Axel Vang Christensen Strikes Back - 14:06 5,000m & 9:06 steeple @15 years old

Does he follow Tinman's principles?

Another Danish youngster Joel Ibler Lillesø (born december 2003) just ran 13:59 in a 5k road run. He went under the former Danish senior NR but a senior runner (qualified for the Olympics in the marathon) ran 2 seconds faster.

There is a third good Danish U20 runner, Anton Østberg, so if the 3 of them participate in the U20 European CC championship in december they may a shot on a team medal and perhaps also individual medals.

How many age group world records does Grace Ping hold? /what race has she won lately?

chgfdmooyh wrote:

Does he follow Tinman's principles?

+1 I wonder how fast he would be with Tinman as his coach.

tinman fan wrote:

chgfdmooyh wrote:

Does he follow Tinman's principles?

+1 I wonder how fast he would be with Tinman as his coach.

15:10 and 9:25 with an injury on the way.

But probably at least 20k followers on Instagram and over 5,000 t-shirt sales.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

His coach once said he runs 100 mpw (that was last year), but at low intensity, so he isn't training as hard as others and will have more longevity in his career. Lots of doubles. That's also a good point to the one who asked "what's his 400 speed?" - they aren't trying to develop it, who cares if he can run a fast 400 when he is in the finish LONG before anyone else is? I wanna see the US freshmen, who do lots of sprint training and plyometrics and then run 40 mpw beat a 14:06/30:11 guy in a XC race. Hell, even most seniors would have problems with the Dane!

you didn't understand the message in my post. no matter.

like here: the reason for a us freshman to run 40mpw, to do lots of sprints and lots of plyometrics is simple: he is a fast middle distance runner on the track. it is of no interest to lose in a xc race against a long-distance runner.

axel vang has obviously already completely opted for the long distance. this may work now at his age but will come to an end in the future. i guess that the poster who asked for axel´ s 400m speed has done it for a good reason. he knows very well that a good speed reserve is key on every track distance. axel is a world class runner at his age level for long distances - but only long distances. his performances for 800/1500 are decent but no more. imagine what might happen a few years later if he would not improve his speed reserve.

He ran a 4:04 1500m, without any speed work - just off his 100+ mile weeks, high endurance training. That is equivalent to a 4:24 mile - how many 15-year olds in the US can run a 4:24 mile, despite all the speed work they are doing? Sure, they can outsprint him at the end, but only in theory. In practice, they finish in 4:35, 4:40, 4:50, etc and will still lose to him.

He is not a Brazier, Engels, Grant Fisher, etc. He is a slow-twitcher, you can even see it from how he looks like - very skinny body type. No matter what amount of speed work he would do, he will never be able to become a world class 800 guy or break 50 FAT in the 400. A comparable US runner is Nico Young - please don't put that guy in a 800, or overload him with speedwork either.

Speed work is the most demanding type of training and has the highest injury risk. He is doing incredibly well with what he is doing so far (high mileage). They don't say he will never do speedwork/anaerobic sessions, but might be saving it for later when he is more matured and has a stronger body to absorb the intensity.

Complaining about the training methods of a coach of a 15-year old that has run 14:06 and 30:11 just seems wrong. He is letting results speak for himself.

And to the one who brought up "Grace Ping" - there is a big difference between young girl prodigies and boy prodigies. There are lots of cases of female phenoms who got a lot slower and couldn't live up to their hype, but the ratio of boys, while not 100% (think about Wesley, marathon kid), is still a lot better.

