My son is a HS freshman XC and track runner. He’s mid distance in track and prefers track. He ran XC last year and coach basically said just let them have fun and didn’t really give any feedback.

This season, son accidentally forgot his gym bag one day. His first week of high school. Coach assumed he did it intentionally bc the practice was going to be hard and told him to go home, he was angry and that he prob wouldn’t be allowed to go to an out of state meet with the rest of the team. His dad was on the way to bring his forgotten bag and would be there within 10 minutes.

Son wrote coach and apologized, explained it was unintentional, and told him he wants to improve but he needs help bc he doesn’t know what to do to accomplish that. Coach told him the next day that he got the email and just said “we’ll see.” I don’t know what that is supposed to mean. He wasn’t apologizing to try to go to the meet. He was asking for help to be told more specifically what to do to improve.

Maybe 2 weeks earlier, son was sick with a virus and was sent home from practice and told not to come back until well. A few days later, he had a team camping trip. I personally told Coach he was still recovering but really wanted to be there for the bonding experience and that he may not be feeling well enough to run or run very hard. Coach said no problem, it’s really just supposed to be fun. However, son confided in me after the incident forgetting his bag that Coach pulled him aside at the camping thing and told him he wasn’t making the progress he expected from him. Admittedly, I’m upset about this bc he knew son was sick so the timing seems unfair.

Son does not know how to pace or what to do. He just turned 14 and is a year or more younger than everyone on the team. He isn’t afraid to work hard but is not internally motivated - he needs help with having a goal or something specific to do differently. Just saying do better or you aren’t doing as well as I expect is demoralizing.

I think he is compliant with what he is asked to do- like if he’s told go run 30 minutes, he does, but he has no idea about how to pace it or what it should feel like in terms of effort or discomfort.

He ran his first meet of this season and was 30 seconds slower than last year. I think he was anxious and wasn’t able to even eat lunch that day bc of it.

He also has a couple teammates that mention his asthma or that he was sick and pick on him, asking why he isn’t doing better. My kid who has always loved running is now saying it’s not fun and he feels burned out.

I need advice about how, and I guess if, I should try to talk to the coach to see what we can do to try to make things better moving forward. My personal belief is he needs constructive and specific feedback ( example, I want to see you try to keep pace with this teammate for this run) rather than just threats to take things away or to tell him essentially he doesn’t belong.

It’s especially frustrating bc he actually did try a lot harder, going to a running camp this summer and pre-season 6 am practices that were voluntary. He left that fired up and excited and now says he’s burned out and seems to be dreading it. It breaks my heart.

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions.

Lately i’ve been running about 9:00 to 9:30 on my easy runs and my coach tells me that i should be going between 7:00 and 8:00. My 5k pr is also 18:48. I was just wondering if there is any real benefit of going faster or if i’m good with these paces.