Brandon Miller, 14-Year old -split 1:51.23!!!

jjjjjj wrote:

come on. 4:20/probably 4:15 is a bad mile conversion for a 14 year old who says he runs 4 miles per week, doing football in the fall and basketball in the winter? are you out of your mind? Don't you think he would run just a hair faster in the mile with some actual mileage?

WTF?

If you want to drive your kids out of sports keep doing what you are doing.

800m future wrote:

Karma Police wrote:

What exactly is "a quality collegiate experience"?

Getting overtrained because of the demand for multiple events at meets and breaking down? Partying? Or furthering your education?

If this kid is running 1.46 or faster at 16, then the only thing College can offer him is the education part. He'd be better off turning pro and going to College just for the courses, and for a job when he's finished running.

The collegiate experience I'm talking about is the NCAA championships and just the overall team aspect of running.

What I'm trying to say is, I don't think a $200,000 4-year contract is worth more than the benefits of running in college.

.

We'll have to agree to disagree then. Who cares about the NCAAs outside America? Answer - no one. I am not American. I couldn't give a toss about them.

What is more important is World Youths, World Juniors, Diamond League, World Champs, World Indoors, the Olympics etc.

I think that a $200K pa contract is worth bucketloads more than running in College. And if it's the education he wants, I'm sure that could be worked out.

Are you parents insane?

These are 14 year old children and you are both have lost perspective here.

You should be cheering and supporting all the kids for the effort and desire to participate nothing more,

Stop ruining sports for your kids

800 speeder wrote: Third, almost EVERY RUNNER does NOTHING professionally. The chances of a kid doing "something", however,are far greater if he/she was fast as a youth. Period.

I think it depends on what you mean by "fast" and what you mean by "youth."

If by "youth", you mean high school, I agree, but if youth mean 12yo or prepubescent, I disagree.

If by "fast" you mean a national record holder of some stripe, I disagree. If by "fast" you mean very solid (say, top-100 in the U.S.) times, I agree.

It all depends on how they were trained to produce those times. There has to a continuous age progression. I think that, yes, they need to be trained to be fast in HS but shouldn't be given everything they can possibly handle. They should be trained like high schoolers, not like collegians or pros. If you train them like a collegian in HS, how're they going to train in college? Like a pro? Then how are they going to train as a pro to get better? There has to to some room left to continually increase the training load as they progress through each level.

As an experiment, just take all the Rio qualifiers 800-marathon and look at what their PRs were when they were younger or if they were age-group superstars. The most common theme you'll see is that most ran very, very solid HS times but weren't age group studs or national record-holders. The last two women's HS 1500 record holders (Hasay and Cain) didn't make the team. Neither did any of the HS record holders on the guys side.

Two immediate exceptions in both directions, both on the women's side, are Courtney Frerichs and Agee Wilson. Frerichs never even ran a state meet in HS and spent most of her time as gymnast. Wilson held the AAU JO record at 3000 for 13yo (I think that was the age) until last year and has always been at the top of the heap.

Again, the question is, what training produced those times? Are they being trained "above their age" so to speak, or is their training what would be typical of, in Brandon Miller's case, a 14yo and they are producing these performances because of their exceptional talent and still have a lot of room to grow and improve or are they being trained "above their age"? That's the question that needs to be answered.

Personally, I think a 50mpw 9:05 HS kid has a better shot of making national teams as a pro than a 90mpw 8:45 kid.

That was bad on my part, I didn't consider the "foreign" or even non-American perspective. NCAAs really doesn't mean much to the majority outside the Americas. However, that doesn't take away from what it has to offer. I do agree, that if I were in your position I would be questioning the values of running on a college team versus signing a contract worth a few hundred thousand dollars. In the end, I would easily suggest someone like Jakob Ingebrigsten take any reasonable pro contract over NCAAs.

Karma Police wrote:

800m future wrote:

The collegiate experience I'm talking about is the NCAA championships and just the overall team aspect of running.

What I'm trying to say is, I don't think a $200,000 4-year contract is worth more than the benefits of running in college.

.

We'll have to agree to disagree then. Who cares about the NCAAs outside America? Answer - no one. I am not American. I couldn't give a toss about them.

What is more important is World Youths, World Juniors, Diamond League, World Champs, World Indoors, the Olympics etc.

I think that a $200K pa contract is worth bucketloads more than running in College. And if it's the education he wants, I'm sure that could be worked out.

Zat0pek- In regards to long term development, do you think those in the 10-14 year range would be better served by building aerobic capacity in the summer rather than competing and training for championship track meets (AAU / USATF)?

Doug, I think youngsters should compete in the summer in track and play soccer, basketball, swim, dance, do gymnastics etc the rest of the year

The answer is a resounding "it depends." It depends on age (there's a big difference between 10 and 14 in my mind), event (400 or 3000?), other sports (soccer? basketball?) and overall activity level, style/type of training on the summer program and a bunch of other things.

