Losing Contact: State Rules for Summer Training

Why Summer Training Matters

Over the next few weeks, I want to take a look at various aspects of our summer training, offering some additional details as well as insights into why we include them. You can find the summary document for training at the end of this, but in forthcoming posts I will give a breakdown on the items, while perhaps introducing a few others.  In this first post I want to discuss the overall structure of our summer training, particularly the rationale for why it changed.

One of my favorite books for high school runners is Jay Johnson’s Consistency Is Key.  While the book addresses a number of topics, its title captures the central message.  If a runner wants to remain healthy and find success, they need to be consistent in both their training and other lifestyle choices.

​Practically that means running most days of the week, with a regular cycle of more taxing workouts and recovery runs.  This is just as true during the summer, the ideal time to build foundational strength and aerobic endurance.  Chad Evans, whose boys at St. Ignatius Prep in San Francisco regularly finish top ten in the large and rather competitive state of California, was once asked for the three most important words in his program.  His answer was “June, July, and August.”  

Summer training isn’t mandatory.  Per state regulations, a runner’s attendance at summer training has zero direct impact on their membership on our team.  However, just because something isn’t required doesn’t mean it isn’t highly recommended.  If a runner wants to reach their fastest times in October and November without getting hurt, the work has to begin in the summer.

That work can certainly be done on one’s own, but running alone is challenging.  Without teammates, it's hard to find motivation and accountability, especially on days when one is feeling a bit sore or the weather isn’t ideal.  Without coaches, it’s easy to run workouts sub-optimally:  running too fast or slow, not recognizing developing issues, being too stubborn to shut down workouts in order to live to run another day.  All of this means that the best structure for summer running is to run regularly with coaches and teammates.

To promote consistency in this, we're offering free summer training shirts to any new runner who attends at least 5 workouts this summer and any returning runner who attends at least 10.  I think they look pretty cool, and this is the only way to get one.

The design for our summer training shirts.

Dead Periods and
​Contact Days

This desire for consistency is why for many years our summer training ran Monday through Friday, with many experienced athletes encouraged to run on their own on Saturdays as well.  While I would love to continue that approach, state policies prevent this.  MSHSAA recognizes the value of summer as a time for students to relax and reconnect with their families.  A non-stop onslaught of summer practices, scrimmages, and camps threatens that possibility, especially when spread across multiple sports/activities and coupled with student jobs.

As one way to address this, the state requires all schools to schedule two summer dead periods, one for sports and one for activities (band, cheer).  MSHSAA gives the following definition for a dead period:

during the dead period school facilities are not utilized by enrolled students in connection with any sport or activity governed by MSHSAA. The dead period is a no school activities time; no open gyms, competitions, practices, conditioning, weight training; no activity-related functions or fundraisers, camps or clinics at school facilities or sponsored elsewhere by the school; no coaches/directors or students may have planned contact other than casual, normal community, non-activity contact. While there may be sports activities during this time, they must not involve the school coach, the school or school facilities.

Schools may make these dead periods the same week or separate weeks.  Our school separates them.  But since many of our students are involved in both sports and activities, they could potentially never get a full break.  Our school therefore requires that both those weeks be honored as dead periods by sports and activities.  This year the combined dead periods span from Saturday, June 22 through Sunday, July 7.

Additionally, MSHSAA requires that all sports observe a seven-day dead period the week before their first allowable practice.  For fall sports such as cross country, this will be from Monday, August 5 through Sunday, August 11.

For as long as I have been involved with our program, we have adhered to the dead weeks.  However, MSHSAA doesn’t stop there.  They further restrict each sport to 20 contact days during the summer.  That raises the question of what exactly  constitutes a contact day.  Once again the MSHSAA Handbook provides a definition:

A day of contact is defined as any date on which any coaching or instruction in the skills and techniques of any sport takes place, regardless of whether activity-specific equipment is used. Any of the following would count as a day of contact – school competition, non-school competition, practice, review or chalkboard sessions, open facility, camp/clinic, evaluation events, group lessons, private lessons. Conditioning/Strength activities will not count as a contact day, as long as the activity adheres to the provisions outlined in By-Law 3.14.6.a - h. Simply being at a school facility will not count as a day of contact unless both coach and student are there and the sport (as defined above) is taking place.

Put simply, if any coach has any sort of sport-specific interaction with any athlete on a day, that day counts as a contact day for the entire team.  For example, if our entire team meets at school for a long run on a Friday in June, that counts as a contact day for the entire team.  However, if I met at the Soccer Park with a single runner on Saturday morning to work on their running mechanics, that would also count as a contact day for the entire team.  But if I met a second runner later in the afternoon, no additional contact day would be accumulated since there had already been contact that day. Contact days aren’t measured per athlete or coach.  It’s a single total for the entire team, and that total isn’t supposed to exceed 20 days.

