FM and Saratoga Training

while for the very best, most talented individuals, it makes sense to hold back in high school and not reach your full potential, the VAST majority of high school runners are not going to have post-scholastic careers and WANT to peak at 17/18-years-old, because after that they're never going to run competitively again

and i agree that a lot of times when you see 'burnout' of kids from top programs, it's because they're going into a college program where the coach doesn't get the best out of them like their high school coaches could (and they likely would've continued to improve under their high school coaches)

if you're the #5 girl for saratoga, chances are you're not going to be going into a top collegiate program, whereas you're coming out of what is probably the best, most accomplished high school program in the country... so it makes sense that your middle-of-the-road college program wouldn't get as much out of you as your best-of-the-best high school program did

i think i'd rather run 1:52 in high school and 1:53 in college than 2:00 in high school, then hang up the spikes... which is what a lot of "burn outs" from top programs would likely be doing if they were in hs programs that trained at a lower level

Ok so seriously do you believe that the college coaches are the ones that don't know what they are doing. You need to do some reading up on human development as well as why east africans are so dominant. I have trained with many east africans who are very good runners themselves and I can tell you that for most of them they did not do many workouts in high school. The things that make them good are extremely large amounts of base training. A lot of times they are training when they don't know it because they run everywhere to do anything. When they get into organized programs they run massive amounts of miles at hard paces but very very few repeats. It is this long build up of their aerobic systems that make them great runners long term.

Many of the high school programs that you speak of from what I have seen work the lactate systems entirely to hard which in many cases (especially females) stunts development as well as wears them down. Please stop acting like the greatest coaches in our country are high school coaches. It just doesn't make sense.

On a side note look at the training program paavo that has been brought up many times on this board. It is a program that pounds young athletes wears them out and causes more harm long term than success short term. Yet people who believe in it always say that the reason the athletes don't do well later on is because the college coaches don't know what they are doing. Look at the best coaches in history. They all preach mileage and tempo's.

To respond to "High School Coach" (keep in mind I'm only reiterating some of my main points from a different perspective)

You're spot on with the criticism of overuse of anaerobic training early on. These kids dont have the years of "base" (general fitness from running/playing active sports/living actively as part of the traditional lifestyle) that Africans/other foreigners have. The main focus in the early years of high school and middle school should be on building aerobic base through a "sweet spot" of mileage each season (progressing each season, and "threshold" and strength work.

It isn't all too uncommon (at the world level) for young athletes to have continued success after early anaerobic work. I can recall looking at logs of the best Kenyan training camps for adolescents, and seeing a MINIMUM of 4 sessions of quality on the schedule per week (with at least one of those sessions being anaerobic). The key lies in the balance of all qualities of training. Thats the coaches responsibility (one more reason why it would be great to allow kids to continue working with their high school coaches through the rest of their careers). I completely agree that it will be challenging to see an athlete progress to their potential if they hit the speed work too oftenearly on and lose focus in building their aerobic system. However, with the right balance (and proper long term development from a coach), it can work.

As a high school coach, wouldn't you love the opportunity to continue coaching your athletes through college and beyond to see how far you could take them?

Completely simplified (again, I'm not dumbing down, I'm just trying to make a very easy logical argument)... Take one athlete who goes into a Saratoga/Burnt Hills/Saugus/Woodlands/York/F-M etc.

Athlete + HS coach + HS program = success

Athlete + College coach/program = non-success

The athlete certainly hasn't changed... what HAS changed that would alter the end result of success?

Arguments are welcome... I'm just trying to understand why in this situation EVERYONE seems to place blame on the High School coaches and not the College coaches.

Of course there are TONS of other variables once college life starts that you can't deny. But at the most basic level between coach/athlete relationship (which is whats being discussed here, isnt it?), this is it!

When you signed your contract to live the stotan lifestyle was defending part of the deal?[/quote]

To jr. hs,

There is no signature needed when defending the people you love. I'm sure you would do the same for your family without "signing a contract".