When to win a world championship in the 10000m, you need to be able to run 52-54 at the end of a low or sub 27 race, that's where your need for speed really comes in. Ethiopians train with a lot of sprints, among other things. At the 5000m, the best guys are averaging low 4's per mile, or 60s and 61s, and they too close at 52-54, maybe even 51 sometimes. Lagat closed a 12:59 over Bekele in 51.9, I think. To maximize his potential, he'll really need to develop his speed. Without it, he may still run a good marathon eventually.

zxczxcv wrote:

When to win a world championship in the 10000m, you need to be able to run 52-54 at the end of a low or sub 27 race, that's where your need for speed really comes in. Ethiopians train with a lot of sprints, among other things. At the 5000m, the best guys are averaging low 4's per mile, or 60s and 61s, and they too close at 52-54, maybe even 51 sometimes. Lagat closed a 12:59 over Bekele in 51.9, I think. To maximize his potential, he'll really need to develop his speed. Without it, he may still run a good marathon eventually.

The ability to kick at the end of a race like 10k is due to aerobic strength. Bekele/Geb/Lagat etc., all the big, massive kickers, are not fast-twitch runners at all. But they don't produce that much lactate even at crazy paces in the 10k, they are still cruising at 27:30 10k pace and have a lot of energy left for a somewhat powerful kick. Magness found lactate tests that confirmed that, they were essentially at lactate steady state (no accumulation) during the middle of a hard 10k championship race.

Lagat tried pretty hard in the 800, and never broke 1:46 despite countless races. Also, NO one is saying Axel should never work on his speed, but I see it as the last "stepping stone" and not to something he should be doing now.

Why? Because hard, anaerobic intervals are taxing on the body and interfere with his other sessions. He won't be able to keep up with 100+ mpw at decent quality if he also adds 1-2 very hard speed endurance sessions to each week. He would need to make room for them by lowering his mileage, or reducing his long run pace from 6:20 to 6:40 or something and while he might gain a little bit of speed, he might actually get worse over his favorite racing distances in the short term.

So you have access to his training logs for the last few years, right? Can you show us specific training that proves he has done no speed work? We will wait for this. I would love to see it.

You cite his skinny body type as being proof of a long distance specialist (which I agree with you, he is) but take a look at Brazier, Nigel Amos, etc. So those guys must also be long distance specialist due to their body type, right? Just pointing out the flaw in your argument.

Obviously he is a long distance specialist, and no one is arguing that he should work on his speed so that he can try to become an 800 specialist or run under 50 sec in the 400 - that would be a foolish to try to be something you aren't. But at some point even long distance specialists need to improve their top speed, just so that as a byproduct they can become more efficient at a faster pace, and thus, they can run a 5k or 10k faster than before. These types of runners can and should obviously focus 90-95% on aerobic development, but at some point instead of trying to run through the proverbial brick wall (lack of top speed) its easier to just move the wall forward (improve top speed).

Lastly, I would love an honest, thoughtful response from you on why anyone would ever take any type of training advice from you? You're completely biased, stubborn, not in tune with your body and can't even follow the methodology of your coaching idol. This is a genuine question: why should we take anything you have to say seriously?

It is sad and hilarious that you cite Magness, a guy who is a Canova disciple and believes in doing top end speed training year round from a young age, yet you seem to say it's not important.

The fastest American in history at this age was Eli Krahn running 4:09 1600 and 8:58 3200. He is now 22 and has PRs of 4:07 and 8:18 which match his PRs from 15 years old.

zxczxcv wrote:

When to win a world championship in the 10000m, you need to be able to run 52-54 at the end of a low or sub 27 race, that's where your need for speed really comes in. Ethiopians train with a lot of sprints, among other things. At the 5000m, the best guys are averaging low 4's per mile, or 60s and 61s, and they too close at 52-54, maybe even 51 sometimes. Lagat closed a 12:59 over Bekele in 51.9, I think. To maximize his potential, he'll really need to develop his speed. Without it, he may still run a good marathon eventually.

Even if that's true, the kid is 15. It's pretty unlikely that he's going to be going to any WC 10k in the next year or two, and even if he does, he has plenty of time to work on speed then. There's not really a reason to risk burning him out now, when he can have years of aerobic development before moving to more speed training.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

The ability to kick at the end of a race like 10k is due to aerobic strength. Bekele/Geb/Lagat etc., all the big, massive kickers, are not fast-twitch runners at all. But they don't produce that much lactate even at crazy paces in the 10k, they are still cruising at 27:30 10k pace and have a lot of energy left for a somewhat powerful kick. Magness found lactate tests that confirmed that, they were essentially at lactate steady state (no accumulation) during the middle of a hard 10k championship race.

