Surprised by the Mileage I've seen with HIGH SCHOOLERS

late 60s and especially 70s - quite a few HS guys did 70-80-90, even some over 100. I'm not sure when that reversed or diminished but I think the 90s showed a decline in distance times. Malmo has stats/graph on that.

On the glat roads I'd say 7 to 7:30. The 15 min guys 6:30-7:15 maybe.

We run trails, lots of up and down. It kills the average pace. I was surprised.

I think the girls are definitely running more miles than they used to 8-10 years ago. Didn't most high school girls use to run around 35 mpw over the summer, with the better girls hitting 40 or 45 mpw? Now you see some of the top girls running 60-75 mpw by junior or senior year. I can't say whether this is healthy or not, but I can say that there seem to be many more kids getting stress fractures now.

little violin wrote:

There have been a lot of high schoolers posting their training schedules and asking for advice lately and I've been surprised to see a lot of them in the high 60's to mid 70's, sometimes even into the 80's. Did anybody else do this much mileage in high school? I can't ever remember going above 50 mpw and wondering if I'm alone in this.

I ran about 15 miles a week on average in high school...sometimes as high as 20 and sometimes as low as 13.1...not kidding either.

We typically ran about 3 miles a day for practice...non-running coach would stand there smoking a cigarette as we ran, waiting for it to all be over so she could leave. We had no encouragement to run over the summer either.

A 13.1 mile week would happen like this:

Monday - 1 mile because of 5,000 race the next day.

Tuesday - 3.1 miles

Wednesday - 3 miles

Thursday - 3 miles

Friday - 3 miles

Saturday - Off

Sunday - Off

On weeks when we also had a Saturday meet, we'd run a mile on Friday and then 3.1 miles for the race on Saturday. We didn't have any organized warmups or cooldowns, so I might run for literally a couple of minutes before a meet, and I rarely ever did a cooldown. Just wasn't the culture at my high school...less was more, and we were told to "rest up" on the weekends, and there was not internet to check to see that what we were doing was not enough. I still managed a 15:48 off that kind of training, and we had several other guys under 17 minutes. Amazing.

I'm a junior in high school right now, I've been running 60-70 since June 15th. Last week was 66 w/ a 13 mile long run yesterday at 6:30 pace.

Lots of High Schoolers have run 80+

Didn't Jim Ryun run 100 in high school?

Yes 70-80 most of the year..

I went as high as 75 once in HS. Consistently in betweeen 50-65 depending on the season.

One of my runners, who was top 10 in Canada among Youth in two events, did not exceed 28mpw at any point in 2012.

I was doing 35-45, and got into the 50's on occasion. I ran 1:55m, 4:18m and 8:55 3km. Lot's of hard track workouts.

1:57 4:17 9:22 off of about 20-25 a week in HS.

Knowing what I know now, I wish I would have gotten up to about 70 during base and 50+ in the season.

Do you run roads or trails? I was surprised myself how much the hills and winding trails slow you down.

I marked out a legit 9 on our usual hills and it takes my 15-16 min guys 70ish minutes and they're putting in some work, but not crushing the downhills.

Like I said, I was surprised.

i maxed out at 50 miles a week, i remember it was a big deal when i hit it, did that one week before senior year of xc. most weeks i was probably in the 30s, maybe 40s during the summer. it was also verrrrry slow, like 7:30 pace, sometimes even 8 min pace on longer runs. we would do one moderate tempo effort (3-4 miles), and one very hard interval effort a week during the season. our team did pretty okay off that, all our guys my senior year were under 17:00, with two guys under 16 including myself. we also had 6 or 7 guys under 10min for the 3200m. not unheard of, but not bad. doesnt seem like we really did a lot of work, but somehow our team was always decent and still is decent today. almost no one ever got hurt either.

Ran most weeks about 40miles with a 2 weeks in the 60's 4:20 1600 8:39 3k 9:20 3200 and 5k on track in 15:13. Only staple workout I remember was 5x3min with 90 seconds rest which was done on a cinder path. Coaching my son now whose 17 and he runs about 25 miles a week and has run sub 16 on the track. Triathlon training is great for building aerobic capacity.

I ran 4:13, 1:54 off 35-40 a week. Our coach didn't want us running big mileage and burning out. I really didn't start running full time until my junior year so he took it slow with me. Crazy that some guys in high school are running 80-90 a week. I came from a program that was top 25 in the nation my year as well (in xc). We put in good summers and quality workouts and that was key.

The Southlake Carroll cross country team uses a high mileage system of no days off and hard days close to meets. It seems to be working because they came in 2nd at NXN last year and are looking good again this year. Here is an article about them from last season:

http://espn.go.com/blog/high-school/track-and-xc/post/_/id/986/southlake-carroll-teams-powered-by-paavo

60 mpw as a junior

70 mpw as a senior

Sub-15 3 mile as a junior

Senior time yet to be determined

Back in high school I don't think I ever made it over 35mpw. I rarely ran on sundays and just loved the workouts and races. One quality day on monday or tuesday, a dual meet on wednesday or thursday and a large meet on saturday. I ran 16:23 for xc, 53.8, 1:58, 4:35 (not commensurate with ability) and 9:46.

I'm just now trying to reapply the high intensity with moderate (50-60ish) mileage now to achieve similar results in my 20s

for XC I was 70's - 80's but some of the others on the team were higher. I was an 800m guy. We were very good year in and year out, lots of Invitational Championships, Sectionals, States, had a few All-Americans on the team. We were running mostly singles.

We had different coaches for XC, Indoor and Outdoor Track, but had good success in each. Would say that by Outdoors, mileage was down to 40-50mpw.