high school x-country coaching

I am excited to have been hired to be the 2010 cross-country coach at Raleigh Charter high school.  This is a 1A public high-achieving academic school in downtown.  We held the first two practices in the morning on Monday and Tuesday.

It is a good group of kids (about 30 of them evenly split boys/girls) and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to work with them.  My goals for the season are:

• Provide an intelligently structured training plan appropriate to their level of ability
• Help each athlete meet his or her training & racing goal for 2010
• Help them learn more about proper training, nutrition, gear, and recovery
• Encourage fair play and team oriented thinking
• Be fair-minded, disciplined, and a good mentor/coach/example
• Do as well as possible at dual meets and invitationals

Our practices are in the early afternoon for the remainder of the season, so we'll be dealing with some heat for a few weeks.  It has been extraordinarily hot & humid here in the Raleigh area this summer.

On that note, this morning I got up at 5:00 to go for a tempo run with a few of my TAF teammates around downtown.  My heart popped on big hill number three at the 45 minute mark and had to hobble-jog back to our starting point.  Something like 8.5 miles in 1:04.  Completely wrecked!