Day In The Life Of A Cross Country Coach

As some of you may know, I coach cross country at a community college in New Jersey. I love it. I love seeing the athletes improve as the season goes on, and seeing how hard they work. This year I’m grateful to 1) finally have a full men’s team and 2) have a committed, motivated team.

cross-country-coach

Some seasons (and if you’re a coach you might know this), you get student-athletes who are on the team but not giving it their all. They complain or just seem blah to be there…and I wonder, “Why are you even here?” lol. But this year our team is solid, and our men’s team has a good chance of making it to Nationals as a team. We’ve had runners qualify for Nationals every year I’ve coached, but as individuals. We’ll see what happens!

Last weekend, we had a meet out in Harrisburg, PA. It was pretty low-key but a good chance for them to see where their fitness level is at. It was the first 8K race of the season for the men (the first meet was a 5K).

I decided to do a little vlog to capture the day and show a day in my coaching life

This Friday, we race the Paul Short Invitational, which I’m super pumped about. It is a pretty big meet, and I plan to do another vlog for that one too.

For us, race days usually go like this:

  • Get on the bus and get there about 1-1.5 hours before start time
  • Get to location and set up in our spot. Hang out for a bit.
  • About 30-40 minutes before start time, I send them out for a warm up. We’ll start with drills like A skip, B skip, high knees, butt kicks, cariocas, side skips and more, then they will go on a 10-15 minute easy jog, then come back for more dynamic drills and stretching.
  • Head to the start area with about 10 min. to go and start doing strides.
  • They run, I run around and try to catch them at certain points to give them splits or simply motivation.
  • Afterwards, they go for a 10 min. cooldown jog and then we stretch.

Let me know what you think of the vlog! I want to do more videos again…future topics might be:

  • My dynamic warmup routine before runs
  • Tips for getting faster at the 5K
  • Quad/glute workout for runners
  • My go-to stretching routine

Continue reading here: My Marathon Training Plan

Was this article helpful?

0 0