Every coach would like to see an athlete enjoy a state meet like Liz Tremblay, left, had last spring. But how do you make that happen? Colorado Track XC file photo.
In eight years of coaching at state track meets, I've witnessed a few gruesome injuries. Most vivid in my recollection are athletes from Soroco, Silver Creek, and D'Evelyn down on the track short of the finish line and further from their personal goals than they likely ever imagined possible.
I've seen numerous other athletes sustain less dramatic injuries at the state meet. While their recovery periods were no doubt shorter than those who sustained more dramatic injuries, they, too, left the state meet detached from the dreams they brought with them.
Injuries are not the only risk in place at the state meet. Even with the new three-day schedule for the state meet, fatigue remains an important factor. While fatigue rarely keeps an athlete off the track in his or her event at the state meet, it does impact performances. There is a long list of individuals who seemed to be locks for state titles but finished back in the pack due to accumulated fatigue from earlier events.
In the great scheme of things, pulled, torn, and detached muscles seem to be the province of the explosive events and overwhelming fatigue the province of the endurance events.
I chose recent Thompson Valley graduate Liz Tremblay for the cover photo of this article because she exemplifies the kind of state meet performance that so many find so elusive--state titles in two relays (both state meet records), a state title in an individual event (another state record), and a fifth place in a fourth event. Both of her individual events had prelims. One of her relays had prelims, but Tremblay sat out the 4x400 prelims. She competed at distances from 200 to 800 meters, touching both the explosive and endurance ends of the spectrum.
It's no understatement to say that Liz Tremblay was vulnerable to both the kind of traumatic injuries suffered by sprinters and the kind of building fatigue that afflicts distance runners competing in multiple events.
So, how do you prepare an athlete for a performance such as Liz Tremblay posted at the state meet?
That is largely a question for Matt Norton, coach of the Thompson Valley track and field program, but this much needs to be said: the workouts Norton puts his top athletes through are substantial. Liz Tremblay is undoubtedly a gifted athlete, but her springtime practice schedule prepared her for what she did at state in a way that few high school athletes' training regimens ever do. I've personally viewed the records of some of her workouts and went home slack-jawed. There was nothing easy about her training.
Those workouts also built over a period of four years. Liz Tremblay didn't get to where she was last May on the strength of a single season's work. And, you could probably put 100 high school track and field athletes through the kind of workouts Tremblay endured and break 95 of them in the process. We're talking about an exceptional athlete. Exceptional in terms of physical giftedness, exceptional in self-discipline, and probably exceptional in a couple other key areas as well. I'm guessing she ate right, rested consistently, and stayed properly hydrated on a consistent basis.
At this point, it's worth talking about that marquee matchup in the 4A girls 400 at state last May--Liz Tremblay vs. Emily Blok. On Thursday, Tremblay ran the 4x800 plus prelims of the 400 and 200. Blok ran the 100, 200, and 400 prelims. Either way, it's a brutal load, but perhaps Blok's load was slightly easier on account of the fact that Thompson Valley went all out on the 4x800 to knock down an all-classification record in the event. Both Blok and Tremblay were able to coast somewhat through the 400 meter preliminaries.
On Friday, Tremblay finished fifth and Blok first in the 200 meters--a probable dead heat in terms of toll on their bodies and wiring. Was Tremblay's finish predetermined by her load on Thursday? Perhaps.
On Saturday, however, with both athletes dealing with accumulated muscle damage and central nervous system fatigue, the advantage had swung back toward Tremblay for the 400. Tremblay had no prior events that day, whereas Blok had run the 100 earlier in the morning. Is that why Tremblay edged Blok at the finish? It's difficult to answer that question from this distance, but it doesn't seem a stretch to suggest that Tremblay came into the race at a slight competitive advantage.
On an ordinary day, Blok's 100 in the morning may have been inconsequential to the 400 in the afternoon, but the third day of the state meet is no ordinary day of competition.
So, is there any place at the state meet for athletes who aren't as exceptional in as many ways as Liz Tremblay?
Yes, but careful coaching and management of the state meet schedule are still in order.
Almost every coach studies the state meet schedule (linked here). One of the first things that most coaches notice about the three-day state meet schedule is the compressed schedule on Thursday. Whether you are 4A/5A or 2A/3A, you have approximately six hours to get all of your events on Thursday done.
