a real coach wrote:
I can't imagine anyone who has posted so far has coached a championship girls team.
Well, you'd be wrong. 3 state titles in 13 years with a handful of other top 5 finishes. Like you, a few kids running collegiately, 6 currently for XC teams ranging from Div I to Div III. A bunch more for track teams.
Yes, these are the few who can handle that mileage and doing that is what it takes to be at the top. In high school 40 mpw (that is about 7 miles a day, for 6 days a week) is about the point the MAJORITY of high school girls break down. Yes a few can handle more but remember it takes 5-7 healthy runners to make an XC team. As soon as you start pushing you see injuries pop up.
This is just what I've seen with 10 years of coaching anyways.
You are an idiot. Did you not read the "after that my body broke down?"
You push your body per the individual. If they can handle 40, 50, 60 or more great. You find their limit and push them to achieve that. THEN you slow raise the mileage and intensity.
If you are injured because you over-train you leave your performances at practice and not in the races. As someone who ran on the Farm Team this was exactly the problem, people pushing too hard. For the 4-5 at the top is worked great. For the 40+ others it was too much. A good coach doesn't make cookie cutter mileage estimates, it varies on the person. I have known and trained with two 28 min 10k guys. One couldn't run more than 50 mpw or he would get hurt. The other would run 120 mpw.
It is all about the individual...
2,000. We had good turnout.
runnerr wrote:
You had 100 girls on your hs team?? What was the size of your school?
That's not true, I would say that the top-25 in each region at least care as much as these 4000 boys you mention. So, maybe 100 compared to 4000 for boys, but 40 is pretty extreme.
Once upon a time wrote:
As a coach who has seen large amounts of success with girls teams I must agree. For the most part the girls that have talent and are highly competitive are the 40 or so you see at footlocker. On the other hand there are probably 4000 boys with the same attitude.
Another factor: injuries. High School girlsare very fragile and will get hurt. It is a 4 year progression to get them to 40 mpw.
The fast/top in the region runners aren't the only ones who work hard. I know a few girls who where around in the 100s in California (still good though) who were running 50+, 60+ mpw. Likewise, I know guys who were in the top 30 who were running less than 40 mpw.
And what someone else said is correct. You can check dyestat but I believe Rene Paragas, the Saugus HS coach, posted on there.. they were talking about Sarah Sumpter who improved a lot after running 100 mpw and he mentioned something like "100 mpw is not unusual.. there are whole girls teams that do that type of mileage."
I believe Paragas has also said he prefers to coach girls over boys because the girls listen/work harder...
In 13 years you had one girl who trained more because she saw the correlation between training more and improved racing performance. You might be the worst coach I've ever encountered. 3 state title teams? Let me guess, not a major running state (NY, CA, OR, WA, TX etc) and not overall state title but a "class" champion. If you really only had on girl who ran more to get better, that's embarrassing.
not sure wrote:
a real coach wrote:I can't imagine anyone who has posted so far has coached a championship girls team.
Well, you'd be wrong. 3 state titles in 13 years with a handful of other top 5 finishes. Like you, a few kids running collegiately, 6 currently for XC teams ranging from Div I to Div III. A bunch more for track teams.
The two top girls hs teams in Oregon, that have both been nationally ranked, are running about 30-40+ mpw. From my knowledge (which is limited nationally) I'd be surprised if there are very many girls high school teams over 50 mpw consistently. I know there are some, but my experience is that people too often look at an outlier and assume that they are more common than they are.
Make up your minds!! You guys were first telling a girl who wanted to run 60 mpw (look at the thread by MXC) that she was running too much. Then you say that anybody can do 60 mpw. So make up your minds...
Wake up call wrote:
Flanagan - 100 miles a week
Dibaba - 100+ miles a week
Defar - 90-100 miles a week
Kastor - 110-120 miles a week
Radcliffe - 120+ miles a week
I'm curious where you pulled these numbers from. Not saying they're wrong, just wondering. I think I once heard Flanagan reference being in the 90-95 range with her mileage.
hayward102 wrote:
The two top girls hs teams in Oregon, that have both been nationally ranked, are running about 30-40+ mpw. From my knowledge (which is limited nationally) I'd be surprised if there are very many girls high school teams over 50 mpw consistently. I know there are some, but my experience is that people too often look at an outlier and assume that they are more common than they are.
It makes perfect sense that many top female high schoolers run less than 40 mpw. Many teams average more than that and do quite well also. In fact, most of the teams at NXN are 50+ - led by FM. The insane thing is to say girls will not motivate themselves to run that much nor can they be motivated to do so. That is a statement from pure ignorance.
I coach a girls high school team. We've been to NXN/NTN once. We've won several state championships. I can still count on one hand the girls in our program who've run over 40 mpw at any point during the year. And, frankly, our top seven would crush many NCAA DI programs and a substantial majority of DII programs at 5K.
We're on a long-term project of raising mileage, but we're raising it slowly. Results are looking good so far, but taking a 25 mpw kid to 45 mpw in one year is just begging for trouble. Look at the number of wrecks that have been made from taking extremely talented high school girls and pushing the mileage big time in college. You know the names. If you don't, you shouldn't be opining on this thread.