-Hannah Luber

Please dont act like I said the best coaches in the world hail from central New York high schools... hah!

They are certainly some of the best high school coaches, and I firmly believe that they would continue to be great individual coaches if they had their athletes for more than the standard 4 years. Would they approach things differently? Probably. I assert that they would get more out of their athletes than what you're seeing and criticizing now (successful HS -> D1 NCAA program).

If I were coaching HS kids (which I plan to do someday) I would approach it very much like you suggest. Starting off with very basic mileage building and tempo/strength work. I would limit interval workouts and build gradually over each season and year. I'm not an ignorant nobody who blindly worships the successful HS coaches of today. I understand training and long term development. I'd "undertrain" them based on the "extreme" standards (hah) because I know that is what would be best for them in the long run going into college and beyond.

Our system is the way it is, and will never change. The logical program progression goes from elementary/middle school sports -> HS track/XC -> NCAA track/XC -> post colelgiate development group or elite coaching. Thats simply the way it will probably always be.

Would I love to see HS kids continue to live at home to train with their successful HS coaches and sacrifice the infinite glory of "Division 1 NCAA" programs? Absolutely! Will that EVER happen? Absolutely NOT! The appeal is non existant. Very few American kids would ever think of sacrificing the glory of college for the risk of rising to the next level as an athlete by sticking with what has worked. I agree that it is a better life learning experience to get away from home and have a college experience. However, something is lost in translation when it comes to long term progress. The system is flawed for long term development, and it is essentially a luck-of-the-draw for most kids coming out of a successful HS programs and picking a new 4-5 year program/coach situation. A kid these days has to have a lot of real world intuition to see through the bullsh*t that is the NCAA recruiting system. Its a shame that so many young athletes are caught up in the trap and never see out the other side.

For those who are successful, I'm very happy and grateful. I truly do love our sport and am glad to be seeing such a resurgance of talent and success in American distance running. But you have to understand that for every success story from HS to college there are an equal (probably more, but I'm not gonna BS you with fake statistics) number of failures/quitters. Is this naturally going to happen? Of course. I'll assert again though that if they kept the same coach for longer development there would be a far lesser dropoff rate and we would see more success.

whoa whoa whoa...hs chicks read letsrun?

"i think i'd rather run 1:52 in high school and 1:53 in college than 2:00 in high school, then hang up the spikes... which is what a lot of "burn outs" from top programs would likely be doing if they were in hs programs that trained at a lower level"

I absolutely agree, which is why I show gratitude towards what the successful HS coaches are doing.

Again though, it is absolutely 100% the college coaches fault for not recognizing the needs of an athlete that far advanced. You need to be asking specific questions of mileage progression from season to season, which workouts worked well, which workouts worked well WHEN (in the season), what the athlete feels best doing, what the athletes were doing for training before their BEST and WORST races. They need to ask the tough questions of OUTSIDE factors (friends, life at home, bad habits, etc.) and be more than a coach, (a mentor) to help the athlete work through what is holding them back from being their best.

Coaching is much more than just telling the athlete what each day's workout plan is. Coaches (and in this example, again, my target on the whole- college coaches) need to be HIGHLY ADAPTIVE to what each indivudual athlete enters their program with. It's simply not enough to throw an athlete into the "A" or "B" group and administer group workouts. They need to know each athlete at an intimate individual level to get the most out of their potential. I'm sure its hard to do that with large rosters of 50+ kids, but if thats "too much work" whats the solution? Keep your roster smaller! Get a group that you're willing to manage at a high level and give them your ALL. Care for them and their success as you would to your children... in short, ACT LIKE THE SUCCESSFUL HIGH SCHOOL COACHES DO.

I hate to quote a New Balance ad, but THAT^ is the difference between love and money. The college coaches fall under the pressure of AD's and work it too much like a business and too little like a family. If the FM girl's posts haven't indicated enough, that nurturing caring environment is what helps get OUR kids to the highest most SUCCESSFUL levels. Understand that.

