A Coach's Perspective

A blog hasn’t been written in a while, so I figured I would try and tide you over until they start popping up again.

I got back from the State meet about two hours ago. I ate some food, relaxed for a little while, and tried to digest the season without getting too close to the various milesplit tweets and retweets about teams and individuals doing outstanding. A question I hear frequently about cross country is, “why are other teams so much better and how do we copy that?”, “why is (insert individual-champion name here) so much better than the rest of the field?”, and “what do they feed those guys?” and there isn’t one answer to those questions. (It’s about to get math-y)

Picture a circle. That circle has an infinite number of points, and each one of those points has a corresponding slope (as shown below). 

Pretend like the individual or a team is a single circle. These teams and individual champions at the state meet have an infinite number of things that are going for them. Now pretend that each point on the circle is one of those “things”. They have the right genes (talent), they really like the sport, they do the appropriate runs at the appropriate times and at the appropriate paces (half coaching/ half motivation and discipline), they stretch well, they eat well, they sleep well, they hydrate well, they work hard (this sometimes out does talent), they have near perfect opportunities that they take advantage of at the near perfect time, they have a near perfect warm up and a near perfect cool down, they tuned their muscles to a near perfect level, they are motivated intrinsically and extrinsically, they are motivated by their teammates and their teammates are motivated by them, they are confident, they take chances at a near perfect time, they are mentally tough, they enjoy the challenge of running faster, they find purpose in running, they are in the right State, etc, etc, etc. If one of these “things” is off or not perfect, that point on the graph gets skewed, and the circle becomes something different.

This is what I love about Distance running. You can’t just blindly gain muscle mass and out push or out sprint someone else. No, you have to make everything go according to the right plan at the right time. Everything matters even though you can’t control every single aspect, but all of the things you do control have to slope in the right direction, or else a season or race won’t be the absolute best it can be (ie it won’t be a circle).

So, when I am thinking about our season, I am thinking about when we made everything work, and when we didn’t. I am thinking about injuries, sickness, and effort as well as success. I get that things happen. People get hurt, sick, or otherwise unable to run. Life happens, but there is always a way to make some of those “points” slope the way you want them to. World and national records have been set by people who weren’t at their peak physical condition and Olympic medals have been awarded to people who weren’t necessarily the most in shape but to those who made that specific race work.

Part of the reason Joe and Tyler (as well as a load of our JV, freshmen, and Varsity guys) had a great season is because they made it work.

Coach, how do I “make it work”?

You can’t make this last season work anymore. It’s over, but, you can make next season work. Train appropriately over the winter, eat well, sleep well, hydrate well, challenge yourself, have fun, and maintain consistent running (don’t get sick and don’t get injured as much as you possibly can). 

-Adam Boehm