Using the Indoor Season Productively
by Steve McGill
One of my most vivid memories from my college days comes from my sophomore year, when my team had four good hurdlers and a rival school had three good hurdlers, all within tenths of a second of each other. In the indoor conference championships, our top three hurdlers finished ahead of all three of their three hurdlers, and we reveled in our dominance, vowing that we would carry it over into the outdoor season. When we raced them again in a small tri-meet outdoors, it was more of a mixed result. I finished second to the other school’s best hurdler, and our next two hurdlers finished behind their next two. At the outdoor conference championships, I was the only hurdler on our team to make it to the finals, and I just barely made it as the eighth qualifier. Meanwhile, all three of their hurdlers made the final. Their best hurdler finished first, while I finished last.
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Such a promising season ended up being a rather disappointing season for our hurdle crew as a group, even though I had a good season individually. At the time, I highly valued the indoor season because the outdoor season was very short for those like me who didn’t qualify for outdoor nationals, so I wanted to do as well as I could in as many races as I could, indoor and outdoor. But after that season, my attitude changed. Our hurdle crew had peaked too soon. We had placed too much emphasis on the indoor season, while the hurdlers from the other school were focused on competing at the highest level at the peak of the outdoor season.
In my coaching career, I’ve primarily approached the indoor season as a time to prepare for the outdoor season, although my more advanced athletes have competed extensively in the indoor season. But I still prefer to train for the longer 100/110 meter outdoor distance even during the indoor season, even for athletes who compete in the 55/60 meter hurdles indoors. One year back around 2014 I made the mistake of really locking in on the shorter indoor race with a female hurdler who, a senior at the time, had made it a goal to win the 60m hurdles at indoor nationals in New York. In practice that winter, we put a greater emphasis on shorter sprints, block starts, and drive phase mechanics. The girls’ hurdles was a hot race that year, and even though my girl ran well, she missed out on making the finals by one place. Once our focus turned to outdoors, she struggled with speed-endurance. She ended up running a very respectable 13.76, I think it was, but that was well short of the 13.3-13.4 that I felt she was capable of.
Nowadays, there are so many indoor meets that athletes can compete as often or more often indoors than outdoors. To me it’s excessive, because, as a coach, my role is that of a teacher. With my hurdlers, I have to teach technique, I have to teach rhythm, I have to teach all the nuances of the event. Even with advanced hurdlers, I don’t like competing every weekend in the indoor season, as preparing for races every week takes away from the big-picture training. The latter part of each week ends up consisting of shorter, race-specific workouts that provide the needed short-term benefit but can take away from long-term goals.
My school team doesn’t have an indoor program. Part of the reason for that is that we don’t have a track, and part of the reason is because we have such small enrollment that putting a team together is pretty much implausible. Even our outdoor team only has about twenty kids, girls and boys combined. At the end of the outdoor season last year, I told the team that if anyone wanted to race indoors this winter, let me know. I had a handful of kids who were real hard workers and who I knew would benefit from the opportunity. One girl, our distance runner Sophie, ran cross country in the fall and has continued training, so she is race-ready and has benefitted from the competition, having already set new personal bests in her races, and she also qualified for nationals in the 1600 and 3200. Meanwhile, my long hurdler, Marie, has raced in the 300 and 500 as we train for the 300m hurdles outdoors. These indoor meets are giving her a chance to face competition so that she’ll already be race-sharp when the outdoor season begins. My other hurdler, Grace, who prefers the 100m hurdles although she’s equally proficient at both hurdle races, hasn’t been training much in the offseason, and it showed in her first race, as she was sailing over hurdles and spending way too much time in the air. Our sprinter, Alena, generally lacks focus although she has a lot of natural ability. She got smoked in the 55 dash in her first race. Then my one male athlete racing indoors, Alex, ran good solid races in the 1000 and 1600, even though he wasn’t really close to his personal bests.
So, Sophie has something to build on as we head into the outdoor season, Grace and Alena had a much-needed wake up call to get their butts in gear, and Alex and Marie had good confidence-building races. We’ll run a couple more indoor races before the state championships in mid-February, and Sophie will also compete at Nationals in March. Because we don’t have an official indoor program, I’m under no pressure to send the kids to meets every weekend. Instead, we can develop at a natural, steady pace.
With Grace, a senior who won’t be running track in college, but who has a good chance of winning the 100h outdoor state title in our weak division if she can get into the 17’s, we’re still trying to figure out if we should continue working toward three-stepping or if we should instead work on refining her four-step action. We need practice sessions, not races, to figure that out.
Honestly, when I go to these big indoor meets that last all day, I see plenty of kids who would be better served training than racing. I’ve always been a practice coach more than a race coach. I’m more concerned with how you’re developing than with where you’re ranked on Milesplit. Quality training time is precious and shouldn’t be wasted or taken for granted.
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