watchout, on , said:

Given a bit more time I think I could argue why it's much more difficult to actually schedule less meets, but ultimately, that's what it comes down to; schedule less meets and try to get the kids to understand why.

MatthewXCountry, on , said:

Wait, no traffic? Where is this route, I want to check this out!

watchout, on , said:

The change people really want is for SS to split (but that won't happen because of football). It is ridiculous that you can drive for 5 hours in no traffic and be in the southern section the entire way.

cerutty fan, on , said:

I wouldn't think most good coaches would actually run their kids hard in many races during indoors. That should be base training. If they are running their kids into the ground that early, well... they are doing it wrong.

But yes, the California track season comes down to three reasonable phases: 6 weeks of light racing and heavy training (call it the Pre-Competition phase, starts the last week in February), 6 weeks of moderate racing and moderate training (call it the Competition phase, it would start with Arcadia for potential State qualifiers), and then 3 weeks of light training and heavy racing (call it the Peak phase - Division Finals, Section Masters, and State). That gives you 10 weeks for base training (with occasional indoor races, if you so choose to include that within your training schedule) if you qualified for FLN, 11 if you ran at NXN or FLW, 12 if you made state but didn't compete post-season, or 12+ if you didn't make state.

Additionally, it is the coach and AD's decision to schedule non-state series meets, so if a coach feels like their kids are racing too often: STOP SCHEDULING SO MANY MEETS.



California kids should feel lucky that they have so many opportunities and such a long season. Many kids in other states only see their coaches for 12 weeks in track and 11 in XC - that's 23 weeks of training in the year (plus 10 more in June/July/early August), during which time they race 20 times up to 25 if they make it all the way to state in both track and XC.

watchout, on , said:

Of course, preceding that is 6-7 weeks of league meets and high quality invitationals. Before that, and even overlapping it, is indoors. Of course, they do get about a 4 week break in between XC Nationals and indoors, and that's more than enough time to build up a solid base, right?

From the time the XC season starts in early September until track is done in early June, kids in California could have over 40 race-days in their legs within about 280 days. Basically, once a week for the better part of a year. It's little wonder certain college coaches don't even consider the most talented California kids; odds are they are fried by the time they graduate HS if they've been national-class runners the previous 2 years.

If you tell your wife you love her 38 times a day, or better yet as a simple reflex to end every electronic communication, I'm pretty sure it's not going to elicit much of a response by the nervous system either; it's fried.

MatthewXCountry, on , said:

Yes, but my point was that not all 6 weeks are like that (as cerruty fan was saying).

State, Section Masters, and Division Finals are requiring runners to go all-out or close to it. A 4:20 will make the cut for league finals and Division Prelims. And 4:25 is more than good enough for League Prelims.

So that's 3 weeks of running hard, 1-2 weeks of decent effort, and one week that's relatively easy (for a nationally elite type runner). That's not enough to stop great athletes from having great performances - a 3 week peak isn't uncommon. Besides, as Scott mentioned, there isn't really any other way to whittle down the field to get to the state meet - unless, of course, state was in a divisional format which would eliminate the need for the Section Masters meet and save athletes a week of hard effort, though I'm not sure that's the change people would want.

MatthewXCountry, on , said:

Since qualification is strictly on time (you are not guaranteed a qualifying spot in the masters meet by winning your division), these qualifying races for masters are effectively "all out" for many of the athletes and nearly all out for the national caliber ones.

cerutty fan, on , said:

I agree with this and its actually even worse because there is no way a 4:20 qualifies you to the southern section masters meet from your divisional race. Most athletes must run well harder than this. For example, this was the CIF girls qualifiers (runners in bold ran too slow in their prelims to qualify - yes a 4:56.7 was too slow! and for the boys a 4:15.6 was too slow!) Even if we were to say a 4:20 wasn't too taxing surely a 4:10-4:15 is quite taxing on a national caliber runner

1 Ferron, Kayla 12 Redondo Union 4:52.45 10
2 Segal, Sydney 12 Beverly Hills 4:52.53 10
3 Gehrich, Amanda 9 Tesoro 4:53.24 8
4 Shanahan, Danielle 12 Bishop Montgomery 4:53.31 8
5 Goins, Rianna 12 Canyon/Anaheim 4:54.67 6
6 Huebner, Megan 11 La Quinta (L.Q..) 4:54.68 10
7 Canterbury, Paige 12 Dana Hills 4:55.03 8
8 Scott, Marissa 12 Bonita 4:55.03 6
9 Ulizio, Cara 12 Redondo Union 4:55.54 5
10 Coscia, Kimberly 10 South Torrance 4:55.80 4
11 Fairchild, Melissa 11 Serrano 4:56.16 3
12 Collins, Destiny 9 Great Oak 4:56.53 6
13 Helbig, Ashley 11 Great Oak 4:56.71 5
14 Jones, Alana 12 Laguna Hills 4:58.06 5
15 Hong, Abby 11 Mira Costa 4:58.87 2

