How should I leverage running for college?

Sub-9 guy wrote:

scholarship expert wrote:

That is not low mileage. My son's team ran 35 MPW and one guy broke 9. My son ran 9:15 on 35 MPW senior year. He ran 9:20 junior year on 30 MPW.

Ok, but it’s also not high mileage. I would say the 30-40 the OP is talking about is “low,” the 50-60 that I’m suggesting is moderate, and 70-80 is high for a prep. He doesn’t have to run a certain amount of mileage, just run more to get close to the 4:30/9:40ish standards that would make him competitive for D3 or maybe for a lesser UC school.

OP, I can’t tell you what to do or how to structure your summer weeks. I ran 55 mpw before senior year during base phase and probably about 45 during the season. I don’t think you have to structure it, just run as you feel, sometimes progressing the run pretty hard if you feel great and sometimes going super slow and easy. I suppose you can throw some fartlek or tempo in as long as you are going by feel and not some preset pace. A few short doubles a week wouldn’t hurt either.

If you are worried about not losing speed, then incorporate some lifting/plyometrics and/or short hill sprints into your week. Like 10 x 10-12 seconds, all out, full recovery (like 3 min). These are all just suggestions. But, if you are serious, just get out and run more. Obviously don’t go straight into a 50 mile week but build up to it and then stay there. You will improve.

hs recruitment help? wrote:

Sub-9 guy wrote:

Johns Hopkins, Rice, Georgia Tech, Case Western… all great schools.

You have a lot of potential in running, but you need to run more miles this summer, 50-60 mpw or more if it’s important to you to make a roster and continue on in college. See what you do in cross country because you just might pique the curiosity of many of these coaches. 50-60 mpw is solid but still fairly low volume.

Alright, I'll work on summer mileage. I've never went up there in mileage before except for one gimmick week where I jumped from a 13 mile week to a 50 mile week just trying to make the goal one time... Promptly got IT band syndrome haha. I'm not sure how to space out the runs for more mileage though. Slowly increase distance of daily base runs? Problem is that I feel like getting more mileage during track season is really hard with all the meet days where I only run ~4mi or track workout days with not that many. End up barely scratching 30. Is doubling in runs a valid strategy? I could probably do a 4 mile run in the morning and then another in normal practice.

Actually though, a thing at our school is that a lot of our runners seem to just run on talent. Our lead runner with a 9:00 3200m and 15:05 XC 5k at states (Cali) doesn't ever run over 50 miles a week and instead more like steady low 40s. I've often heard the rest of var boys saying that 50+ miles a week was "too much, making you slower and 'tankier' like for a marathon". One of our guys that consistently runs 50-52 mile weeks for almost two months now has recently stagnated and is stuck at 5 minute 1600m and 10:20 3200m (After hitting 4:54 and 10:15, his recent efforts have all been disappointing to him and slower, probably not related to the mileage?) so that just kind of added to it.

So just, what's your experience with upping mileage for XC season and how much did you do in track?