Of course. I’m not gonna be visibly down around him if he “only” run 4:16 this season. He doesn’t owe anyone a time, I am just so excited about him that I felt like I had to post it because his workouts seem to indicate he could get into sophomore superstar territory, but I don’t want to be that guy who tells someone they’re gonna run 4:30 when really they’re in 4:38 shape or something. I coach other athletes in the area as well from 6 minute 1500 gals to a 1:53 senior in college, I’ve had some experience with both failure and success and I know not to react to failure in any negative way.
To peach pit, I will most certainly update this thread. The goal we’ve been focusing on/discussing has simply been the school records of 4:20 & 9:20 - he’s really competitive and he talked about wanting those, so I told him that’s what we’ll aim for. However I think at this point he and I know those are most likely formalities, hence why I started the thread. I’m not sure if it’s better to just keep the conservative goals or shoot for more ambitious ones with this kid because he’s run so well off of just showing up and balling out, so maybe putting higher expectations on him could be detrimental in some way. Or maybe not.
No indoor races on the schedule so far, overall I’m not a huge believer in the necessity of indoor races, or at least a full indoor season. That may be the wrong mentality though, let me know. He seems ok just training so far because he knows he’s making a jump, but maybe one race under distance race to test the speed couldn’t hurt. Had he had skipped XC we were going to do an indoor season because he would then have gone almost a year without racing, but he did run XC this year so the plan has been just to train November-February.
Interesting. I am working with a very talented 13 year old here in my country. His development has taken offin the past 3 months running the following times. 400 54.04 800m 2:02.7 1500m 4:21.9 3k 9:23 and yesterday he ran a new years eve parkrun in 16:23.
He also high jumps 1.67m and long jumps 5.35m
Obviously your athlete is talented but the key is consistency and structured program and also have quality athletes to train with.
There are no school coaches so I will be able to work with this athlete for some time.
Thursday 3.5k threshold +5x100m hill efforts with long recovery
Fri off
Saturday 16325k (previous best in October 1834)
He trains with squad of that includes much faster older runners but I keep his training modified
Talent is every where and it will be exciting for your athlete. Goodluck.
update on my young athlete who is in 9th grade here. 1:57.07 for 800m 4:02.09 1500m 8:55 3k (90mins after 1:59 800) and 15:56 for 5k parkrun a few months ago. Also won National XC in August 2023 with 12:37 4k. Nationals for us in April. Not a big deal when there is a 3:33 1500m 17 year old in the same city :)
The thread creator had a MASSIVE ego so if his athlete was running well, he'd definitely come back to brag about it.
I assume he burned his athlete out or got him very injured. This athlete should be a junior by now.
I predict the original creator will come back and lie and say the kid is doing amazing, but refuse to give us a name or specifics.
“For their protection, I don’t want to give any names but uh, you’ll hear their name soon enough!”
Bingo.
Direct Quote: Note: I've changed some details on his profile so he can't be identified, but I have a feeling most of the country will know his name soon.
Interesting. I am working with a very talented 13 year old here in my country. His development has taken offin the past 3 months running the following times. 400 54.04 800m 2:02.7 1500m 4:21.9 3k 9:23 and yesterday he ran a new years eve parkrun in 16:23.
He also high jumps 1.67m and long jumps 5.35m
Obviously your athlete is talented but the key is consistency and structured program and also have quality athletes to train with.
There are no school coaches so I will be able to work with this athlete for some time.
Thursday 3.5k threshold +5x100m hill efforts with long recovery
Fri off
Saturday 16325k (previous best in October 1834)
He trains with squad of that includes much faster older runners but I keep his training modified
Talent is every where and it will be exciting for your athlete. Goodluck.
update on my young athlete who is in 9th grade here. 1:57.07 for 800m 4:02.09 1500m 8:55 3k (90mins after 1:59 800) and 15:56 for 5k parkrun a few months ago. Also won National XC in August 2023 with 12:37 4k. Nationals for us in April. Not a big deal when there is a 3:33 1500m 17 year old in the same city :)
Note: I've changed some details on his profile so he can't be identified, but I have a feeling most of the country will know his name soon.
History
Freshman year: Kid did not run a step until summer of 2021 - his first XC season he comes out opens up at 18:02 and PR's at 17:16 mid season on 15-20mpw and with no summer base. Takes a month off, joins the indoor track team, goes 5:06-4:50 in 2 indoor races (is still running with an inept high school coach having him do 15mpw doing all sorts of little things wrong). Goes right into outdoor, opens the season at 4:40, drops down to 4:28 in his last race in May on the same training. He also split 2:01.x on a 4x8 at some point and ran 10:00 for 32 on a double. Not too surprising seeing as he had zero aerobic development. Never ran a 400 of any kind unfortunately.
I heard about this kid and reached out to him because, honestly, what private coach wouldn't want to get their hands on such a talent - the school he goes to is notoriously bad at middle distance/distance running development, the school records are 4:20/9:20 from over 15 years ago - and I really wanted to see what he could do on something other than 15mpw with 8x400 every week during base phase. I've been working with him since this June.
I had him take a few weeks off after track then started base building. The second week back, he got into a moderately bad car accident. His injuries were non life-threatening but he was still out for 6 weeks late June to early August on doctor's orders with a concussion, an internal laceration and a fractured ulna (point being he got pretty banged up). I had thrown in the towel at this point on the XC season, I told him that it would be best to start from scratch and start a long build towards outdoor season, maybe hop in a few indoor races to break up the monotony and stay hungry and whatnot. However I realized it was best to just let him race the XC season as he is young and I don't want to keep him from that team experience - after all, he had success last year off of no summer as well.
