Parents,
Many of you are wondering when practice officially ends on a daily basis. I have given the runners a time of 4:30. Please understand, however, there must be some flexibility in this time. Cross Country is a sport where a set end of practice is not practical. For instance, the days before meets, we will do shorter runs, and therefore, be done before 4:30. Some days, however, we do long runs and may go a little past that time. With the number of kids we have out this year (which is a very good thing), the time it takes any runner to complete a practice run varies significantly.
As coaches, we do our best to keep the team together during workouts and stretching, so there is downtime until everyone finishes and wait-time is required; some kids will complete the assigned run before others. This, in my opinion, is what makes cross country such a great sport. Runners all come at different levels, but everyone is given the opportunity to improve.
The typical practice will start at 2:55. However, there are times when Coach Schmerge and I are called for short after-school meetings. Also, the days after meets we like to highlight improvements of our runners during team meetings. There may be days we don’t get started running until 3:15. Still, 4:30 is a good estimate of when practice will be over.
Coach Gutman
693-3075