[Daniel Andrews]

Daniel Andrews on May 2, 2005 at 12:23 pm #10809

Only event in track I don’t like is 3200m run when some coach puts their paint dryers in. A road or XC race i can see, but why torture a kid with 8 laps in front of everyone all eyes glued to them. I know its about finishing, but its an awful thing to do to a kid.

I watched a jr. high meet this last week. My niece was running in it for the Jr. high I coached at last year. The girls coach, put this girl, not my niece, who is slower than a 3-toed sloth in the 800. What’s worse she was damn near lapped in a 2 lap event. She came in at 4:43 secs. I almost cried, kids in jr. high don’t think in relative terms. They think in absolute terms. Put her in the 100 or 200 at that level, but most of all coach the girl. Work on her mechanics. Work on her stride rate and stride length. That is a coach’s job at that level.

[loz800m]

loz800m on May 16, 2005 at 11:37 pm #45069

Amen

[CoachKW]

CoachKW on May 17, 2005 at 7:18 pm #45070

But, why take a kid with no obvious leg speed whatsoever and put them into a sprint race? Who says they have to be fast before they run distance? They may have been up against entry limits and had no choice but to enter her in the 800. You can work technique all day every day on kids like that and they won’t get any faster in a sprint race. But, she could improve and become serviceable in a distance race if she chooses to.

[Daniel Andrews]

Daniel Andrews on May 19, 2005 at 5:52 am #45071

Kids in middle school have a hard time dealing with absolute time differences as opposed to relative time difference. So they feel better losing by 5-8 secs than they do by 2+ minutes. I struggled with this last year, but the big problem is this girl sprints the last 50m of the race pretty well. She needed to do more distance running in practice. On my XC team for middle school a girl with a 12:15 1 1/4 mile TT improved from 19:45 minutes in her first meet to 15:30 for 2 miles which is respectable for a 7th grader, because I worked her up to 20 miles a week before I started cutting back.

Trust me on this one, my niece was not coached at all this season and it showed that she did not train either. In fact the coach’s reply to one of my niece’s friend about “How do I use starting blocks?” was “You figure it out.” I know the coach, and many parents keep asking about what they should do. My only reply to them is find a track club, preferably the one I work at :). There are 3 within 30 minutes of my hometown.