Most people are cruising when running a 10k 60s slower than their PR. You will notice that when they are running 10ks at close to their PR, they aren't dropping 53s last laps in 5ks or 10ks.

The simple point people are making is that you can run a 14:00 5k with a 55s 400m and great endurance. You can't run a 13:00 min 5k with a 55s 400m. Nobody has shown the ability to have that level of endurance. And as an almost 16 year old you are running into people who are often getting pretty close to physical maturity. History has shown that building endurance tends to be a lot more predictable (i.e. we have a good feeling of what happens when you take a person from 40mpw to 80mpw) than trying to build speed. Nobody expects him to be super fast (i.e. sub 50s 400m right now). The question is more does he have ok speed (say 52 or 53) or is he slow (54s+). Now if the training has any meaningful differences and if timing matters (i.e. better to do speed training as a 15 year old or a 20 year old).

But that is really all for the future. Hope the kid stays injury free and gets a solid 5 years more training . If turns into a 12:50 guy or 13:45 guy doesn't really matter as long as he gets a chance to see how far his talent can take him

There is absolutely no evidence that doing short sprints, hill sprints, flying 40s, etc. from a young age leads to early burnout.

But there is quite a lot of evidence that we get slower as we age and more prone to injury when adding quality -so why wait?

Han Solo wrote:

But there is quite a lot of evidence that we get slower as we age and more prone to injury when adding quality -so why wait?

There's a lot of evidence that most guys peak in their 20s. He's at least 5 years away from that. I don't know a ton about coaching, but if he's doing this good off of no speedwork, maybe it's best for him to wait a little longer before he starts doing hard sessions.

Rocket Mann wrote:

Han Solo wrote:

But there is quite a lot of evidence that we get slower as we age and more prone to injury when adding quality -so why wait?

There's a lot of evidence that most guys peak in their 20s. He's at least 5 years away from that. I don't know a ton about coaching, but if he's doing this good off of no speedwork, maybe it's best for him to wait a little longer before he starts doing hard sessions.

Why? A half dozen 10-15s runs with long rest isn't remotely as hard as aerobic work he is doing today. Nobody is suggesting the kid go nuts with anaerobic work. They are suggesting he should be working on speed.

LateRunnerPhil:

The super talented Danish kid who ran a 30:50 10000m last year at the age of 14 had multiple other big breakthrough performances.

He ran a 14:06 5000m in Alborg two weeks ago at the age of 15. At first I thought it might have just been a lucky race, but two days ago he also ran a 9:07 3000m steeple chase. These performances are not flukes, he is consistently performing like decent D1 runners at the mere age of 15.

With barely any lifetime mileage, the young runner seems to be more talented than Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who already trained seriously from a young age and was heavily coached by his father Gjert.

Christensen might be able to break each of Jakob's age-records in the next years.

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I agree that Axel is marvellous but I don´t think that he has achieved to run below 31 in a 10 k at 14 and the other great times WITHOUT EXTENSIVE AEROBIC TRAINING FOR AT LEAST SOME YEARS.

Axel to Jakob:

Axel might have a shot at Jakob´s PB at 16 in the 5000m at 13:35 (surpassing 2 years older Nico Young in the process!) BUT.......

Axel will have big difficulties to beat Jakob´s teen WBs in the shorter distances:

1500m: It is already to late to beat Jakob´s 14 years PB at 3:48: and only 1 month left to break 15 years PB at 3:42.

3000m: One year to break 8 minutes (= Jakob´s PB at 16)

3000m steeples: Also one year to break Jakob´s 8:26 which means that Axel must improve with more than 40 seconds!