Trying to Teach Young Athletes about Pace Judgment

Over the last two years I have made a real effort to try and coach my athletes how to pace themselves properly. This is because when I ask the athletes to jog a lap of the track for the warm up it turns into a race and they comeback out of breathe. I don't attend competitions due to work commitments and the fact that parents and other coaches put far too much pressure on young athletes. Only events I attend are the cross countries and that is because I usually race later on in the day. 2 years ago I watched an under 11's cross country and witnessed something really disturbing, there were athletes crying when they were running. The reason for this was the athletes knew they were coming last and also they were really tired. Bare in mine this was when they were less than halfway round the one mile course. The start is ridiculously quick, even the senior men don't start as quick as them. I have made a real effort in the last year to equip my athletes with the experience to be able to complete a cross country and that they compete in cross countries more often.

When I was planning how I was going to tackle the pacing problem I looked into games that developed the athlete's pace judgment. I found a game called the gears game, this game helps the athletes feel 4 different paces. Gear 1 is walk, Gear 2 is slow jog, Gear 3 is fast jog and Gear 4 is sprint. The area used is 4 lanes and the athletes use gear 1 up the first lane then come down lane 2 in gear 2 and so on till they get to gear 4. The picture demonstrates this better. This game is effective because the athlete can experience different speeds and once they feel the speeds, they understand what pace you want them to run in. The coach can play around with the sequence instead of lane 1 being gear 1 etc. lane 1 can be gear 3, lane 2 can be gear 1 etc. 

The next game is an activity that I have developed myself and it is called the A-Z game, the athletes run around a track or a circuit with a partner. The first partner says A for Apple and the next partner says B for Banana and so on till they get to Z. When they get to Z they should have been running for at least 5 mins. To make the athletes run for longer or shorter you adapt the topic so instead of doing A-Z the athletes could do footballers and football clubs. The harder the topic the longer the athletes run for and this works the other way round. This game works alongside the gears game because when I do this activity i get the athletes to run in gear 2 because If they run any faster they will struggle to talk to each other. The reason that talking is emphasized is because of the energy systems, to be able to talk when running you have to be using the aerobic system, this is because you need to be using oxygen. As a coach you can find out if the athletes are using the correct system by asking them questions, if they can not answer due to being out of breathe they are in the lactic system rather than the areobic system. This games helps the athletes gain experience in running for a length of time and also helps them to relax when running. They relax because they don't think about running because their mind is concentrating on the game rather than how long they have been running for. 

I have even looked into changing the structure for cross country races for the under 11's because the main problem is the athletes run too fast into the first corner and then get fatigued. The athletes then start walking or they drop out. My solution to this is to change the race to a handi cap. The slower less experienced runners would run first and they would be set off in waves of 3 or 4 with a 30 second gap. I find that athletes are motivated when someone is going to catch them so they start running when they see someone gaining on them. The handicap would result in the race being closer in terms of finishing but also the emphasis on winning would be reduced. This is because it is about the time the athletes get rather than position. There are incentives for the faster more experienced runners because they can chase down runners in front and also in my opinion will help the middle pack improve a lot quicker by being able to stick with the faster runners when they reach them. This idea had mixed reactions, the coaches of the under 11s backed my idea and I had some really encouraging feedback however, the older members of the club are a bit more old fashioned and traditional because they explain that it defeats the object of a race. I totally agree with this point but it shouldn't be about racing at the age of 11 and under it should be about experience and enjoying cross county. 

To conclude; to get athletes to enjoy endurance work the emphasis has to be on fun, if the athletes don't enjoy endurance they will rapidly lose interest. From experience I have found it difficult to train my athletes to judge their paces however, I have found a little bit of success in terms of understanding, the athletes are starting to understand what paces they should run and when. Demonstrating this is a problem because they get a bit too excited and then they start to race each other. I have found that the A-Z game is very successful in getting the athletes to keep running without stopping for a few minutes and they run at a good pace which uses the correct energy system. Finally, if you have any advice or comments please share them or tweet me on @dannymaynard92 Thanks.