The 5 Mistakes New Distance Coaches Make

I still remember my first season as a head cross country coach. I hadn’t planned for it to happen. I was a competitive masters road racer who had been recruited by the outgoing coach. I already worked at the high school, and my daughter was a sophomore on the team, so the stakes felt personal from day one. After a few days of careful consideration and some serious kitchen-table conversations with my wife and daughter, I decided to take the plunge.

I walked onto the track that first day armed with a clipboard, a whistle, and decades of my own racing experience. I had a training binder thick enough to stop a bullet, filled with notes on Lydiard and Daniels, and I had color-coded spreadsheets for every workout. I was ready to build a dynasty, but I didn’t even know the basics of high school cross country training.

And by mid-October? My underclassmen were burnt out, I had a strained relationship with the boosters president, and the team culture felt… flat.

I was coaching running, but I wasn’t coaching runners.

It took me years—and more apologies to athletes than I care to admit—to realize that high school coaching isn’t just about physiology. It’s about psychology, biology, teaching, counseling, empathy and the delicate art of managing modern day teenagers who are growing faster than their bones can keep up.

If you are new to this game, you have an opportunity to skip my “learning curve” (read: mistakes). Based on decades of experience and observations from top programs across the country, here are the five most devastating mistakes new distance coaches make—and how to avoid making them.

1. The “Mileage Monster” Trap

The most common trap new coaches fall into is the “More is Better” fallacy. We see collegiate programs running 80 or 90 miles a week, and we think, “If my kids want to be fast, they need to grind.”

The Reality: High school bodies are not collegiate bodies. They are often dealing with rapid growth spurts, hormonal changes, and a lack of structural durability.

The Fix: Adopt a “minimum effective dose” mindset. Ask yourself: What is the least amount of volume we can do to elicit the desired adaptation? As renowned sprint coach Tony Holler likes to say, “Don’t burn the steak.”

2. Ignoring Long-Term Athlete Development

New coaches often coach every athlete as if they are peaking for the Olympics this year. We treat a 14-year-old freshman with a biological age of 12 the same way we treat an 18-year-old senior who has been training for four years.

This is the “Cookie Cutter” mistake. You write one workout—say, 12 x 400m—and the whole team runs it. The seniors hit their splits easily. The freshmen? They are dragging themselves across the line, form falling apart, digging a recovery hole they won’t climb out of for three days.

The Reality:

You are not just a coach for this season; you are the steward of an athlete’s career. If you burn out a talented freshman physically or mentally, they will quit before they ever find out how good they could have been.

The Fix:

Group your athletes by ability and “training age,” not just gender.

• “Freshman/Novice”: Focus on movement quality and fun. Their volume should be significantly lower.
• “Developmental”: Sophomores/Juniors building aerobic capacity.
• “Performance”: Seniors/Varsity handling higher loads and specific race-pace work.

3. Neglecting the “Invisible Training”

We obsess over splits. We agonize over whether the tempo run should be at 6:15 or 6:10 pace. But we often ignore the other 22 hours of the day.

Dr. Nathan Carlson, a physical therapist who works with elite high schoolers, notes that young runners rarely need to “try harder.” They need to recover harder. The biggest limiter for high school success isn’t usually the workout; it’s the lack of sleep, poor nutrition, and academic stress.

The Reality:

You cannot train a malnourished, sleep-deprived body. If you ignore this, you aren’t coaching; you’re just managing a slow decline.

The Fix:

Make “Invisible Training” a visible part of your team culture.

• Talk About Iron: especially with your female athletes. Ferritin levels can drop silently, destroying a season before it starts. Encourage annual blood work.
• Sleep is a PED: Remind them that sleep is the best recovery tool there is.
• Strength Training: This is non-negotiable. Bodyweight squats, lunges, and plank variations protect the skeleton.

4. Copying Culture Instead of Building It

I once tried to copy the University of Oregon’s branding for my high school team. I designed a t-shirt. I hung posters in the hallways of the gym. I tried to manufacture a vibe I admired.

Nobody bought into the idea. Why? Because it wasn’t authentic to my athletes or my personality.

The Reality:

As leadership consultant Brian Kight warns, copying culture is like trying to wear someone else’s prescription glasses. It might look cool, but you won’t be able to see where you’re going. High schoolers have excellent “BS detectors.”

The Fix:

Build a culture around standards, not slogans.

• Define Your Values: What does your team stand for? Pick no more than 3 and hammer them home.
• Rituals Matter: Create your own traditions. I spray painted my old running shoes silver and turned them into trophies: The Salty Shoe Award. They loved it.
• Involve the Seniors: Culture is top-down. If your seniors pick up the trash or break down the tent after a meet, the freshmen will learn to do it too.

5. Coaching the Spreadsheet, Not the Athlete

This is the silent killer. You have the perfect 12-week periodization plan. It’s a work of art. But on Tuesday of Week 7, it’s raining, half the team has the flu, and mid-terms are tomorrow.

The “New Coach” looks at the spreadsheet and says: “The plan says 5 x 1000m at Threshold, so we are doing 5 x 1000m.”

The “Experienced Coach” looks into the tired eyes of their kids and says: “Change of plans. 20-minute yoga session, and then I want you go home and eat a good meal and use the extra hour to sleep.”

The Reality:

Wear the “parent” hat. The spreadsheet doesn’t know your #3 runner just broke up with their boyfriend or that your #5 runner failed a math test. Stress is cumulative. The body doesn’t know the difference between “running stress” and “life stress”—it all drains the same battery.

The Fix:

• The “Eyeball Test”: Watch your athletes during the warm-up. Are they chatting and laughing? Or are they silent and dragging? If the energy is low, adjust the workout.
• Communication Loops: Create a system for feedback. For boys, it can be a quick “scale of 1 to 10” check-in before practice. For girls, you may want to have them write down how they’re feeling and hand it directly to you.
• Be Brave Enough to Rest: It takes confidence to tell a team to go home early. But often, an extra day of recovery yields better performance than a forced workout.

The Finish Line

Coaching high school distance runners is one of the most rewarding jobs on the planet. You aren’t just making them faster; you are teaching them resilience, discipline, and how to be part of something bigger than themselves. I like to think we’re coaching them to become better people, not just better runners.

Don’t worry about being perfect. You will make mistakes—I do every single day. But if you prioritize the person over the spreadsheet, build a culture of respect, and play the long game, you won’t just build a fast team. You’ll build a family of runners.

And that, Coach, is how you really win.