My high schooler wants to completely commit to sub 16 5k or 410 mile. Who can I pay to make this happen?

Milesplit guru wrote:

I scoured milesplit. Average improvement is 15 seconds from freshman year to senior year. I will give him about 4:30 his senior year. I would bet any amount of money that he doesn’t run 4:10 ever.

Interesting. I'm convinced now that 4:10 is a stretch. That said, average growth is probably not what OP is willing to pay a coach for. Looking at the top 10 12th graders in my state last year, only one gained as little as 15 seconds from freshman PR to senior PR. Most were in the 20-25 range, one dropped 39 seconds, and one 57.

New Jersey

70 mile weeks shouldn't be the goal for a a 15 year old kid. No need to run more than 50 a week, I would guess. Find out which D1 middle/long distance runners are graduating this spring, and ask them about hiring them for a couple weeks in the summer after they graduate.

You could also find out what serious runners are in your area, whether that be former D1 athletes or just good runners on Strava, like somebody else suggested.

Your kid doesn't need somebody holding his hand every day, he just needs a running gait analysis, a weekly running buddy, and some wisdom and motivation in the form of an online coach. Even an online coach can give him a good running gait analysis too.

I cannot believe letsrun posters are offering three pages of advice on how a high school male should attempt to improve from 4:49 to 4:10. There are little secrets. If the lad runs eleven months a year, it is not impossible, but there obviously is no guarantee. So many posters are actually offering training advice. Ridiculous. Even if the lad does not race sub-4:10 in high school, so what! Steve Scott never broke sub-4:15 for one mile in high school. Steve Holman never broke 4:15 for 1600m while in high school.

I bett it will cost 32 dollars in the form of tea.

Literally just follow this and your son will be fine. He may never run 4:10, but he will certainly reach his potential off of this.

I cannot believe this! wrote:

Steve Scott never broke sub-4:15 for one mile in high school. Steve Holman never broke 4:15 for 1600m while in high school.

Dick Burkle, who set an indoor mile world record in 1978, had a high school PR of only 4:28! He ran 5000m at 1976 Olympics, and also made the 1980 team (which didn't compete because of the boycott).

The 18th best senior last year ran 4:10. The 18th best freshman ran.................4:25! The average improvement is 15 seconds.

You get an F.

F goes to the teacher. Well researched and explained unlike most other posters here who go by their gut instead of real math and statistics.

Don't look at just the top guys. You have to look at all guys in your state to get the average improvement. For every guy that improves by 30 seconds, there is a guy who didn't improve at all. There are some guys who even go backward. Of course looking at the top guys will yield the largest improvements.

If you really ran a 4 min mile, you know how this works. Rare outliers aside, if he can't run 52 or faster for the 400 and a 1:56ish or faster 800, then 4:10 is not realistic. Not now at least.

He can race his way to goal times with or without fast people in his group.

Milesplit guru wrote:

The 18th best senior last year ran 4:10. The 18th best freshman ran.................4:25! The average improvement is 15 seconds.

*knocks on skull* is anyone there? Hello! Hello!!

The 18th best freshman in 2015 ran 4:24 and the 18th best senior in 2018 ran 4:10 so the average improvement of the group was actually only 14 seconds over that period. The 100th best freshman in 2015 ran 4:30 and the 100th best senior in 2018 ran 4:14 which is a 16 second improvement. 15 seconds is sounding like the correct number as average improvement from freshman to senior year. That's not what the OP wants to hear.

Skull Knocker wrote:

The 18th best freshman in 2015 ran 4:24 and the 18th best senior in 2018 ran 4:10 so the average improvement of the group was actually only 14 seconds over that period. The 100th best freshman in 2015 ran 4:30 and the 100th best senior in 2018 ran 4:14 which is a 16 second improvement. 15 seconds is sounding like the correct number as average improvement from freshman to senior year. That's not what the OP wants to hear.

That isn't the average improvement. Do you even know what an average is?

You're stating the difference in time between the Xth best freshman in 201x and the Xth best senior in 201y. I'm sure that nearly everyone on this thread can see that except for you.

If you wanted the average improvement you would take each freshman in 2015 and see how much they improved by 2018 and then you'd take an average of all of those improvements (add them up and divide by the number of runners sampled, as I'm not sure you know what an average is).

I’m not as concerned about meeting a specific number. I’m excited that my kid is excited and committed. It’s rare. Have most of you forgotten what it’s like to have lofty goals? I like it. It’s ok.

Stats are against most good things we want to achieve. I get it. My question wasn’t “can he do it?” My question is how can I help him reach his potential. It’s not unusual that a high school team isn’t the best way to reach potential, right? It’s not unusual that the best in our sport had big goals at some point?

Runners are cynical. I get it. I’ve been there. It’s a brutal sport. But if a kid is excited, I like that we can put our heads together and brainstorm.

So far a lot of great advice. Not sure if the stats derived from milesplit are useful when you don’t take any variables into consideration and use only 2 or 4 of tens of thousands of runners in your calculation. The “stats “ you derive are useful if you’re trying to discourage an excited young runner with poorly calculated information. You must have been joking with that calculation? Please tell me you are. It’s so bad it’s hard to know where to start. I don’t deny that it’s unlikely to go from 449 to 410 in 3 years, but your calculation is so magnificently terrible as a predictive statistic that you have to be troll.

Please take a few hours and actually calculate the average improvement of the top 1000 seniors in 2018. Oh wait, milesplit has ranked all of the guys already so you can take a minute and pick a few data points to come up with an expected improvement of a particular group. All you need to look at are the differences of the 1000th, 100th, and 50th data points to come up with typical improvement . We know 2 already (14 seconds and 16 seconds). The 1000th is about 20 seconds. So if you take the time to come up with the actual average, I guarantee that it will be between 16 and 17 seconds. The only way that this type of analysis doesn't work is if you are working with data that has no upper boundary like in the case of looking at average salary increases and we didn't look at the top few individuals who could skew the data. So no, 15 seconds may not be the average, but 16 to 17 seconds is almost guaranteed to be.

You get an A.

Thanks for all of the theory. But the only applications that I see are 15-17 seconds of improvement is what can be expected.