Jakob Ingegbrigtsen was running 70 miles a week as a 9 year old?!

Sham 69 wrote:

You must be joking... I almost DIED on a 15 miler. I'm a 4:30 guy and NOT 10 years old!!

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=10524812

It's pretty funny that you think 15 miles is far/hard.

Paul Tergat, Daniel Komen, and Haile all ran at least 20k a day as young kids. Our current Half Marathon world recorder himself said he covered vast distances. Our current 5k and 10k WR holder was already running close to 50 miles a week before even entering his teenage years. The thing here is they didn't run the whole way -- it was run, a bit of walking, running, etc... time on feet is more important.

Rheinhardt Harrison was half marathons before age 10. He's turned out just fine.

I don't understand why we freak out at younger kids logging higher mileage as long as it's easy running and intensity is low or null. Literally millions of kids do this in East Africa every year. Barefoot. Why are we so scared as long as we keep the intensity and pressure out of it?

Not unheard of at all in the U.S.. Brad Hudson was running miles like that and more starting around age 10 or 11.

Sham 69 wrote:

That sounds borderline abusive.

Yeah, pretty abusive on the poor parents who have to drive him all around, buy all those expensive running shoes, pay for race entries, sit around and wait for him to race at meets, change up their schedules to accommodate him, etc., etc..

Super Fans wrote:

Paul Tergat, Daniel Komen, and Haile all ran at least 20k a day as young kids. Our current Half Marathon world recorder himself said he covered vast distances. Our current 5k and 10k WR holder was already running close to 50 miles a week before even entering his teenage years. The thing here is they didn't run the whole way -- it was run, a bit of walking, running, etc... time on feet is more important.

Rheinhardt Harrison was half marathons before age 10. He's turned out just fine.

I don't understand why we freak out at younger kids logging higher mileage as long as it's easy running and intensity is low or null. Literally millions of kids do this in East Africa every year. Barefoot. Why are we so scared as long as we keep the intensity and pressure out of it?

US and europe has just way too many generations of giant pu$$ys....you think back before cars were in mass, say prob up to the 1930s especially in rural areas kids and adults had to WALK a lot. my dad who grew up in rural indiana in the 1960s had to walk 9 miles to school everyday. sometimes he would have to run so he wouldnt be late. so thats 18 miles a DAY 5 days a week, and on the weekends if he wanted to go to town and hang with friends 18 miles again. as long as your not going anaerobic at a young age all the time its not going to mess you up. some of you people are truly weak minded and pathetic when it comes to being in shape.

and we all wonder why the US has sooooo many fat f*cks....OMG 70miles a week as a KID!!!! holy hell hurry get this kid an iphone and a coke!!

Refinement Culture

michiganrunner55 wrote:

Although that is working for him to this point I don’t think overall that is good at all. I can think back to Stormi Ann from Michigan in the early 80s preteen and teen phenom. Kids get burned out

Stormi Ann had a hypoglycemic condition that made training and racing problematic. So did her younger sister whom was also a prolific racer. Also, some (most) teenage girls don't get faster if the were super elite at age 13.

Middle and Long distance running is a morphology thing in the first place. Training and running help a lot, but if you don't have the shape for it don't expect to be in the elite.

There are the examples of Mo Farah and Sifan Hassan. They almost started running professionally late, but they peaked great.

michiganrunner55 wrote:

wejo wrote:

Not sure if this has been discussed on here but I found these comments really interesting. A journalist translated some comments from a podcast Jakob did and he apparently was running quite a bit before he was even double digits in age.

"When I was 9-10-11, I was running 120-140 kilometers some weeks." That's 70-80 miles a week.

Are we going to see US parents trying to start copying this? The success of Jakob is unbelievable but that amount of training is unhear of in the US. Does it sound accurate to you all?

https://sportindepth.com/index.php/2021/03/26/jakob-ingebrigtsen-normally-i-run-181-5-kilometers-a-week-during-winter-training/

Although that is working for him to this point I don’t think overall that is good at all. I can think back to Stormi Ann from Michigan in the early 80s preteen and teen phenom. Kids get burned out

Sweet jesus, I have not heard that name in almost 40 years! I used to run against her. She seemed very healthy I recall, seemed to enjoy the sport. I always wondered what became of the Stormi and Windi.

xczvzxcv wrote:

I guess it ruined him. He only ran 3:28.6/7:27 last year.

