For students who run mid 15s senior year...

I've known several 20:00-ish or even slower freshmen who go on to run low 16s on legitimate courses as a senior, but being able to run mid-15s as a 17-year-old takes some solid talent. If you're not talented, you just haven't had enough training years to reach that level yet. Plenty of said low-16 guys go on to break 15 in college if they train right, but there usually isn't enough time between when they commit to training (usually sophomore year or thereabouts) and their senior year to get to that mid-15 level.

Sorry if I'm crushing your dreams. That's been my experience as a high school coach.

Question 1: no

Question 2: yes

I ran low 16's my senior year, mid 18's my junior year, low 20's my sophomore year, and mid 20's my freshman year. I didn't start training seriously at all until the winter after my junior CC season. Looking back, if I would have trained smarter I think I could have been mid-high 15's. My senior year was the first year in a long time our team didn't completely suck- we had 3 guys under 16:10 and 2 16:20-30. The previous years, it was an accomplishment to make it out of the district meet. 3 years later they won the state meet (Ohio, division 1). I talked to some of the younger runners and my coach a little bit, and they had done some things differently than when I ran. I know there was a kid who didn't make varsity his freshman year, and ended up running mid 15's his sophomore or junior year (I forget). So, you might improve quickly, you might not. It might take some people a while to figure out what works well for them in training, others might get lucky and respond well to what their coach prescribes.

I ran 18:55 my freshman year, i got down to a 16:25.

Chris Derrick ran 18:30 for his first 3 mile race his freshman year and then worked his way down to 13:51 his senior year

I only ran two seasons of cross country in high school, starting as a junior. I ran low-16 as a junior and mid-15 as a senior. If you have some talent and dedication, along with proper training, you don't necessarily have to have four years of high school running to go sub-16. Of course it would help, and I wish I had started sooner.

I didn't break twenty my freshman or sophomore year, didn't break 19 last year and now run low 16s. I think 22 to 15:30 is a bit extreme, but probably doable.

Swag Lord wrote:

I didn't break twenty my freshman or sophomore year, didn't break 19 last year and now run low 16s. I think 22 to 15:30 is a bit extreme, but probably doable.

So this is you:

freshman - above 20

sophomore - above 20

junior - breaks 19

senior - low 16s

Are you trolling? The improvement from junior to senior year seems too drastic.

All the guys I know that ran 15:xx their senior year ran 17:xx or faster their freshman year.

20:09 to 15:09 on the track in a little over 4 years. We don't generally run the 5k where I'm from so there are almost no data points in between. But it's absolutely possible.

I had nearly two years of running experience and had been about 8 months with a competitive team. Yes, I'm sure my training had a lot of obvious deficits, but it demonstrates that I'm not some superfreak jogging 20:09 right off the couch.

Addendum: I had two years of experience at the time of my 20min 5k. I trained continuously thereafter and so I was at 6 years of running at the time of the 15:09.

I ran 21:low for 3 miles as a freshman and 15:11 for 3 miles as a senior.

Progression

Freshman: 21:low

Sophomore: 18:low

Junior: 17:09, injured and did not finish the season though

Senior: 15:11