Prove me wrong: High School Athletes SHOULD NOT be doing 5 mile tempo runs

Tempo for decades has been synonymous with anaerobic threshold.

So you agree with the OP

Won’t disclose who, but my daughter is top 10 in the country according to Tully and Milesplit and she’s never run a 5 mile tempo or 30 x 30”. Just depends on the talent level you’re working with. Never forget, high school XC is 5km at nationals.

I used to live by mile 20 in the 80s. That 20-15 section is a good spot for a tempo.

The best recent USA runners have all been athletes who focused on speed as young runners. Grant Fisher was notoriously low mileage in high school. Brazier ran 47 in high school. Sinclaire Johnson ran a 55 open 400 in high school. Coburn's best high school event was the 800.

The prime age to develop speed is from 15-20. After 20, speed gains will be severely limited, especially if you've already been running excessively high mileage.

Gain speed first, like Athing Mu, Faith Kipyegon, Sifan Hassan, Will Sumner, then you can gain the necessary endurance as you get older.

Even Jakob is a perfect example of focusing on speed first. His 800m PB of 1:46.44 was run in 2020 when he was only 20.

This is so full of crap. I've followed the RunCCG guys for the last four or five years and they are doing a great job.

If you want to get good at this sport you need to put the work in. It's that simple.

OP would absolutely faint if they knew Deena's high school training. But pshhh, she barely got any records into her 40s so that's a terrible recipe for longevity. And there are several hundred other examples of preps doing longer tempos. The fact that you think 5:30s is fast is telling. We ran that fast by mistake on easy days. Call back when you've coached 20 future DI athletes and one that makes an international team.

You might want to reread Jakob's teen training there sport.

What was Deena 800/1600/3200/5000m high school PRs.

What’s your goal here? Train everyone for the 400m and then see where they are when they’re 20? You don’t lose speed by running high volume. You lose speed by not training speed.

You listed a bunch of extreme talents who were probably going to be very good as long as they didn’t break a bone. I’m more impressed when the kids at the back of pack in the frosh soph races become top finishers in the varsity races.

Why? I mean I could tell you her 8th grade PRs if it really matters but I need some context here.

Answered my own question with my google magic as she’s one if my favorite all time runners… about a 4:55 / 10:30 athlete, excellent in Cross Country, didn’t fulfill her potential at Arkansas. Great piece here-

10:19. Apparently google is second to actually having been there.

I don't like tempos for HS athletes bc they have a tendency of running easy days too hard anyways. They basically get in tempo efforts during the week without being prescribed them. It's a maturity thing.

I mean yeah, that's definitely possible. you can do a lot in 7 minutes. imagine 7 extra minutes of max vo2 per week. or if you do tempo workouts a week, that's 2 extra miles of quality work. also with high schoolers it's never even guaranteed they are running the right pace, and on tempos they often go too fast.

number one red flag a coach who overtrains says "those 7 extra minutes won't kill them." even if it doesn't kill you, it can seriously overtrain you.

I know this wasn’t really your point, but I would limit the rest a bit more for cruise intervals, even for high schoolers. I think 90 seconds would be more apt for targeting 5K pace. 60-75 would probably be right for 1Ks@LT, assuming the athlete was fairly fit. Important to limit rest with LT to keep aerobic system under pressure and limit pace pushing.

I think total LT volume should probably start at race distance (3 Mi-5K) and then be raised steadily over time. Say 5K total LT volume for fresh, 6K for Soph, 7K for juniors, 8K for seniors. Of course a very rough guideline and depends on the athlete, but I think doing LT volume under 5K total is a little silly if you want to run a quality 5K.

To the original topic, I agree that it entirely depends on the athlete. Saying that an athlete is going to “burn out” just because they’re doing X volume or X intensity of training is stupid. Someone like Craig Virgin ran ~80-90 miles a week in high school (much of it hard) and still had great success after high school.

Where an athlete actually tends to burn out is if they’re being pressured into doing the sport or doing X volume or X intensity by a parent or coach, rather than being self driven and deciding to push THEMSELVES hard. My two cents.

Veronica Billat uses a protocol where athletes run 30 seconds at their vV02 max pace (based on a 6 minute test) with a 30 second float recovery of half that distance. It's not that daunting. Athletes work up to 1 minute work bouts and eventually 3 minute work bouts.

The OP stayed tempo pace; 15 minutes at tempo pace with breaks every 30 seconds isn't difficult. 15 minutes at V02max pace with breaks every 30 seconds is also not difficult.

spot on coach. No need to do high mileage in high school - there will be plenty of time for that in college. High school is a great time to work on developing top end speed and coordination necessary to compete at the next level. Better to slightly underdo it in high school and leave some room for improvement at the next level. So many kids that are good at a young age burn out because they are already maxed out of training and stop seeing rewarding jumps in performance.

I’ve gotten to know the Run CCG guys over the last year. They are first class guys and if you want to just bounce ideas off of them they are always a good listening board…. never try to sell you anything or say you’re wrong and we are right. Just some guys that love running and helping kids get to the next level. Better than taking the librarian because she runs 5k’s and calling her the cross country/distance coach and hoping she can build a program and develop kids. Still to this day it’s hard to find good coaching for kids for distance running. Look how many specialty coaches are out on the market for every other sport. We need more guys like Run CCG. If the end result is better kids they might become coaches themselves one day and positively impact kids lives.

Wait…I started using runccg this year. Is it really true colleges are aware look out for runccg? Uh oh.