x>, than I do in qualifying for State in race <y>." or "I realize you made initial entries on Monday, then revisions on Tuesday, but even though it's Thursday I just remembered, I'm taking the SAT on Saturday."
I heard all of these things this week (ok, maybe not the last one; but I'm guessing I'll hear it today at practice), and boy is it frustrating. It's basically like being an engineer working on optimization problems, but each time you get a solution, the client adds a new constraint. All your hard work down the drain. It's more than that though. It's that we are part of the system we're optimizing. Thus the solutions that get thrown out have an EFFECT on us.
Example:
Monday night
Johnny's Mom: What and when are you racing on Saturday Johnny?
Johnny: 3200m in the late afternoon
Johnny's Mom: Ok, great, your sister's soccer game is at 9:00am on Saturday so I can get both of you to your activities.
Friday night
Johnny: Oh, by the way, I'm racing the 4x800m now. It's at 9:00am. There's no bus to the meet. Also, I don't know any of the other kids phone numbers to arrange a ride.
Johnny's Mom: Suck...
Then there are the other difficulties when my goals (optimization constraints) are not my athletes. Like when I want to set up a relay to win, but one athlete only wants to do open events. Or if I want to get every athlete into at least one event, but my faster athletes want to be in many races. My athletes (and with increasing frequency, their parents) don't understand how we're all connected. That each decision made for an athlete ripples through the rest of the team. But I guess I get paid the big bucks to see the Forest while they get "paid" to see one tree.
Bar Raising
How much is enough? Or more importantly, how much is too much? That's always the difficult question with volume. Asking the kids how they're feeling isn't much of a good indicator - the motivated ones always say "I'm fine. Can I do more?" and the slackers say after the first repetition "My leg just fell off, can I be done?". When I was in high school I commonly remember doing 16 (and by my junior and senior year 20) x 400ms for workouts. When I came to BHS as an assistant, our first couple years the athletes could barely make it through 8 x 400m. Sure the rest may have been a bit shorter, perhaps the repetitions a little faster, but I never left the workouts feeling plussed. I chalked it up to "Hippie kids are weak". Then when I became the head distance coach, I started raising the expectation. 8 became the minimum, strong freshmen were doing 10, upperclassmen 10-12. Because of the ice Monday, today's workout (Wednesday) became the one workout of the week, so we upper the expectation even more. 16 for many of the strong juniors and seniors, at least 10 for everybody else. Know what? They rose to it! Sure, I did an adequate job of scaring them, "Start these out on the slower end of your range, then get faster through the workout if you feel good. If you don't, by the end your legs will fall off, your head will explode, and tuberculosis will spew forth from all your pores." Doing this, nearly all of them felt good and started running faster and faster by the end. Thus not only did they do a ton, but they all left the workout feeling like they'd just set a new record on Whac-a-Mole. We'll see how tired/ sore everyone is tomorrow though...
Entry Changing
"I only am willing to race the 1600." - says 12 athletes (when I've only got 3- 6 spots available). "I have to work. I would have needed to request off one month ago to have gotten it off." (when the meet schedule has been posted for the last 3 months). "I care more about running race <x>, than I do in qualifying for State in race <y>." or "I realize you made initial entries on Monday, then revisions on Tuesday, but even though it's Thursday I just remembered, I'm taking the SAT on Saturday."
I heard all of these things this week (ok, maybe not the last one; but I'm guessing I'll hear it today at practice), and boy is it frustrating. It's basically like being an engineer working on optimization problems, but each time you get a solution, the client adds a new constraint. All your hard work down the drain. It's more than that though. It's that we are part of the system we're optimizing. Thus the solutions that get thrown out have an EFFECT on us.
Example:
Monday night
Johnny's Mom: What and when are you racing on Saturday Johnny?
Johnny: 3200m in the late afternoon
Johnny's Mom: Ok, great, your sister's soccer game is at 9:00am on Saturday so I can get both of you to your activities.
Friday night
Johnny: Oh, by the way, I'm racing the 4x800m now. It's at 9:00am. There's no bus to the meet. Also, I don't know any of the other kids phone numbers to arrange a ride.
Johnny's Mom: Suck...