And for the boys
1 Luna, David 11 Indio 4:11.91 10
2 Gidebuday, Sydney 11 El Modena 4:12.43 10
3 Fernandez, Bryan 12 Dos Pueblos 4:12.62 8
4 Corcoran, Garrett 11 Villa Park 4:12.73 6
5 Tamagno, Austin 9 Brea Olinda 4:13.05 8
6 Gonzalez, Juan 12 El Toro 4:13.17 10
7 Koryta, Brennon 11 Brea Olinda 4:13.22 6
8 Goins, Austin 12 Canyon/Anaheim 4:13.64 5
9 Batra, Chanan 12 Beverly Hills 4:14.37 5
10 De La Torre, Daniel 12 La Salle 4:14.96 10
11 Reddish, Porter 12 Vista Murrieta 4:15.25 8
12 Warrick, Kyle 12 Roosevelt, E 4:15.51 6
13 Hernandez, Hector 11 Canyon Springs 4:15.65 4
14 Malone-White, Evan 12 Redondo Union 4:16.15 3
15 Yoho, Alan 11 Flintridge Prep 4:16.60 8
16 Hall, Dalton 12 Mater Dei 4:17.07 4
17 Esposito, Austin 12 Rancho Cucamonga 4:18.37 5
18 Brown, Andrew 12 Mission Viejo 4:18.82 4
19 Galvez, David 12 Rowland 4:18.82 2
20 FitzGerald, Jimmy 10 Rio Mesa 4:19.97 3

cerutty fan, on , said:

I disagree on your last point - I think competition is supposed to be "us vs. them". The system as it stands is just about as reasonable as it can be. Yes, it makes the 4:10 State Leader have to work for it and not be as fresh as he could be at state, but every 4:22 guy in the state deserves his chance to get to state (or as far as he can go), and the weekly rounds are the only way I know to get there.

Scott Joerger, on , said:

Thanks for clarifying the details of qualifying. The thing to note in regards to being able to cruise through rounds theoretically is that even a 4:20 effort for a 4:10ish 1600 talent is going to drain the central nervous system quite a bit. It disrupts training, potentially disrupts sleep the night before and night of the race, the nerves are overstimulated the day of the race, etc. Week after week that takes a toll. Now maybe if you are a 3:44 1500 talent you can absorb this all as training, but if your maximum is roughly 10 seconds slower than that, it's going to be very stressful.

I feel like the schedule is setup to make an "us vs. them" sort of situation where battle is being done constantly and nearly everyone is left battered, bruised, or broken. It would be nice to see a schedule that takes our physiology/psychology into account better and makes for an end-of-the-season meet like State and Brooks where kids can come together and have truly exceptional performances.

Three move on from league to CIF Prelims. The At Large for these schools is about 4:20-4:21 (any under that go automatically). There is no at-large standard from Prelims to Finals or from Finals to Masters. Finals to Masters is the really competitive and risky one to get past. Now there is an at-large for Masters to State - which I believe is around 4:13 usually. The actual number hasn't been published yet.

Century League is the most competitive league for individual milers right now, hands down. But even there, when you are talking about national class runners, they should be able to get out of their league. Yes their focus will be on getting through the rounds of CIF meets and state, but I think it's expected that those will come first. Brooks PR is an extra meet that will probably fall a bit after their peak, and they just have to deal with it. Then again, Blake Haney seemed to just get better as he got into summer racing last year.

cerutty fan, on , said:

Granted, there are certainly leagues with a lot of talent. But my question is how hard to they have to run to qualify through the early rounds?

Take the Century League last year for example. This is the top 10 for the 1600m according to athletic.net (so it may not be 100% accurate, but should be close)


1600 Meters
1. 9 Austin Tamagno 4:09.43a CA Brea Olinda
2. 11 Garrett Corcoran 4:10.95a CA Villa Park
3. 12 Austin Goins 4:12.04a CA Canyon (Anaheim)
4. 11 Sydney Gidabuday 4:12.43a CA El Modena
5. 11 Brennon Koryta 4:13.22a CA Brea Olinda
6. 12 John Janneck 4:18.72a CA Brea Olinda
7. 10 Wesley Walsh 4:22.70a CA Canyon (Anaheim)
8. 10 Austin Shellito 4:28.28a CA Brea Olinda
9. 11 Mitchell Hutton 4:28.95a CA Villa Park
10. 10 Skyler Garcia 4:29.05a CA Brea Olinda



How hard would Tamagno, Corcoran, Goins, Gidabuday, and Koryta have to run to qualify for the CIF-SS Division Prelims? I wouldn't imagine they would be in much danger to not qualify in League Prelims (it wouldn't make sense to only qualify 4 guys for league prelims, for example). Maybe not getting out of League Finals either (I don't know how many move on from league to section prelims, or if there is an AQ standard they could meet and how tough that would be).


While there might be 5 weeks of qualifying meets before state, the state caliber athletes don't have to be near their best for all 5 of those meets. I would think it would be more like 3 weeks in a row (SS Masters, Division Finals, and possibly Division Prelims - though both Division 1 and Division 2 only had 12 guys under 4:20 last year in the SS, and Division 3 only 10, so maybe that's not so likely)

watchout, on , said:

It's all dependent on where you go to school. I know if you live in Southern California you can't exactly breeze through all the rounds. Even if you can, most kids don't have the patience to do so.

In leagues that are abnormally strong, where you may have multiple nationally ranked performances like the Century League currently does, it can be a real battle for nearly every one of those 6 weeks.

cerutty fan, on , said:

How many weeks in a row do the national caliber kids have to run hard? I wouldn't think they'd have to run too hard to get through the earlier prelim/qualifying meets.

6 weeks in a row of qualifying meets for most CA runners to go through league prelims to state, one weekend off, then this meet. Brutal. Whether this meet is easier to peak for than the NB or Adidas Inv the weekend before, or Golden West the weekend after, I'm not too sure. However, I'm fairly certain the top level kids are racing too much in too short a time span to have any truly special performances relative to their own potential.

What do you guys think?

Awesome.

I assume they can't do the same for the 2 mile (3200m) at Arcadia, since that's a Nike sponsored meet?