(also I'd like to commend the HS kids who have defended their programs, I would have done the same if I were still part of my HS program... power to you, and good luck)

Observing wrote:

F-M? I can think of only one name in the past 15 years that made it through four years of college running: Allison Mann. She was a product of the Jerry Smith era at F-M prior to Aris taking over. They were hard working then (mid 90s) and had a deep enough team to sit their top 5 out at dual meets. (Before that, Kathy Mills had some legendary success. One of the first great female high school runners prior to Kinney/Footlocker) I can think of a couple of F-M girls that went on to try DI (Cory Roos in the late 90s and Hannah Davidson a couple years ago) who either did not make it in the DI program or seriously underperformed.

How about 3x FL finalist and D1 all-american (@BC) Lauryl Burdick?

Props to you two young runners for coming on here and maturely handling this conversation.

A lot of people won't and indeed shouldn't come on boards like this addressing such types of criticisms. Often times they take it all too seriously and go a bit overboard, but you to addressed what you needed to address and did a good job of it.

Keep in mind that there are plenty of runners/teams/coaches out there that think fondly of your team. While I certainly loved your responses, I hope you don't find it necessary to constantly get into these battles. Sometimes its better to stay of the the fray. But in this instance: kudos.

Best of luck at Nationals.

I played football/basketball in high school and ran track in the spring. Football/basketball practices were typically 3 hours long and involved plenty of pre-season and off-season conditioning, captain's practices, team dinners, service days, all the things that took a lot of time but made us into a well-conditioned team of brothers that feel a bond 30 years later.

Track was a joke. I think it's the same way at most schools. There's nothing wrong with working kids hard. Everyone's criticizing the anaerobic emphasis at an early age. It's easily possible to run 50-60 miles week of mostly aerobic mileage while in high school which would enable a great advantage over most teams. Certainly mine.

Yes it is possible to have kids run 50-60 miles a week and gain advantage over a lot of teams. I don't believe however that it is possible to gain the advantage that these schools are gaining with just aerobic work like you imply.

If we are going to blame the college coaches then why is it that we see many of the African runners who have come up with the same system still succeed the way that they do in college. It seems like there is a double standard where a lot of the great american high schoolers can't make it but the African ones can. They are going to the same college coaches aren't they?

Also on the note of the African's what I see in their traning is a lot of hard work, don't doubt that, but smart hard work. Most of their harder days while they are younger approach the lactate level but don't cross it. They do hard runs with mainly negative splits where they start off slow and by the end are running fairly quick. The competitiveness of American high schoolers seems to make them go out hard and try to kill one another on many easy days right from the start. Looking at the training from schools that I have seen with a lot of success generally they are just pounding them day after day and it is more of a the strong will survive type thing. They have 50 kids on the team run them incredibly hard and hope 7 of them make it out alive.

It's the same old story, these HS coaches run these kids into the ground but have success, the success comes because these folks have their kids training at a level that is beyond the development level of the kids, sometimes they get injured and fall apart in HS sometimes it catches up with them later on in college (ie: erin davis), but it does catch up with them.

The supporters of these coaches blame it on the college coaches, but like someone else mentioned earlier, plenty of kids develop under these same college coaches and kick the former stars of these so called great programs asses.

Keep on enabling these guys to ruin potential stars before they physically develop, meeting runners at the airport after college visits and making them do their tempo runs because you are too insecure to have them miss a day of training. Wait outside McDonalds on a friday night to prevent your runners from going in with their friends after a HS football game, and on and on.

I guess when you are a HS star it is all OK, you have become legends for a short time until some other nut comes along and takes a group of kids beyond this level and then breaks them. Good Luck and enjoy because it won't continue.