Then there are the other difficulties when my goals (optimization constraints) are not my athletes. Like when I want to set up a relay to win, but one athlete only wants to do open events. Or if I want to get every athlete into at least one event, but my faster athletes want to be in many races. My athletes (and with increasing frequency, their parents) don't understand how we're all connected. That each decision made for an athlete ripples through the rest of the team. But I guess I get paid the big bucks to see the Forest while they get "paid" to see one tree.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Flexibility
One of the key differences between being an athlete and being a coach is the concept of flexibility. To be successful as an athlete, you need to possess inflexibility - a singular, bull headed passion to succeed, to overcome any obstacle. Without this inflexibility an athlete can not truly push themselves to the limits in races. They'll cute workouts short, miss them completely, or rationalize skipping stretching/icing/strength drills, etc. As a coach you must behave in a completely different mindset. You've got to set long term plans, but then adapt them to current situations. If a workout isn't going well you might have to change the rest or if it's windy throw the times out the window and strive for the right "effort". Scheduling conflicts arise, you work around them. Countless other situations.
Today was such a day. The problem - Weather. Both today and tomorrow we'll have very low temperatures, today freezing rain, tomorrow a light snow. Realizing that the track was unusable today, I was initially going to try to force the workout tomorrow in only slightly better conditions. Luckily though, I have a wonderful team of coaches around me, and eventually one of them brainstormed - why not just have one large "ball buster" workout on Wednesday for the week (in addition to Saturday's races) when the temperature will be in the 50's? Eureka! Such a better idea.
Today was such a day. The problem - Weather. Both today and tomorrow we'll have very low temperatures, today freezing rain, tomorrow a light snow. Realizing that the track was unusable today, I was initially going to try to force the workout tomorrow in only slightly better conditions. Luckily though, I have a wonderful team of coaches around me, and eventually one of them brainstormed - why not just have one large "ball buster" workout on Wednesday for the week (in addition to Saturday's races) when the temperature will be in the 50's? Eureka! Such a better idea.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
First Day of Track!
... and already losing sleep.
I haven't done the leg work, but I imagine if you ask most coaches (successful or not) why they got started in coaching the number one answer would be "uh... I did the sport myself and liked it." Ditto for me. As you continue coaching you learn new reasons, these too may not vary much - "I enjoy working with the kids." or "I'm successful at it." For me however I think my biggest attraction to coaching are the problems and emotions.
First the problems - As a scientist, or better yet as a results oriented person, it comes very easy to me to tackle a problem like this: 1) Identify problem 2) Brainstorm Solutions 3) Implement Best Solution While this seems simple, it neglects the Journey. From this viewpoint, all that matters is the problem is solved, (and solved as simply/ efficiently/ methodically as possible). As easy as this is for me; it also can bore me - "Lather. Rinse. Repeat." (and frustrate me when working with people). Coaching however demands a different methodology. Often the Journey, the Growth, or the Motivation behind a course of action is the valuable exercise (and not the solution in and of itself). This is not at all in my nature, but because it is difficult (for me) and foreign - it has captured my interest. And I've gotten much, much better at it.
Second the emotions - I like feeling things - excitement, despair, accomplishment, annoyance, whatever as long as the emotion is strong, real. I like that after the first day of track a very lengthy and heated conversation is still rattling around in my head (keeping me up right now to write this). It shows me the passion I have for this job, it validates the choices I've made to continue doing it. It reminds me of lesson #2 learned by Alan Versaw described here. After 6 years of coaching, I have no problem losing sleep over coaching! I worry that I won't have these same feelings, this same passion in another line of work.
Excited for what day 2 will bring...
I haven't done the leg work, but I imagine if you ask most coaches (successful or not) why they got started in coaching the number one answer would be "uh... I did the sport myself and liked it." Ditto for me. As you continue coaching you learn new reasons, these too may not vary much - "I enjoy working with the kids." or "I'm successful at it." For me however I think my biggest attraction to coaching are the problems and emotions.
First the problems - As a scientist, or better yet as a results oriented person, it comes very easy to me to tackle a problem like this: 1) Identify problem 2) Brainstorm Solutions 3) Implement Best Solution While this seems simple, it neglects the Journey. From this viewpoint, all that matters is the problem is solved, (and solved as simply/ efficiently/ methodically as possible). As easy as this is for me; it also can bore me - "Lather. Rinse. Repeat." (and frustrate me when working with people). Coaching however demands a different methodology. Often the Journey, the Growth, or the Motivation behind a course of action is the valuable exercise (and not the solution in and of itself). This is not at all in my nature, but because it is difficult (for me) and foreign - it has captured my interest. And I've gotten much, much better at it.
Second the emotions - I like feeling things - excitement, despair, accomplishment, annoyance, whatever as long as the emotion is strong, real. I like that after the first day of track a very lengthy and heated conversation is still rattling around in my head (keeping me up right now to write this). It shows me the passion I have for this job, it validates the choices I've made to continue doing it. It reminds me of lesson #2 learned by Alan Versaw described here. After 6 years of coaching, I have no problem losing sleep over coaching! I worry that I won't have these same feelings, this same passion in another line of work.
Excited for what day 2 will bring...
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