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Question What's the advantage to tracking workouts and run times throughout a season? Rafferty YThe coach can notice a number of things. One is, in the beginning, what level is this person starting at? Then at what rate are they able to approve. Have they improved rapidly in a short amount of time or do they improve slowly over an entire season...build it up. The importance of that is first to see if the strategies of the training are helping. And if you don't see improvement for a number of people on the team, then the type of workouts that you're doing are not beneficial and that is going to hurt the team and hurt the individual runners. Also with data tracking I think it's important to look at the person's performance to see if they are burning out. If they're getting tired. They may peak earlier and you might be able to see that on a graph. Their workouts have shot up over seven or eight workouts and then all the sudden start falling down. I think also with tracking we're looking at the weather conditions. You're able to tell when some people might have a harder time in certain types of weather. Whether it's hot. You have some people who have a hard time running in hot weather, some people in cold weather and you're able to then prepare for meets and workouts looking at that. Faya You'll be able to see various patterns through the tracking. Every runner reaches a plateau at some point. And hopefully what you can do is track not only individual runners but groups of runners so that they can adjust their training, you can adjust their training, and give them the necessary rest if they're being over-trained, or if they're being under-trained you can raise the intensity. Jenny You also may be able to find someone's strength or their weaknesses in the process. Whether they're better at a certain distance for track or whether they're better at a certain type of course for cross country. Rafferty I think if you're coaching and not tracking the times and not setting target times for the runner to hopefully hit, you might be setting up for. Back Home		Educational    Posture    Warm Ups    Long Runs    Short Runs    Tracking    References   Personal Best site    People    Programming