Megan Keith progression

No, she doesn't do orienteering anymore, at least not at a competitive level. I don't expect to see her in the steeple anytime soon - she's 21 and already run 30:36 in her first ever 10000m race on track, which is second on the European u23 all time list. Why would she move to the steeple? She has potential to achieve something in events people care about

The steeple also is looking like it’s no longer going to be incredibly soft. Probably 8:50 (8:30 3k fitness) for a medal from now on. It’s kinda crazy that 9-flat put you in the medal hunt, but there were injuries amongst the Kenyans, the best flat runners stayed away, and Ethiopia took some time to integrate in the event.

The records you're citing are official records (from what I recall), but do not provide a full picture. She has a lot of unofficial runs—local races in track, on road, etc—that are not accounted for in the system. She's just now getting to where her races are tracked.

But if you've been around British women's running for the last decade or so then you saw this coming (or the possibility of it). She's been competitive on the national scale in her age group for a while, and been competing with/winning against top EU athletes in EU Cross for a while as well.

Some others have also mentioned her XC background, but it's also important to note that a lot of the local track meets aren't officially recorded in the UK for World Athletics purposes, or easy to track down. (There are a lot of informal ones, too.)

Anyhow, she's not a new sensation—this is a natural progression.

These are just the best times straight from the World Athletics progression tab for those events year over year.

I know she has been running XC but we are discussing track times which are easier to compare.

Sounds like what you are saying is the British have a better way of doing things. It also seems like every time Europe or Oceania athletes go through a period of success, they use it as proof that their system is better. It looks like "that classic British runner background" is working to some extent for Megan, I say to some extent because she's not a perfect model of success considering she is yet to compete for global championship medals. There are only 3 things that universally always point to success, and that is having talent, good training and competing well. Beyond that, different things work for different athletes; there is no such thing as a British system that's better than the U.S. or anywhere else.

If you check out Megan Keith's Power of 10 you can see she has been running a very long time. First xc race at 10. First 5k parkrun aged 11 in under 24 minutes and then lots of 5k parkruns and cross country ever since. And of course that won't include all the smaller events that don't go on Power of 10 or her orienteering.

When she was younger looks like no track, just all xc and 5k parkruns. A base built over a long time with lots of mileage. There are interviews with her coach who say she is an example of patience and the long game and not pushing for junior success.

There are some very good 13-15 female year olds in UK at moment. Top u15 girl has won every XC this winter and has a 16.3x 5k and debuted sub 36 for 10k. Be surprised if doesn't end up in US college system.

Everything is here

That's absolutely not what I'm saying (and it's pretty premature to have a dig at her for not competing for global medals at age 21 after less than a year as a pro). My point was in response to the what I think the OP was implying; that we should be suspicious of Keith's progression because she didn't run ridiculous times as a junior.

I was pointing out that there is a cultural difference between Britain (and Europe) and the US in how we approach junior sports. Junior athletes in the UK are not encouraged to run crazy times because no one cares about that. It's not like the US where you had T&F News keeping track of all the kids that had broken 4 in the mile and you get several threads on LRC whenever some high school record gets broken. We don't even keep track of school records in the UK and I doubt anyone could tell you who holds the mile/1500 school record here. It's broader than athletics, we don't care about any junior sports like you do in the US. The popularity of college football and basketball is honestly bewildering to Europeans. No one here would go to watch Liverpool under-21s play football and that's the biggest sport in the country.

So I'm not saying one system is better than another, I'm just saying you will rarely hear about young athletes from the UK until they are pros. And rapid progression in their performances isn't surprising because times are irrelevant at junior level here, they only begin to matter when those athletes are turning pro.

As someone else UK based I would agree with some of that. But add a few other thoughts too.

We don't have a high school but a club system and is kid's priorities for most sports not just running. And many of the kids really do care about their track times and rankings in the UK. Biggest track events are the English schools and UK athletics and both have pretty high standards in order to qualify. Go on insta and their are lots of kids saying where the rank in UK in their particular event.

The biggest difference is the college system in US. Your junior times dictate whether you will end up with a scholarship or not. In UK only the very elite will get small scholarships of a few thousand at Uni. Sub elite might get free gym membership! Therefore the need to be a top junior is more important in US. And I would say the junior UK runners who are pushing times etc is because they want to get US scholarships.

No animosity intended; that's not my style.

I appreciate the clarification; however, after rereading your original post I think most people would assume your comparison between the British versus the U.S. system is inferring the British system is better. With that said, I disagree with you that junior athletics is not taken serious in the U.K.

Again, it's a misunderstanding. Plenty of people take athletics seriously - I'm one of them! I'm involved in the club scene here. But it's not the subject of feverish debates and there's certainly no such as thing as a high school star over here. The kind of attention that people like Katelyn Tuohy or the Young brothers got during their high school careers, with actual fan bases, would never exist here. You won't ever see a big crowd at any school sporting event.

Knownothingdad is right to point out the centrality of clubs as a key difference from the US. Coaching doesn't really take place within schools, it's mostly left to private organisations like athletics and football clubs. Schools over here generally wouldn't have specialist coaches for any sport, let alone a minority sport like athletics.

So you need to understand each athletes history and injuries to have any understanding of where athletes are in reaching their full potential. Chloe Scrimgeour barely ran distance in high school(played basketball and track) and is only 20. She has had 2.5 years of serious training and has the potential to have another jump— when Parker was 20 her pb in 5000 was 15:20.

how many years of full time running do you need to have before you can run your true pb? I think these girls are still heading to peak at age 26-28.