If I’m honest, we haven’t been the most observant of this policy in the past.  That puts our program at risk for sanctions, as a single report to MSHSAA (say from a rival school) could make us ineligible to compete at districts/state.  As much as I value our training time, that’s not a risk worth taking.

At first, I did think we might have a way to meet daily and still adhere to the policy.  As the above quote mentions, Strength/Conditioning activities don’t count as contact days.  Elsewhere in in its handbook, MSHSAA defines these activities as those limited to running, weight training, and calisthenics. 

If you examine a typical day of training for us, it really doesn’t consist of anything beyond running, weight training, and calisthenics.  At face value, it would seem like most of our training sessions would count as conditioning rather than contact days.  

​Wanting to play it safe, I reached out to Doug Fessler, assistant executive director at MSHAA and contact person for cross country.  He told me that since the primary activity of cross country was running, any session involving running would count as a contact day.  To qualify as conditioning, our activities with coaches and athletes must be restricted to weightlifting and calisthenics.

Working for MSHSAA is a pretty thankless task. I've sent Doug Fessler too many emails to count over the last year. I probably annoy him at times, but I appreciate how Doug always replies to my questions, even if he doesn't always give the response I hoped for.

What All This Means
​ for Our Training

Students can certainly still run every day (and on most they should), even together, and even during the dead periods.  On non-contact days, this just can’t happen in the presence of coaches, nor can it happen on school grounds during the dead periods.

Even after observing our dead periods, running together Monday through Friday the other weeks of summer would amount to 35 contact days, far beyond our limit. That meant prioritizing certain days of training where coaches would be present.  Our two hardest days in our weekly summer cycle are our aerobic workouts and our long runs.  These are the most complicated days with the greatest potential to be done incorrectly.  Therefore, I wanted to have coaches around at all of these outside of the dead periods.  

Last summer I tried to be flexible with schedules, shifting a runner’s hard workouts based on their attendance at training.  I already had some reservations about this approach, but given the restraints on contact days, this simply isn’t a viable option going forward.  To minimize contact days, these workouts need to be consolidated to the same days.  Tuesdays make the most sense for our aerobic workouts.  It comes on the heels of plenty of weekend rest but with Monday as a day to ease into harder intensity.  Friday long runs allow multiple recovery days from the aerobic workouts but still fit in before the weekend when many might be away on trips. 

We used to alternate our summer sessions between mornings and evenings.  At times that created short recovery windows, especially with a hard morning run following an evening run the night before.  Wanting consistency, we decided to shift all sessions to the morning. 

There were several motivations for going this route over the evenings.  First, more of our runners with jobs work in the evenings, meaning they are more available in the mornings.  Second, summer heat tends to be a bit more predictable (and tolerable) in the mornings.  Third, mornings provide flexibility with the rest of the day.  If thunderstorms roll through in the morning, we still have the option to run in the evening if they’ve cleared out by then.  And if some of our runners do end up in the weight room later in the summer, they could do this in the afternoon/evening after some time to recover from their morning run.  The one exception to this due to Vacation Bible School is our first week, where we will meet in the evenings.

As you can see, during summer 7 am tends to be much more comfortable than 7 pm.

Committing two contact days per week to the long run and aerobic workout only leaves 6 remaining.  Rather than concentrating all of them on a third day every week, I decided to spend most of them on our first week of training and the first week out of the dead period.  The thought was that during those weeks, we could help set a tone for what each day of the week should look like.  Then in subsequent weeks, runners can follow that tone on their own.

The one thing left in limbo was our fun day.  Our program has a long tradition of incorporating a fun day each week–traditionally on Friday–where we would combine some light running with some sort of game or enjoyable activity.  For the sake of team culture, which is ultimately the bedrock of any success, I didn’t want to lose those.  However, we also didn’t have seven contact days to spare.
​
Finding a solution required a bit of creativity.  First, we moved the fun days to Wednesday.  Coming right on the heels of our hard aerobic workout, Wednesday should be something of a recovery day anyway.  We also separated the fun activity from the running.  We’ll start with the games with coaches present.  After that, our coaches will leave.  At that point runners have the option to stick around for a run without coaches.  Based on information from MSHSAA, Wednesdays wouldn’t count as contact days under this structure.

All of this still leaves us with two contact days to spare.  Right now I have them penciled in for two of the Mondays where our strength training levels up.  However, if we need to use them elsewhere, we have that freedom. 

Hopefully this gives a good overview of the rationale for our weekly structure and the allocation of contact days.  You can see all of this mapped out on our team calendar.  Unsupervised days are listed as OYO (on your own).  My hope is that some of our veteran runners will take initiative to plan training times on these days and communicate details to all runners.  However, these can’t happen with coaches around, as much as I would love to be there.

​In the next few posts, my plan is to take a closer look at training groups and levels before examining the individual days of each week to discuss what they look like and the role they play in our training.  Overall,  my goal is to create an environment where someone doesn’t have to care why we do what we do, but at least those answers exist if/when the curiosity arises.  If that's you, stay tuned!

Summer Training Plan
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