Are they running only 2 days a week (with the rest of their training on a treadmill)? Are they making huge jumps in their performance levels? Are they dominating their peers as a result?
Her freshman year of high school, Leachman began to have injuries..... She began to experiment with her training schedule with the help of her club coach, Kenny Dirkson, they decided that running twice per week and cross training on her easy days allowed her body to heal and she could run without pain in her hip...... eachman chose to exercise 90 minutes on the Arc or Elliptical trainer arbitrarily. It works best for her as it was the right amount of intensity and duration to help her fitness. She has stuck to that time frame since. She monitors her heart rate with her Whoop to make sure the effort is high enough. When a pool is available, she does some pool work..... She lowered her 1600m best of 5:23 to 4:52.46 at the Texas Relays to finish fourth.... She entered the state meet as a dark horse to say the least given the circumstances of her qualifying and her freshman status. College Station senior Maddie Jones was the top returnee and Layleigh Littlefiled had won the 800m in impressive fashion. But in the final, Leachman blasted out to a 71 first lap and a 72 second lap(2:23) to get a seven second advantage over the field. She increased that lead by the finish by running a personal best of 4:47.28 as Jones finished second in 4:56.95. Littlefield finished a distance ninth in 5:17.07.....Elizabeth Leachman’s 9:57.65 two mile for third place at the Nike Outdoor Nationals left everyone scrambling to find out just who this runner was. Where did she come from? The freshman went from being a very good freshman runner to one of the best ever for her freshman class and for her age in US high school history in just one race. Her list of accomplishments following the race: She ran the fastest two mile time by a freshman in US High School history eclipsing the 10:04.73 run by London Culbreath, North(McKinney, TX) in 2017. Her two mile time converts to 9:54.18 3200m which is second only to the 9:50.69 3200m time run by Sadie Englehardt, Ventura, CA in 2022 when she was a freshman. Her 3,000m enroute time of 9:19.41 broke the US freshman best of 9:26.32 run by Jordan Hasay(Mission Prep, San Luis Obispo, CA) in 2006. At age 15 years 5 months and 14 days, she just missed the age 15 record of 9:19.09 run by Kelsey Chmiel (Saratoga Springs, NY) in 2017. She is now a sophomore and one of the 2 favorites to win the FootLocker XC championship Saturday.
That's a very detailed post. However, some of that athlete's improvement may not simply be the result of the kind of training she did but physical maturation at that age, during her mid-teens. It might be more indicative if you found a senior athlete who had risen to the top of the sport on a similar training program.
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