‘Isn’t smart in the middle of your season’: Why coaches steer elite high school and college track athletes away from Bloomsday

When skilled runners hit the road, there is always the risk that the road will hit back.

That’s the dilemma for college and high school track and field coaches when faced with the question whether running Bloomsday is a good idea for their athletes.

Despite all the competition and enjoyment that Bloomsday has provided some 40,000 people annually since the 1970s, the answer leans heavily toward no. There is certainly a taboo that track and field and road racing don’t mix, and the reasons are varied.

“It’s kind of the forbidden fruit,” said Cheney High School head coach Derek Slaughter, who coaches one of the most formidable distance running crews in the region.

“Bloomsday scares me this year,” Central Valley head coach Chuck Bowden said, knowing the race is sandwiched between the end of the regular season and the start of all-important postseason competitions.

Obviously, track athletes run on a smooth, 400-meter track with far less competitors, versus Bloomsday with wall-to-wall runners and asphalt beneath their feet. In high school, the maximum distance raced is 2 miles, and in college a 10-kilometer race is the max. Bloomsday measures 12K, or roughly 7½ miles

“For 95% of the human population or more, running Bloomsday is a great idea,” long-time Whitworth head coach Toby Schwarz said. “For the rest, wisdom should take priority over temptation and short-term desires.”

Gonzaga head coach Pat Tyson agrees. He was once an elite collegiate runner in the 1970s at Oregon, and it’s the same then as it is now.

“Most understand that it’s not a good fit for this time of the year,” he said of his talented Bulldogs distance running crew. “They already know that without asking.”

Even when he was a coach at Mead High School, Tyson encouraged his athletes to be a part of the event, but not to run in it.

“No high school or college teams would want their present athletes to run it, but boy do we encourage our alums to come back and celebrate the weekend. We’ll be there to cheer them on.”

“It’s tough that you don’t get to see the top high school and college runners, but it’s still a great event,” said Eastern Washington University distance coach Sam Read, a competitive road racer. “You’ll eventually see those same high school and college runners, but it’s after they graduate.”

Slaughter competed for Shadle Park High School in the late 2000s, and he remembers a strict ban from running in Bloomsday.

“If we did it, we would have been kind of suspended from the team – especially the varsity athletes,” he said. “It was to avoid any silly or dumb injuries. If you get any kind of tweak or problem, you are kind of ending your track season with Bloomsday.”

Now as a head coach , he takes a more neutral approach. He doesn’t forbid his athletes from running in Bloomsday, but he discourages it.

“I kind of find a middle ground with our athletes – I tell them they can do it as a training run, but I don’t want them to race it,” he said.

Early May is the beginning of postseason competition when athletes attempt to advance from one competition to the next, either by placing or meeting time standards. One off day could mean the end of the road, and coaches don’t want to have to place the blame on that road.

“There is a toll on their bodies and it will take more time to recover from a race that distance,” Slaughter said. “They are training for a 3,200 race and a 12K is too taxing knowing the next week you have to run your best to have a chance to advance and possibly run at state.”

“Doing something not part of your normal schedule has a high risk of injury,” Schwarz said. “Waking up Monday morning with a sore foot, or tight knee or inflamed Achilles is common when someone throws in a longer race on pavement with hills on a hot or wet or cold Sunday morning.

“Racing an event that is four times as long as your longest track race isn’t smart in the middle of your season.”

Risk of injury is part of it, but overdoing it is what concerns Slaughter the most. For Cheney, its last hard workout before the postseason typically comes on the Monday after Bloomsday.

“The problem lies with the kids pushing their bodies to the limit,” Slaughter said. “I’ve seen athletes run Bloomsday and then the next week they are flat for their postseason race.”

“In my opinion, they won’t be on fresh legs,” echoes Bowden, who said the addition a few years ago of a subdistrict qualifying meet the Wednesday after Bloomsday further complicates the recovery issue. “It would pretty much wipe out whatever you have planned as a Monday workout and premeet on Tuesday.”

It could be an 80-degree day or freezing cold which exacerbates the risk of injury or recovering properly. Running the rolling hills of the Bloomsday course doesn’t help.

“Bloomsday is not a normal course, race or environment,” Schwarz said, “So no matter how slow someone runs, the risk is high for injury or, at best, soreness.”

“If you run a 12K, your legs need a couple of weeks to get them back in the game,” Tyson said.

“Some kids can handle higher mileage and some kids cannot,” Bowden said. “You have to be careful – dead legs are dead legs no matter what, and then you have to have to wonder, ‘Why did we do that?’ ”

Slaughter has run Bloomsday many times with a best of 42 minutes. He knows all too well the competitive aspects when there is always somebody ahead of you to catch.

“If I was in a race in that environment, I’d run way faster than I should,” the former competitor at Western Washington University said.

“When you line up, your instincts are going to take over,” Tyson said.

“It’s not that far from training for a 10K or 5K, but for most of our runners it doesn’t translate to the perfect race distance for training or just for fun,” Read said. “Most of them don’t want to do it just for fun because they are college athletes and are really competitive people. As soon as they get to the start line, it’s game mode and they are going to race hard.”

