From Indoors to Outdoors
by Steve McGill
While the indoor season is still going on for those athletes who have qualified for nationals, for many the indoor season ends this weekend or next weekend with state championship competitions. My school had its state meet on Thursday February 6, which means that my hurdler, Janie Coble, the full-time gymnast who hurdles on the side, is done with her indoor season, and now we are looking forward to outdoors. If you’ve been following along with The Hurdle Magazine for the past year or so, you have some familiarity with Janie’s story. She started hurdling last year, as a junior, and won our 1A/2A independent school state meet in the 100 meter hurdles in 16.56. While the time wasn’t all that impressive relative to the fastest times in the state overall, what was impressive was that she ran that time off of training once a week for hurdles while training and competing in gymnastics the other six days.
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We continued our once-a-week sessions into the summer and throughout the fall. Her first indoor meet in January, she ran 9.17 in the 55 meter hurdles, which is on pace for 16.34 in the 100 meter hurdles, which would be a personal best. But based on how she’d been looking in the fall practices, I had thought she’d be under 9.00. So, something was off, but I didn’t know what. In the next two meets, she remained in the low 9’s. The lack of progress was visibly frustrating her. After one race she walked off the track crying and didn’t want to talk to anybody, including me.
That was in mid-January. I had a talk with her parents after that race, and they agreed that Janie didn’t need to be that upset considering these other girls were training full-time for track while she was training once a week for track. But still, as coach, it was my job to figure out how we could do better, and I left the building that day determined to figure it out.
The first thing I decided was that she wouldn’t race again till the state meet. She needed some time to get out of her own head. Also, she needed some time to rest her body. In one of our sessions, her knee buckled when she pushed out of the blocks. She felt enough pain that we had to abort the workout. She went to a doctor later who told her she had tendinitis in both knees.
In our next session, I decided we had to minimize the number of reps she did in practice. She had said to me at a meet last year that she does better in races when she doesn’t warm up over the hurdles as much, which I had considered complete nonsense at the time. But now I was thinking that maybe with Janie, less is more. While I usually wait till the latter stages of the outdoor season to emphasize quality over quantity to an extreme degree, I felt like I needed to do that with Janie now, because her body couldn’t handle the workload of a typical mid-winter training session. So, we kept the warmup the same, but reduced the amount of full-speed block-start reps over the hurdles. I had her do just one rep over two hurdles, one rep over two hurdles, and then three reps over three hurdles. Every rep was full speed ahead, and the entire workout took 40-45 minutes from start to finish.
That formula seemed to work. We did it for three weeks in a row prior to the state meet, and each session went very well. At the state meet last week, she ran a personal best of 8.97, dipping under 9.00 for the first time, and hypothetically dipping under 16.00 for the first time if she were to maintain her pace for a full 100 meters. Even though she only finished fourth (as the indoor state meet was comprised of all divisions), she was jumping for joy afterward, and I too felt happy, knowing we had achieved a breakthrough, and that we had found a formula for success moving forward.
Now that we’re beginning to prepare for outdoors, I need to get Janie prepared for the outdoor distance, which consists of double the amount of hurdles. One thing we figured out during warmups at the state meet (although I hardly ever point out anything technical during warmups prior to a race) was that her trail leg was plopping down heavily, causing a twist and a pause upon landing, when she wasn’t leaning forward during hurdle clearance. So I reminded her to stay forward, and on the next warmup rep she looked a lot better. Our cues going into the race were “stay fast, stay forward,” and forget about everything else. Stay fast stay forward. Looking back, her upper body erectness had caused a loss of speed in previous races, but I had somehow missed it. Going forward, that will be a major cue every time we step on the track.
In our most recent workout, I had her build up to five hurdles, although we used a crouched start instead of a block start. We only did one rep over five, but we’ll keep adding a hurdle each week until we get up to eight hurdles. I’m always conscious of needing to be cautious when it comes to pushing her body. Janie will push through anything; she’s her own worst enemy in that regard, and it’s also the mindset that has worked for her throughout her gymnastics career. So it’s my job to monitor how she’s looking each rep so I can decide when we’re doing too much. Once we’re up to eight hurdles, we’ll stay at that amount. I’m not a big believer in the need for a hurdler to clear ten hurdles in practice. Save the race for race day. Marathoners don’t run 26 miles in training runs. But they’ll run 21-23, knowing if they can maintain a certain pace for that far, they’ll be able to do so for the full 26 on race day. So I’m using the same logic.
Below is footage from Janie’s last training session prior to the state meet.
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