And they were saying he wouldn't get any faster when he was roughly 15 running 3:40. He has gotten faster every year, why would we expect that to stop? His high mileage early in life allowed him such a great base that he doesn't have to waste the time doing crazy high mileage now to catch back up. He can run the 90-100 mile range (which he is very used to) and have higher quality workouts that are still controlled since he's been doing them for so long. He will keep getting a little bit faster for more than a few more years.

Its amazing how little evidence we have on pediatric running. I see some have suggested running as far as you want as long as its not "intense". Based on what? I could argue the opposite. Kids play hard, doing less volume and sticking with 400/800 until you get older could also be effective...grooving that efficient economy of speed before you start logging massive hours of pounding on the joints. I trained my 13 y/o to run what she liked (4 and 8), and that has led to some good success I think now in the XC years. Sample size of 1 of course. I did the opposite starting at 6 y/o running distance with almost no intensity until 8th grade. I paid dearly getting used to HS. She is much better than i ever was.

So not sure what is best, I just know we have Zero evidence of what the limits are...intensity vs volume... Assuming they are having some fun and want to do it mentally.

I don't buy it. If he ran that much at nine he'd be a cripple today. I had a friend who ran excessively between 10 and 12 and his growing legs shut him down, never to be a runner again. (But a pretty great bowler.)

It's true that he did, BUT it was what he himself wanted. He saw his brothers train and wanted to do the same. His father did not push him in any way, nor did he stop him. Think about it - for him it would have been completely normal, growing up with two older brothers. He went with them to training. What do you expect the younger brother of two to do in that situation? Sit and watch or try to mimick them? Given the conditions, you can say he was environmental deprived.

One quote that struck me especially:

“I considered myself a professional runner when I was 13, and much of my day to day life since, has been centered on doing that job well.”

That... makes sense given his home environment but... very not normal.

Jeffro wrote:

I don't buy it. If he ran that much at nine he'd be a cripple today. I had a friend who ran excessively between 10 and 12 and his growing legs shut him down, never to be a runner again. (But a pretty great bowler.)

There are many posts in this thread that are just absurd. Your friend is just one case. It doesn’t have anything to do with other cases. Look at some really hard core college programs. Maybe only 1 out of 3 thrive and the others get hurt or burned out or whatever. Jakob has thrived....so far. We shall see.

this can mess up an athlete's long term interest in competing and training.

I always thought the great Jim Ryun trained to hard too young, put too much pressure on himself, and his coaches did too.

For once and all I'll say the '67 Jim Ryun would have beat the '68 Kip Keino, yes even in Mexico City.

Good luck to Jakob. Rest when you feel like it.

I suppose team sports or long slow running both tick the box of being a 'natural' and 'lower stress' form of training Vs traditional track interval sessions.

Running 200m or 400m repeats close to maxing out is just extremely unnatural no matter how you cut it.

Humans were designed to do three things on foot: walk long distance for migration, run long distance for tracking prey/gathering food from further areas, sprint in very short bursts to evade danger or catch prey.

Relatively long (200-400m) intervals over and over at high speed and intensity on a hard surface just breaks you down unless you are extremely well conditioned first. That's why it's not great for children to start doing track sessions at a young age. In my opinion.

Super Fans wrote:

Paul Tergat, Daniel Komen, and Haile all ran at least 20k a day as young kids. Our current Half Marathon world recorder himself said he covered vast distances. Our current 5k and 10k WR holder was already running close to 50 miles a week before even entering his teenage years. The thing here is they didn't run the whole way -- it was run, a bit of walking, running, etc... time on feet is more important.

Rheinhardt Harrison was half marathons before age 10. He's turned out just fine.

I don't understand why we freak out at younger kids logging higher mileage as long as it's easy running and intensity is low or null. Literally millions of kids do this in East Africa every year. Barefoot. Why are we so scared as long as we keep the intensity and pressure out of it?

Tergat says he lived half a mile from school and walked there slowly.