When it comes to running, rest, and nutrition, high school runners have no one-size-fits-all formula. In my twenty-fourth year of coaching, I’ve seen runners who excel living off of Cain’s chicken fingers, others who refused to eat anything unhealthy, and plenty who believe Dr. Pepper is the lifeblood that flows through the veins of champions. Teenage runners are exceptionally adaptable, but we do our best to steer them towards healthy choices regarding their nutrition and, perhaps even more critical and equally more complicated, their sleep habits.
The author and former distance coach at the University of Houston, Steve Magness, states simply, “Stress + Rest (Nutrition) = Growth.” My favorite part of coaching is setting up training plans for our athletes. I love putting together the puzzle pieces and trying to sequence workouts in the best way possible over several months to see if I can have runners peak at the right time. The workouts in the above equation are the stress. Regardless of how ingenious (or regarded as ridiculous a few years later upon further reflection) my training plans are, the workouts are only as good as the rest and recovery needed to complete the plan. Professional runners can work at incredibly high levels of volume and intensity because they can match their workouts with long blocks of rest, physical therapy, and a diet designed to help them recover from their work. Without the recovery to complement the running, they are unable to maintain the workload. I take it for granted how much we ask our athletes to do during the season at Owasso. The workload is far more than I did in High School. It’s not quite to the level of the volume and intensity I did in college, but for our senior runners especially, it’s not too far off. With that being said, we could run more miles. We could spend more time in the weight room and do extra stretch sessions, but there is only so much time in the day. Our runners usually have difficult class schedules; many of them have part-time jobs, and we want them to spend time with their friends and family. With all our runners' responsibilities, we still need to give them time to recover. They need AT LEAST 8 hours of sleep a night. So we might do a little less than we could, but I believe we should do just about as much as we should for them to be healthy, successful, and still have a life outside of running.
In addition to the stress of training and the rest needed to recover, we stress the importance of fueling to be successful. For a young runner, this can mean all kinds of things, depending on the athlete themselves. We emphasize how important calories are above all. They have to eat! Some of our kids can eat anything and still run fast with little side effects. Others adhere to a strict diet before practice and race day or go into a digestive tailspin. Does that sound gross? It is. May I please tell you now that pepperoni pizza for lunch is the greatest practice killer of all time! Sometimes, it’s just a matter of finding out what food works for them and when is the best time to eat it. Another point of emphasis we make with our athletes is the importance of the types of food they eat. We tell them to eat like a caveman! If it grew from a plant, then eat as much as you want. If it was packaged in a plant, then limit your intake. Is it okay to drink a Dr. Pepper every once in a while? Sure, but not three or four a day. Ice cream? Some of our kids are so skinny I want them to eat more ice cream! Can they have a fried pie from their Aunt Eula? If you pass up a fried pie from Aunt Eula, you’re a fool! Go ahead and eat it, but not in excess. The difficulty here is that SO much of our food is packaged and processed, and they are short on time. It’s easy to grab some chips and an energy drink. Finding the time to make a lunch and cook a dinner is hard. We always come back to the fueling idea. If our runners are fueled by a bunch of junk food that their body has a hard time processing, they are taking away from their ability to perform at their best. That might mean all the difference in the world when it comes to running a PR, making the Varsity squad, or winning a State Championship.
So, back to “Stress + Rest (Nutrition) = Growth.” Our spiel to our athletes is you can train as hard and as much as you want if you can make the time to recover from the training. If you can’t get ten hours of sleep a night, you shouldn’t be running eighty miles a week. If you can’t recover from the training, you can’t adapt, and therefore you can’t grow. If you are training hard and sleeping enough but fueling with a bunch of junk, or perhaps even worse, not fueling enough, you are on borrowed time. You are limiting your ability to grow from the training and the rest you’re investing in. If you are genuinely a bonehead, sleeping a lot and eating well but not showing up to practice, no growth occurs because there is nothing to trigger the stress. Based on his research with his team, Coach Magness also stated that the number one key to their growth as an athlete was their consistency in attending practice, which makes far too much sense. If you want to be a better runner, you have to run! When our athletes learn to be consistent with their diet, consistent with their sleep, and consistent with their training, we see magical things happen. Quality and consistency in all good things are truly the key to success.
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