He opened up the first race at 17:04 and ran 15:55 a month later on the same course (flamed out a little at the end of the season but that wasn't entirely surprising given that he ran less than 100 miles before the XC season started.
And now, I have finally got him doing an uninterrupted, full cycle buildup for the outdoor season, and the results have been absolutely spectacular even this early.
Recent workouts:
30 minute flat-ish tempo @ 5:26 (yes, a tempo, I tell him not to run all out but "comfortably hard")
25 minute extremely hilly tempo @ 5:25 (I personally was running this route @ 5:28 pace a month out from a 4:01 1500)
60 minutes @ 6:15 pace. on paper the workout was "1 hour uptempo" - he says 6-7 perceived effort.
5x1200m w/ 2 minutes recovery on trail at 3:42
7x1k w/ 90 sec recovery on trail at 3:02
14x400m w/ 1 minute recovery on trail @ 69.1 avg
A boat load of hill repeat workouts as well that won't have any meaning to any of you but seems are similar to things a few 3:5x-4:0x 1500m guys I've worked have done.
I know I've got him training like a 5k guy but it is only December, and I know that this kid has an absolutely unlimited aerobic reserve in there waiting to be tapped into. I've got him doing weekly pure speed stuff and speed maintenance strides as well so he'll be alright when we start running faster in February.
Every single workout I throw at this kid he knocks it out of the park and gets faster seemingly every run. I'm not having him blast these workouts to pieces either, he is running within himself and the next day is perfectly fine. In fact, I tell him to reign it in on the easy runs, he always wants to run sub 7 pace but I tell him to back off a little even if it feels easy.
I've built him up nice and slow since November from 20mpw to 40mpw and we have been holding steady there. Once February rolls around that figure will be ~30-35 with some more quality speed endurance injected. and yes, don't worry, strides after easy runs, he's doing core, etc.
Honestly I'm just excited that a talent like him has fallen to me, it seems like I can do no wrong with this kid and he will improve no matter what. I sort of already have an idea, but do these workouts seem like the base phase stuff you'd expect from a 4:10 miler? I've just never coached a young high schooler of this caliber and I can hardly believe my eyes - and I feel strange telling a 15 year old his season goal should be in the 4:10 range - I don't want to put expectations too far out there but I also really feel like he's bound to be knocking on the door of 4:0x this season. Thoughts?
P.S. any thoughts on his training? I don't proclaim to be a genius but I do feel like I have a pretty good grasp of training theory, but any feedback on how to optimize this further would be appreciated. I just want to avoid messing this kid up as much as possible, I've read too many stories of potential sub-4 talents gone to waste from shoddy high school coaching.
M 40-50 min easy run and strides
T tempo run (been 22-30 minutes for the most part, it's a little different every week). maybe a fartlek every third or fourth week
W 40-50 min easy run and strides
T long interval or hill repeat workout (usually totaling about 6-7km, stuff like 8x800 with 60-90 rest)
F 40-50 min easy run and strides
S - off
S - 65-80 minute easy run and pure speed
Regards,
Coach AM
He’s got potential. How tall/heavy is he?
You think he’ll have a growth spurt?
I was 5’-6” 125 as a freshman and ran 54/2:07/4:52 and by track season of junior year I was 6’-1” 165 and split 49.7/1:55/4:28/16:19
20-25 mpw. Everything on the track. Longest run was 5 miles easy. For me, lower mileage but faster easy runs was good. I often ran 7:00 pace but ended under 6:20/30 for the last 800-1200m 1-2 times a week. Malmo style.
I was speed oriented but if I had his aerobic…whew, I could have been good. Keep touching on the speed work. Siding drills and skips. Weight room explosiveness like cleans. Squats and core work.
update on my young athlete who is in 9th grade here. 1:57.07 for 800m 4:02.09 1500m 8:55 3k (90mins after 1:59 800) and 15:56 for 5k parkrun a few months ago. Also won National XC in August 2023 with 12:37 4k. Nationals for us in April. Not a big deal when there is a 3:33 1500m 17 year old in the same city :)
Crazy how no one asked about your athlete.
Hand Solo check this out U15 Nats 1500m Lets see how the HEPS 3k goes today as well.
In 2023 we were at World XC and World Athletics. Were you? We do ok here but you seem to be a grumpy old man. Chill mate.
You have talent on your hands, no doubt. I am a HS coach, degrees in Kinesiology, and was a D1 runner myself about 100 years ago. I have coached MS and HS over the years, usually with a few strong natural talents at any given time. The description of this young man is strikingly similar to one of my current athletes. He started running and went from 5:15 to 4:37 in 8th grade. Then went 4:27 and 1:58 as a freshman after just a few 800m races. Ran the 400m once at 52. He was low 16's in XC off very low mileage. My estimate for him this year is 4:18 and 1:55 at best, for what it's worth. That said, his mileage is modest (never higher than 30mpw in track season and max 40mpw in XC season). I keep his workouts very focused on speedwork b/c it's where we see the most tangible improvement, but mostly bc that's what he enjoys and I want to keep it fun for him. They are still kids, after all! Obviously, every runner is different, but I have noticed with talented kids, a sharp trajectory for the first 1-2yrs, and when they get to low 4:20's, the improvements are much smaller and tougher to reach consistently. Maybe I read your post too fast, but a jump from 4:28 to 4:10 seems pretty dramatic in one year. I think you would have to move your 400m pace workouts from 69's to 64's at least, very significant difference. That said, I am never above stealing so thanks for sharing your workouts. I will definitely pick up a few of those :) Good luck
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
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