Hot Takes wrote:
I had no idea what I was doing in high school, neither did my coach. I just ran more every season, starting at 25mpw freshman cross country 'naturally' running 10:50 for 3200m at the beginning of freshman track and getting up to 70mpw as a senior. Most of my runs were pretty hard progression runs, occasionally ran an actual organized track workout of intervals. Didn't run easy very often, almost never. Obviously this is not ideal training, but I ended up running just over 9 flat for 3200. If you run a lot and push yourself while running you'll get pretty fast. Once that stops working and you stagnate for a year, then maybe look into a specific training plan.
This is because you were in high school (young). Obviously you have a good bit of natural talent, but the amount of time it takes to recover as a high schooler versus say a 30 year old is significant. I personally felt like as I have gotten older it is easier to bounce back from higher mileage days (I frequently do 20+ mile long runs and never ran more than 13 miles at once in high school), but intensity takes way more out of me than it did during that age.