>Who remembers a HS champion?
That isn't the only situation. The quote assumes that everyone who will run in college and the difference in training will just determine HS greatness... maybe par for the typical letsrun reader, but in the real world, if you aren't fast enough, you don't get to run in college.
I didn?t run 100 mpw in high school, but I wish I did. Looking back a few of the posts, I see that people are talking about burn out and also comparing equivalent HS performers with different mileage background? the lower mileage person with the same performance obviously has a bigger upside. A point that is missing is that, for a large number of individuals, the difference between training at a moderate level and a higher mileage level can mean the difference between running in college or not. Only a small percentage of high school runners are ?good enough? to run in college. If you are not fast enough with moderate training, what are your alternatives? Basically, train harder and smarter or high school is pretty much the end of your running career, at least the ?serious track? of cross country and track as opposed to fun runs, road and trail races, triathlons, etc. if you are still interested in those kinds of events. How is that end result any better than risking (not even close to guaranteeing) some possible injury or burn out that can often be avoided with smart higher mileage training?
I didn?t get an opportunity to run in college, but I?m pretty sure that I would have if I had known then what I know now about training and how my body reacts to different kinds of training. I didn?t start running until my Jr. year of high school, and I just did what my coach told me to do - pretty much the low mileage stuff popular in the mid-80?s. I ran pretty slowly off of that stuff (30-45 mpw), and I was always tired and had a real BURNED OUT feeling after every mega-lactate producing interval workout. I would not feel well for two weeks after such a workout and my coach ended up sending me out for 10 milers on interval days, only to toast my body again when I felt ok. I ran 4:46/10:00 off of that stuff, never feeling right. Those performances were not good enough to even be allowed to try out for walking on at the college that I chose for academic reasons (4:30/9:30 was min for walkons). With hindsight, I know that I could have run much faster on high mileage and I know that I wouldn?t have burned out. I actually started running the summer before my Jr. year, with some summer running with the prior HS coach. I ran 8 miles the first day and 9 miles a day the rest of the summer, so basically 60+ mpw from my very first week of running and my body handled it well. In fact I felt MUCH better doing that mileage without any killer intervals than I did when school started and my mileage dropped/killer intervals began with the new coach. First year of college, I pretty much gave up running training and went back to my old sport cycling. The next year, my cycling was screwed when my bike frame cracked and the warranty claim took forever and denied me a bike to ride for the summer, so I got back into running. Within just a couple of months I went from maybe 40 mpw to 100mpw, topping out at 145 mpw. It was a little mind blowing at the time ? I felt way better running high mileage without intervals than 40 mpw with hard intervals. I didn?t jump into any races right away, since college races weren?t open to me (except intramurals?), but I did run ridiculously fast off of just single daily long runs and one 6 mile tempo run a week (ran my fastest 6M in 29:28). If I could have read the Hadd training article back in high school, I would have known what was going on with my body and I?m sure I would have been in the sub 9:30 2 mile range that would have let me run in college. As for burnout, I?m still running 2 hrs a day and I?ve never had an overuse running injury and I?m reasonably competitive for a guy who didn?t run in college (15 range 5K, but specialize in middle distance trail races).
I?m not necessarily advocating 100 mpw in high school for everyone? not many are so lucky to have my injury free high mileage record (hint: a lot comes from listening to my body though). But, I do think that the killer lactate producing workouts are much more likely to produce burnout than mileage is for someone with my muscle/body makeup (perhaps I have a high slow twitch percentage).