Slaughter reminds his athletes that the years competing in high school or college are short, and after that they’ll have their lives ahead of them to compete in road races such as Bloomsday, or The Boulevard race in Spokane in the fall.

“The moment they graduate from high school, 90% of them jump into Bloomsday because they just love running,” Slaughter said. “It just hits at a bad time during the track and field season.”

Especially at the college level and even at the high school level, track and field workouts and competition are precise. Lap time splits are critical, whether running speed workouts, distance workouts or, most important, competitions.

The key to avoiding injury at Bloomsday, Schwarz said, is keeping to the planned pace – a “tempo run” as it’s called.

“For a college runner who is tempoing Bloomsday for a workout, that is fine,” he said. “But it is a pretty good tempo length and there is risk of getting caught up in the moment and racing it.”

“I might encourage them to do it if they are redshirting and that it works for them as a nice 12K tempo run as a workout,” Tyson said. “It can be done and used during certain situations, but it depends on each individual.”

Eastern is in a situation in which the race may work for some athletes whose seasons have concluded, but definitely not for those advancing to the Big Sky Conference Championships, which start Wednesday in Bozeman.

“It’s really just hard timing. For those going to conference, we don’t want a 12K and a hard effort on their legs,” Read said. “And most of the athletes who just finished cross country, indoor and outdoor seasons are mentally and physically burned out and ready for a little bit of a break.”

Whitworth’s Northwest Conference Championship meet was in April (both the men and women placed second), so Schwarz has several athletes whose season is over. Some will use Bloomsday as a proving ground for the fitness level they achieved during the track and field season.

“Bloomsday is a very big draw for those who want to use all of their fitness and work from the season and put it to the test against the world,” he said. “Oftentimes, the middle or back of the pack college runner can be a king or queen in comparison to the average Joe or Josephine.”

Tyson ran Bloomsday as an elite runner after his college days were over, then was a Coporate Cup competitor when he returned to Spokane to coach at Mead. More recently, he’s walked Bloomsday with race founder Don Kardong.

He’s always been a supporter of the event, and has had hundreds of his athletes involved volunteering at water stations or working with elite runners to transport their sweats and personal belongings from the start line to the finish.

More important, he urges his former Gonzaga runners to return annually to run in the race and take part in the team’s awards banquet and alumni weekend. He does the same in the fall when The Boulevard race takes place.

“We do build Bloomsday into our schedule, and I’d say about 80% of the alums who do show up run it.”

While he hasn’t run in Bloomsday since he became a head coach, Slaughter will be on the sidelines cheering on his family, friends, and yes, a few of his athletes.

“I think it’s a great race. I tell them it’s like any other Saturday or Sunday long run they would do. They can find somebody they would like to run with and have a nice 12K run, but don’t race it.”

“In tiny little Prosser when I was growing up, I remember people coming back on Monday wearing their Bloomsday T-shirts,” Bowden said of the mystique to Bloomsday. “It has such an amazing history and has a great local connection to it. And they support us – it’s unbelievable how much they support running in high school and kids.

“So sometimes you feel bad when you are asking kids not to do Bloomsday. Personally, I’d rather see them at districts or the state meet competing at 100% rather than still recovering from it. They can run it the rest of their life.”

Read, who along with his wife, Rebekah, are competitive road runners, will run Sunday at Bloomsday. He’ll enjoy the race with family and friends, including several athletes he coached previously in Cheney and at Montana State.

“There are some people I have to try to beat,” he said.

“Bloomsday is a great community event and a wonderful opportunity to go out and test oneself – against themselves and others,” Schwarz said. “Bloomsday isn’t going anywhere, so take advantage of being a high school or college athlete in that eight-year window. After that, go run until you can’t run, then walk and then have someone push you around the course. There is a time and a place for everything in life. Now may not be the time and Bloomsday may not be the place.”

Slaughter encourages his athletes to run in the summer with the Flightless Birds Running Club that meets each Tuesday in Cheney. He would also like to see a summer type of series in Spokane that would allow high school runners to compete against one another on the roads. He mentions the Yakima Mile as an example of a race he would encourage his athletes to race in during the offseason.

Tyson agrees that summer is the time for collegians and high school runners to compete in road races, such as the Cherry Picker’s Trot in Green Bluff. Other than that, they have long been avoided dating back to his days running alongside the legendary Steve Prefontaine at Oregon.

“It was the same – there were very few college runners but there were a lot of elite postcollege runners,” he said of the long-running road racing craze. “Those were the competitors who wanted to be a part of Bloomsday and all the other cool road race competitions.”

Volunteering to help at Bloomsday-supported events is another way many local schools have kept their athletes involved. Same with The Boulevard, a new fall race in downtown Spokane that comes during college and high school cross country season.

While a few Cheney distance runners competed in the inaugural event because it’s shorter (5 miles) and came during an open weekend in the cross country season, the rest of Cheney’s team cheered on runners from beneath the Washington Street Bridge.

But this week at Bloomsday, the risk versus reward is a no-brainer.

“The reward of Bloomsday is being a part of it – it’s an amazing road race and there is no other thing like it,” Slaughter said. “But the risk isn’t worth it. The moment you graduate, you can run it for the next 30 or 40 years, and that’s the big thing.”