Here’s How You Help Your Athletes Run Their Best Race
Published September 21, 2025
Quick question: Can an athlete race faster than their fitness level?
While high school athletes often figure out in races that they can endure more discomfort than they have in the past, the technical answer is "no."
If an athlete can’t run better than their fitness level, then their goal should be to run as close to their fitness level as possible.
So the question for you is, "How can I help my athletes I coach race to their fitness levels?"
Have Them Focus on What They Control
They don’t control the course conditions or the weather. Your upperclassmen already know this, but it's worth re-iterating this to the new athletes.
What’s harder for athletes to accept is that they can’t control how well or poorly the competition runs.
Here’s what they can control:
• Executing the plan you’ve give them
• Enduring discomfort from the middle of the race to the end of the race
• Speeding up in the last 200m, 400m, 600m, or even 800m of the race
That’s about it.
You simply want your athletes to execute a race plan where they endure discomfort and speed up at the end. If they do that, they’ll race to their potential.
One of your jobs this week and for the rest of the season is to help them embrace the fact that they need to focus on what they can control and not worry about course conditions, weather, or the competition.
Are You Focused on the Competition?
You likely are, and I don’t think that’s the end of the world.
We’ve all said some version of, “If we can just get our 4th and 5th runners to run 20 seconds faster, we’ll be able to ____.”
You’ve come to this conclusion from either head-to-head competition with other schools or looking at race results and finding teams you’ve both raced against and coming up with a hypothetical race.
I did this for hours and hours as a young coach, so if you’re doing this, I think that’s fine and part of the process of becoming a better coach.
And while I firmly believe you need to know what race paces kids would need to run on the championship courses so that you can prepare them neuromuscularly for those races, be careful not to have expectations for kids that are a “bridge too far.”
They can run to their fitness level, but they can’t run better than their fitness level (though, as I said earlier, they may be able to figure out mid-race that they can endure more discomfort than they have up to this point in the season).
Don’t Make The “A+” Mistake
One more thing you need to preach to your athletes the rest of the season is that you don’t need all seven of them to have their best races of the year to have a great team score.
Said another way, they don’t need to run “A+” races.
Show me a team where a couple of kids had B or B+ days, a couple of others had A- days, and a couple had an A performance, and I’ll show you a coach and team that’s happy with their finish.
Should you aspire to have your athletes ready to have A’s across the board on the same day? Of course.
But I think if you take a few moments now to think about the performances you’d like each runner to have in the next meet, you’ll see that you don’t need your varsity to have seven PRs on the same day.
I’ll try to remember to reiterate this point as you go into the final meets of the season. At that time of year, all the programs that go into those races saying, “We need to run the best race of our lives” often come through both the first mile and second mile fast… but faster than they should have, and they end up fading in the last mile.
September 21 is a good time to start preaching to your kids that a bunch of B+ and A- races each week is what your team needs to accomplish your October and November goals.
Lots To Do
There is so much you can do to help your team the rest of the season.
- You can be centered and calm when the weather is problematic and you have a big workout
- You can preach the importance of sleep
- You can do visualizations with your team
And you can help them understand that they don’t need A+ races for your team to have a great day.
They simply need to follow the race plan, endure discomfort, and be ready to run fast at the end of the race when they’re uncomfortable.
Simple, not easy.
Or better yet, “Simple and hard.”
Your kids can do hard things, which makes this such an exciting time of year for them and for you.
Let’s go!
Jay
PS – "The course has changed my team's trajectory.
Last year, we failed badly at the championship meets of our season, ending the year earlier than expected.
This year, after diving deep into the skills from the course, our athletes have had what they needed to succeed.
There is so much value here between race strategy, relaxation techniques, visualization, and most importantly, helping your athletes be aware.
If you feel you have a gap in your ability to help your athletes mentally prepare for competition, this course is 100% worth your time and money."
That's what Coach Pacione has to say about the Complete High School Runner course.
All of the important meets are yet to happen. If you have kids who are fit, but who are struggling mentally, it's not too late to get the videos (and audio) and get them ready to run to their fitness level.
Jay Johnson
