Cross Country Practice

We sent the kids off on a 6 mile run today with strides at the end to finish it off. I feel that most of our runners shut down a little after State was over… (We still have one more race in December. It is a pretty big race with a lot of the Western States.) I do get where they are coming from… It is hard mentally to stay in it when you raced the race we have been training for all season. And for us to say okay, lets do more until this race just throws you off a little bit. Our boys and girls team did so well this season but they could be even better if they were mentally stronger and put more effort into their runs. Not all of them are that way and on the other hand not all of them care about running as much as I and some others. But if they did care more and put a little more effort in, they could be unstoppable! I know I am rambling, but if the other coaches in our region knew how little our kids ran as an average (taking out our top 2 or 3 male and female runners-total… Not top 2 or 3 in each category) they would be frustrated with how well our team did this year! We had a end of the year meeting (which I now realized needs to happen more often) on average to highest mileage each individual ran. We started back from the time we started in the summer. As a team (coaches and runners), we met 3 times a week and on the other 2 to 3 days, we had the captains lead the workouts. We gave them a workout that the captains would have them do. Well we found out the majority (a very high percentage) only ran the days we came! That is only 25 sometimes 30 miles a week. That was their base leading into the season! Ouch!!! Now I know… Next summer will be different. The thing is… The runner has to want it! I know what I want but they will have to want it as much as me! Anyway… I started this post to write a 2 to 3 sentence paragraph and this is what it turned into. 🙂 Practice went well today.