But Coach I Really Don’t Like ….

 

 

Many kids say these words “But coach I don’t even like that event” all to often…what does a coach do when these word come out of of an athetes mouth?   Coach Dean Hebert of “The Running World According to Dean” has some pretty good advice and idead on just how to handle this all to common expression from athletes on your team

I meet with comments to the effect of “Coach, I don’t like that event” from a number of runners. I understand that too. We all have our favorite races. Some of us just prefer running long and that marathon pain is just something we seem to cope well with. Others love the feeling of power and flying through a track race - 400, 800, 1500, 3000. Others yet like the pace and effort involved with that 5k-10k distance.

As I have outlined in the past, everyone is certainly “made” for different events both mentally and physically. This is not a bad thing at all. Having race preferences is not a bad thing either. In fact, it is quite beneficial because it create focus in training. The flip side of the coin is if we become too focused on solely doing our favorite event we never develop into the best runner we can possibly be. Therefore, our strengths indeed becomes our weaknesses if that is all we focus on.

We need to take lessons from the best in the world to learn how to be the best we can be. If you follow elite marathoners you will find them often jumping into 5000s and 10000s on the track. You will find 800 specialists moving down to 400 and up to the 1500/mile. 5000 runners often drop to the mile and move to the 10000. Many of these same runners will run cross-country too which ranges from 5k to 12k.

Read the entire post here

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