Numerous coaches have ventured the opinion that schedule is too compressed. I hear that from explosive event coaches (chiefly sprints, jumps, and hurdles) more than I hear it from distance coaches.
I question, however, whether the more important consideration is six hours or four events.
At first, that seems like an easy debate to resolve. If an athlete has handled four events in a single day at multiple points during the season, then it would seem that if we encounter trouble with the same athlete at state the problem must lie in compressing his or her schedule of performances into a time frame of no more than six hours.
The trouble with this line of reasoning, however, is that it ignores the introduction of confounding variables at the state meet.
No invitational meet--not Liberty Bell, not Mullen Runners Roost, not Nike Littleton/Valor--brings together the intensity, the level of competition, or the urgency placed on maximal performance that is present at the state meet. Superior athletes can scratch an event at big invitationals, coast through some performances, and walk away knowing there's another day if their strength and performances weren't what they hoped they would be. Each of these situations is dramatically different at the state track meet.
I submit that, for most athletes, the consideration of four explosive events in a single day is a more important concern than cramming those four explosive events into a span of six hours. There is no meaningful restorative period for either the muscles or the central nervous system whether those events are spaced over six hours or over ten hours (And ten hours would be an extremely long invitational meet!).
If you push a hamstring to the edge in an event at 10 AM, it will still be on the edge for the next event whether that next event is at noon or 2 PM. If your central nervous system is fried at 4 PM, it matters little whether your next race is at 5 PM or 6 PM. Your muscles will be firing in sub-optimal fashion, and you are consequently at elevated risk of injury.
Asking an athlete to compete in four explosive events on the Thursday of the state meet is a huge order, period. It matters little how well spaced those events are if they each occur without a period of sustained sleep between them.
So, what is a coach, or an athlete, to do?
A good place to begin would be with the notion that less is sometimes more.
Depending on your program, you generally have two options in place. For the athlete who is good enough to be a contender at state in four explosive events, you can either 1) reduce that athlete's events to a number less than four, or 2) substitute for that runner in relay prelims. In a few cases, you might be able to avoid four Thursday events if the athlete is a jumper and jumping competitions are held on Friday and/or Saturday. The downside of that, however, is that it simply transfers the stress to one or both of last two days of the state meet.
Substituting for a top runner in a relay carries its own element of risk. There is no disputing that. Life, however, is about choices. Which risk would you rather run--the risk of not advancing a relay to finals (the level of this risk, of course, varies from team to team) or the risk of injuring an athlete? Admittedly, that decision becomes a little more anguished if a potential state championship is on the line. Multiplying the stress load of your star athlete, however, often leads in a direction directly opposite of a state championship.
At The Classical Academy, we made a conscious and purposeful decision to restrict athletes to not more than three events at state. We overrode that decision with one athlete, but did hold her out of a relay preliminary on Thursday. We felt we had a reasonable opportunity of advancing the relay to finals without her and that the risk of adding the preliminary race on Thursday to her schedule was simply too great. We preferred the risk of missing finals in that event over potentially having her compromised when she got to whatever finals she did make.
Even with that three-event policy in place, we did sustain two injuries at the state meet last spring. Not surprisingly, both of those injuries were to sprinters. Both ran multiple prelims on Thursday, advanced to finals on Friday, and hurt themselves in finals on either Friday or Saturday. Neither injury was serious in the great scheme of things, but both injuries dampened their performances on Saturday. In short, both finished below what they should have if fully healthy.
The choice we made may not be the right choice for every team and every athlete. It wasn't the right choice for at least a couple of the Thompson Valley athletes. Still, we feel good enough about it that we intend to make the same choice this year.
The considerations with distance runners are a little different. The risk of debilitating injury is fairly low with distance runners. The risk of accumulating fatigue, however, is enormous.
Especially at the smaller school level, it is not at all unusual to see a top distance runner competing in the 4x800, 3200, 800, and 1600. It's been a while, however, since any athlete, male or female, managed a sweep of the titles in those events. Let that be a warning to those who would attempt to undertake it.
It may be worth the effort of sitting down and having a heart-to-heart with your top talent, both the explosive event variety and the endurance event variety, before the state meet. What are their priorities? What are your priorities? What all is at stake? What are you both going to feel best about in another month or another year?