Just a side not on this, the FM girls squad for the entire high school, Jv and Varsity, had only 18 girls on the team total and the boys had 20. Running the kids into the ground and using the 7 who survive obviously would not work well in this situation. From an insiders view i know the coaches must and DO a very good job in keeping their kids healthy and injury free. For sure there will still be un-preventable cases where kids get hurt, but nothing like you suggested with "hoping 7 make it out alive".

i think if you ask erin davis, she would attribute her lack of later success to LEAVING the saratoga program, not her having been a part of it

my .02 wrote:

i think if you ask erin davis, she would attribute her lack of later success to LEAVING the saratoga program, not her having been a part of it

Really, look back at her HS career, Footlocker champ as a frosh, made it back but never won or ran as fast. Then the 16:4x or so 5k as an 8th grader, never ran it again.

There was also an article about all of her injuries and something arthritic or along those lines. No proof, but all that hard running at a young age might be a contributing factor.

The slide began long before she left.

Boys from both Saratoga and FM, and some girls from FM did recruiting trips to my college (though we never seemed to get them). As I understand it from talking to them, this is what goes on.

FM: tight knit, one-team one-family attitude. Intrinsic motivation to do relatively high mileage at a pretty quick clip (the FM boy we had said most runs are no slower than high 6s, 6:30 is more common, sometimes dip below 6 towards the end). Emphasis on strength with long tempos and high volume, low rest, moderate intensity intervals. The kids have a choice to push themselves, and the very successful ones do so.

Saratoga: significantly more controlling, though still breeds competitive attitudes. Lower to more moderate mileage. LOTS of small, easier workouts, interspersed with VERY easy days that may include some relaxed 200s or short relaxed tempos within them. Competitive attitude and dedication to winning is expected. Poor individual races that cost the team are addressed very directly; nothing is sugar coated. If you screw up, the coaches let you know it.

Anyone with experience in these programs is encouraged to support or deny what I was told by our recruits.

what erin davis has to say about the saratoga program and how she didn't adjust well to leaving it

"High school mileage was around 40-50 with no added cross training (unless we had other hobbies like rollerblading and skiing that we'd sneak in), and very minimal weight training. We did pushups and situps and a lot of form running and stretching. The workouts were very structured and Mr. Kranick took each individual runner on the team's best racing times and based our workouts off our racing, so nobody was ever overdoing it. He was a very smart coach"

"The lifestyle and training was so different in college than what I was used to in high school. My life and training was so very structured in high school. [Saratoga Springs high school coaches Linda and Art Kranick] were top level coaches and I was very confident in them. I was not used to change"

"I still was not used to the change of coaching. I never had a change in high school. I had been confident in knowing what to expect every day of training and racing from 7th through 12th grade. I missed the structure and consistency I had in high school."

As one of the captains of the current FM boys team I felt it was important for some of my thoughts on this to be expressed. I believe the number of boys on our team this year was just over 20. This could have been the biggest team that I was a part of during my three cross country seasons. Many of the best athletes at FM are brought up playing soccer and lacrosse, like I was up until my freshman year.

Those who do join the team are individuals that understand the sport of cross country. It is not an easy sport. It is so hard mentally and physically. The coaches have to do more thanworkouts. I have witnessed multiple teammates overcome great mental obstacles and learn lessons they will take with them until the day they die. I am truly blessed to have experienced this, to have a team that has become brothers. Our success is not based on extreme workouts and running until you are injured. This approach surely would not bring a team of under 20 success. It is about believing in each other and oursleves.

I have spoken with others runners now in college. From what they know, they tell me that they wish they could have been a part of a similar operation. They say that my coaches do it the right way. I hope I can continue in college with a similar program

Just reading Ms Luber's post as well as the quote from Erin Davis makes it clear why many of the top runners from these programs struggle to find success at the collegiate level. These kids have been completely baby sat for their high school careers. Their high school coaches take complete control over every step they take and even get involved with their personal lives. Then they go to compete for a Division 1 school in which the coach does not have the time to spend going over every detail of their lives. In college, the athlete has to take personal responsibility for their success and these kids have never learned to do that. To the kids that have said they hope to find the same thing in college as what they experienced in HS, you won't. It doesn't exist. College coaches are as much administrators as they are coaches and you will not find one that will go over the minutiae of your training and every day life with you. Like it or not, at some point you have to grow up and make your running and your life your own and not the construct of somebody else.