I'm in my first year of coaching at the HS level. We saw big gains in our XC program this fall, but this Spring I felt my group really plateaued. Many of my athletes started with some early PRs, but we have just kind of been stuck since. We just had our big A-goal meet and only one athlete had a good day, everyone else was at our just behind their PRs.
Backstory to our training is that I have inherited a very weak program, but with plenty of talent and potential. In XC I am the head coach and greatly reduced our race load, but in track I am just the assistant and we compete in 2-3 meets a week and my athletes are required to run 2-3 hard races every meet (was consistently 3-4 races, but I've been working to get the race-load down). Had some part-time commitment from my athletes throughout the winter, but many did other sports. We only get 2-3 weeks before we hit 2-3 meets a week, so I struggled to get many workouts in, mostly just trying to keep my athletes healthy so they have a fighting chance.
I felt I really had to control volume to make sure they weren't hurting/getting injured (our head coach's philosophy is to try and win or compete well at EVERY meet), and it showed in races because I feel like they just lacked the strength and endurance in the back half of the race, no matter how well they ran their first splits.
What advice do you guys have?