Plus, someone else has made the point that you have to have at least five healthy or none of it matters--at least from the team perspective. Preferably, you'd have at least seven both competitive and healthy. But, whether you put the number at five or seven, you find there are very few top teams in the country that aren't racing on a razor-thin margin. I'm not willing to crank the mileage total at the expense of an enhanced injury count; I don't have the bodies to fill in. Winning is a lot more fun than stress fractures.
Finally, it takes a special kind of person (male or female) to love the experience of HS XC at 100 mpw. There are lots of very talented runners who'd never do it if the expectation were anywhere near that high. Some will, of course, and there's something admirable about that. There's also something admirable about making an 18-something runner out of girl on 35 mpw and having her love the experience. She can decide when she goes to college if she wants to go 70 or 80 mpw.
more anecdotal data wrote:
I coach a girls high school team. We've been to NXN/NTN once. We've won several state championships. I can still count on one hand the girls in our program who've run over 40 mpw at any point during the year. And, frankly, our top seven would crush many NCAA DI programs and a substantial majority of DII programs at 5K.
We're on a long-term project of raising mileage, but we're raising it slowly. Results are looking good so far, but taking a 25 mpw kid to 45 mpw in one year is just begging for trouble. Look at the number of wrecks that have been made from taking extremely talented high school girls and pushing the mileage big time in college. You know the names. If you don't, you shouldn't be opining on this thread.
Plus, someone else has made the point that you have to have at least five healthy or none of it matters--at least from the team perspective. Preferably, you'd have at least seven both competitive and healthy. But, whether you put the number at five or seven, you find there are very few top teams in the country that aren't racing on a razor-thin margin. I'm not willing to crank the mileage total at the expense of an enhanced injury count; I don't have the bodies to fill in. Winning is a lot more fun than stress fractures.
Finally, it takes a special kind of person (male or female) to love the experience of HS XC at 100 mpw. There are lots of very talented runners who'd never do it if the expectation were anywhere near that high. Some will, of course, and there's something admirable about that. There's also something admirable about making an 18-something runner out of girl on 35 mpw and having her love the experience. She can decide when she goes to college if she wants to go 70 or 80 mpw.
Coach,
Well said. Out of curiosity and addressing the issue that brought me into this thread, if you asked your girls to run 50 mpw over the summer, do you think they would. I bet they would. You sound like you know what you're doing so if you tell them "run 35 mpw and you'll go to NTN," they trust you. Once again, what bothers me is that some on this thread started saying girls don't have the heart for it. I can't imagine you'd agree with that.
I think some would attempt running 50 mpw over the summer if I asked. I also think it would be too much for many of them.
In my ideal world, I'd have girls coming in at about 25 mpw their freshman year (almost none do), bump that to about 30 - 35 their sophomore year, 40-ish their junior year, and 45 or so their senior year. That, I think, is a good "average" progression for high school girls. Some stronger girls can handle more. Some will thrive on less.
I definitely agree that girls have the heart for it. More precisely, at least as many girls as boys have the heart for training hard. Two things often work against following their hearts in this case, though. One, girls are more injury prone than guys. I'm not sure "fragile" is the right word, but core weakness issues and lower leg injuries in particular seem to afflict more girls. Two, girls get less peer and societal support for doing it than boys do.
I don't think Sarah Sumpter is a good example to use for this thread... yes, the huge leap in mileage improved her times, but it was also a symptom of her anorexia (well-documented... Google it). She basically became addicted to running and didn't eat properly (or at all) and then surprise surprise... her body broke down. This type of story is too common.
Wow, I agree completely with "more anecdotal". I also coach a team of girls that was at NXN this year and we kept the mileage around 40ish for the seniors with the one frosh on the team at around 30 and she has a strong background of xc skiing and could probably handle more but thinking long term and will continue to increase it.
I have also coached a hs girl who made it to footlocker off of 35 mpw who also ran a 10:11 2 mile in a dual meet. Another who made it to fl as a soph at 33 mpw and a jr at 38 mpw, this yr she made it again running low 40's although I no longer coach her.
They would have run more if I asked and probably could have handled it, but if it was too much we would have found out the hard way, by injury. Instead these girls were always healthy and improving yr to yr and more importantly were loving it.
One issue with this is that we all seem to thing of milage as the same for anyone. But really if two people are both running the same # mpw the slower runner is working harder. An average girl runner might need to run 8:45-9 minute mile pace on normal runs. So the 40 mpw that might seem like a drop in the bucket to good male runners is actually 55ish minutes of running every day for many girls.
From what I can tell some successful schools are low on mileage with wicked levels of intensity.
Rode Worrier wrote:
From what I can tell some successful schools are low on mileage with wicked levels of intensity.
who?
My kid was 18 her fresh year, 24-30 soph year, and 40-45 junior year. It worked well for her and she was a national competetior. I do think American's need to get running a little more over a smart period of time if we are going to compete with the other countries. Talent levels are different from person to person. What works for one may not work for the other so I assume workload will have to adjust to the individual. My daughter did do more intesive workouts to compensate for the lower mileage.