I think kids can gain a lot of valuable experience doing age-group stuff PRIOR TO HIGH SCHOOL. At 10-14 I don't think they ought to be doing a ton of miles for aerobic development anyway. I am increasingly a fan of multi-sport kids with track and cross country just being in the mix in that 10-14 age range. I just want them active across a variety of activities. If they're a multi-sport kid in a summer track program that meets a few days a week and they get to experience the sport and run in meets against better competition, I think that's great. Where it becomes a problem is when parents start treating it like the end-all or be-all of the sport rather than just one more season.

My default position once they hit high school is increasing mileage 10-ish mpw per year (say 30 as a frosh, 40 as a soph, 50 as a junior, 60 as a senior or some reasonable variation thereof) with a variety of paces all year round. Increasingly we are seeing greater running success from kids who stay in a ball sport a little longer. I'm aware of one study that showed bone density/strength was 50% greater among ball sport girls than girls who only ran. That's significant and can add a lot to their durability once they make the move to higher mileages which, of course, translates directly in to better performances.

We all know it takes a huge workload and a ton of miles to maximize whatever talent a kid has. The trick is the progression and the timing. How - and when - do you get them to those 100+ mile weeks? A basic principle in physics is that a structure can withstand a significantly higher load if the load is increased gradually rather than suddenly. I think the same thing applies to runners, especially young runners who're still developing orthopedically and neuromuscularly.

I love this article about Michael Norman (OT qualifier as a HSer) and the quote by his coach below from the article:

Is there a better chance that a national class adult runner will come from the many who run 9:05-9:20 or one who runs 8:45? Maybe. But most of our best ran sub 8:50 or the equivalent. Ritz ran 90 mpw in high school, low 8:40s and he became the national record holder at 5000m, 12:56, and close at 10000m in a tactical race, 27:22, and half marathon, 60:00, and one of the best in the marathon, 2:07:47, as well as 3rd in junior world xc.

Webb ran 4:06 in his sophomore year, 3:53 as a senior, and 3:46 as a pro, plus 1:43.84/13:10/27:34.

Hall ran 3:42 in high school and 2:06:17 (2:04:57w) as a pro.

Not too worried about the best high school distance runners as pros.

jjjjj wrote:

Is there a better chance that a national class adult runner will come from the many who run 9:05-9:20 or one who runs 8:45? Maybe. But most of our best ran sub 8:50 or the equivalent.

The time only tells half the story. The other half is the training that produced the time. Don't reduce what I said only to the HS PR. It's the PR coupled with the training that produced it that provides the relevant data.

And you'll find scads of exceptions either way. What I'm talking about is the route that most commonly and most likely leads to the greatest chance of success as a collegian and a pro. There are no guarantees, but there are approaches that maximize chances for later success (not guarantee, just maximize the chances) and those that are still effective but aren't ideal. There's lots of ways to skin the cat but I think the most critical components are age progression and balance across all aspects of training.

After breaking the age group 1500 record. Rock on!

I've got a 16yo who was told he'd get up to 25 offers if he runs World Youths next year (and more or less depending on how he goes). Two kids from his school have received 8-10 offers in the last couple of years and both took one up - one is at Arkansas running distance - are they good? Just starting sophomore year I think. Not sure where the other is going, but he'd be a freshman.

We'll look at it if and when it happens, but I don't think it'll be in his best interests, not for his running, anyway. If a scholarship meant he could get into a top course he couldn't do here, and that was more important than his running, we might consider it.

The issue of whether US College is in the best interests of a talented 14-17yo is close to home for me.

DougC wrote:

Zat0pek- In regards to long term development, do you think those in the 10-14 year range would be better served by building aerobic capacity in the summer rather than competing and training for championship track meets (AAU / USATF)?

I believe very firmly that they should be doing:

(a) sprint training, learning how to run fast, to increase speed reserve and improve form;

(b) playing team spots, for fun, fitness, and development; and

(c) doing some aerobic work, but only 2-3 days a week, and mainly in the 3-10km pace range, and no more than 10-13 miles including warm up and down.

Coach wrote:

I recently had a kid in my school who trained since he was 4, he was a great quartermiler for his country, 48 seconds when he was a preteen but he had hip issues and could no longer run.

Are you saying 48 as a 12yo?

Not as a preteen, I guess autocorrect and I didn't read carefully, he was fifteen. He immigrated here, and finished HS, I watched him do some 300s at a local track and he was in pain and disappointed cruising them in 42. He would talk about all the kids who he used to beat who were still competing while he was washed up, it was sad.

Guy from Missouri wrote:

His brothers name is CJ Jones, runs for Texas Tech U , his brother ran a 1:49 as a sophomore and never got better , that is until his conference meet last spring where he won with a 1:48

CJs not his actual brother, they used to run summer track together and are very close. And it is true he didn't pr for four years, but he lowered his pr from 149.9 to 1:47.3 this year, setting a record at at Michael Johnson classic.

CJ is his brother. I know that for fact!

I looked at the top ten plus a few from track and field news in events from 800m to 10000m. though we don't yet know how guys like slagowski and hunter will develop, virtually all the rest of them, with the exception of one or two per event, became top level Americans and many of them are among the best we've ever produced, Ryun, Webb, Prefontaine, Lindgren.

Were they top ten as 12 year olds or top ten as 17 year olds?

Look at iaafs list of age group record holders. 6 and 7 year olds from 2006 are not even the top HS kids today