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After reading my comments concerning my race, some of you may be confused about my position on watches. I think they are great for road racing and training – bad for high school racing. Here's why.
For most people, road racing is about time. Specific time goals usually outweigh positional goals. It is helpful to get that first mile split to make sure you are on the right pace. It is especially important not to let the excitement of a large pack pull you too fast too early. Add in the large number of novice runners, many of who have not yet learned to use the feel of their body as a guide. A watch would be especially helpful to them. Lastly, if the race doesn't have a visible finish clock, it's nice to time your own race – just in case. This weekend at the Oysterfest 5K was a perfect example as timing snafus abounded.
Watches are also important to training. Being able to monitor your distance runs for both pace and overall time are important. And if your team has multiple groupings for interval workouts, sometimes a coach (OFTEN THIS COACH) needs an athlete to take charge of a group.
But as for track or 5K XC races, watches can be more of a hindrance than an aide. High school races are more often about position than time. Athletes need to concentrate on the dynamics of maintaining contact and throwing surges. The watch doesn't help there. In fact, when you look at the watch and concentrate on what the time means, you are really diverting your attention from the task at hand. What really matters is how your body feels and how you decide to measure and manage your limits. Those limits vary from day to day and are further altered by course conditions and weather. The watch doesn't take any of that into account.
Whenever the watch rule is debated, I always vote for a ban. I'm tired of watching novice runners try to time their races, stopping dead still on the finish line to hit the button. They are a danger to anyone around them. That we can ban jewelry and wristbands but allow watches is beyond me.
For now I'm apparently in the minority among coaches. I suppose I could ban them from my own team, but at the risk of having my athletes feel they are somehow at a disadvantage. Yet, when I see them check their wrists twenty times in the last mile (at random points where the time is meaningless anyway) I have to give the matter another thought.
In the meantime, athletes should consider the possible benefits of shedding the watch, depending on someone else to call that mile split, keeping their eyes on the course and listening to their own body.
After reading my weekend race blog, a few of you might wonder why I mentioned backing off to let someone else cross the line first. The only reason to bring it up was as an introduction to a topic – more accurately, a chance to vent about one of my biggest pet peeves - race decorum.
How often have you seen this? You're at the finish line of a road race. The age group winners are all in, the elites have their sweats on and here come two runners, one of each gender. Now I know I should be gender blind, but heck, most times they just don't look the same and I tend to notice. So here they come, woman leading, the man 5 meters back. The man suddenly sprints at full speed, nearly runs the woman/girl off the course and bursts across the line, hands raised in triumph – another victory for testosterone! I guess it was a Freudian slip that a second ago I had typed testoster-none.
Can he really imagine that anyone is impressed if a seven to eight-minute miler can sprint the last 50 yards? What was he doing for the last 3.05 miles? Measuring the competition? Waiting to make his decisive move? There should be a no-passing rule in the last straightaway unless you are against someone of the same gender and age group.
That's why this Sunday morning I reined in my competitive nature for the last few steps. When I sensed a hesitation – either deferral or tentativeness on her part – I hope it wasn't because she was afraid I might take her down in the last few steps. She ended up 33 rd to my 34 th . A reversal of position would have meant nothing.
I left right after the race to man an Oysterfest booth, thus missing the kid's race and saving myself from my other pet peeve. That being the parent illegally pacing a ten year old to victory. But that's a topic for another day.
Rant ended!
This is my last topic related to Sunday's Oysterfest Race. It relates to how I felt throughout the race, which was pretty darn good. But that is also a sign that I didn't “go to the well” during the race. My goals were well within my grasp, I was in control the whole time and I didn't feel the need to test my limits. In short, I underachieved.
I only say this to point out that the effort an athlete will invest is directly related to the height of one's goals. Thus, the role of a coach who wants athletes to reach their full potential is to find ways to elevate personal goals. It doesn't matter how hard a coach hopes an athlete will try. What matters is how hard the athlete is willing to try. A coach's dream is to have an athlete whose personal expectations exceed the ones he has set for them.
Unless an athlete is incredibly genetically talented (you know there are a few out there and they drive the rest of us nuts) it takes hard work to rise to the top. Hard work flows from high expectations.
The fact that I stayed close to my comfort zone says a lot about my self limiting decisions. My age and experience tells me that I have abilities that are reduced with each passing year.
The beauty of youth is the victory of passion over reason. Young athletes reach greater levels of achievement merely by convincing themselves that anything is possible. Their ability to perform beyond the bounds of reason exist purely because they have not yet imposed self limiting levels of expectation.
While my body thanks me for staying within my comfort zone on Sunday, my brain chastises me for not wanting more.
The best athletes at the Hockomock Championships this Friday will end up uncomfortable in body, but content in mind. I wish them well.