Coach me to become a national-caliber high schooler

The letsrun summer training program could be good for you

I would say I'm pretty similar to you in terms of training, mostly low volume high intensity with similar pr's. Personally I'm finding a lot of benefit by simply upping my mileage. However, I would suggest you add some simple weight training (nothing heavy) as well as some form drills and strides. One thing I've noticed as my mileage increases is I have to fight harder and harder to keep that speed in my legs so make sure to stay on those for race season. Overall though I would just keep it easy, I generally incorporate a 20 minute tempo, hill repeats, and a long run which is enough to balance out speed with aerobic benefit. Even then its all dependent on how your body reacts. Going from 16:20 to nationals caliber (Atleast sub 15 in most regions) is a big gap to fill. Just keep up the good work and make sure you keep some easy speed work.

run more bud

Is your goal to run faster or run 65mpw?

So many runners think “If I run X mpw, I will run Y time.”

Runners I have coached have performed best when we focused on getting in the best shape possible, not getting hung up on mileage. Some of them needed 80-100 miles a week to benefit, others ran extremely well off of 25-35 miles.

If you want to be a sub-16 guy, it makes a big difference whether you are a 4:40 miler versus a 4:20 one. Or if you are someone who can run 6:30 pace for 90 Mounties or whether you top out at an 8 mile run.

What position are you playing in soccer? Also, are you still playing during the summer? If the answers to these question are midfield and yes then I'd recommend taking your mileage down to 50 with one day a week of tempo paced running and one 10 mile long run. I'm guessing you're getting all the summer speed work you'll need for this fall through practice.

Of course that being said, playing both sports won't get you to national caliber but I think if you got down to 15:45 5k cross country you'd be having a lot of fun.

if you were doing 30-40 miles and improved by almost a minute and a half, dont increase it. that high intensity seemed to have worked well for you. dont fix somethin that aint broke.

obviously you know yourself better than i do, but if i were in your situation i'd go for 50 miles max.

if you really want to go for 65, do it and we'll see if you prove me wrong.

thanks everybody for the responses! i appreciate all the opinions and ideas

What makes you think your slow twitch? Did you ever run a mile or anything even when track season ended? To be slow twitch on a soccer team you’d have to be clearly and embarrassingly much much slower than everybody else, was that so?

In my opinion, I don't have super impressive footspeed, which suggests a lower ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch fibers. With that said, I'm not entirely sure!

I was in a similar situation as you, ran cross country in fall just because and didn’t care that much, and I played a different spring sport as my main athletic focus. I always assumed I was slow twitch but I never realized just how slow a lot of distance runners are. I always just assumed that my teammates who’s 5k times were a minute ahead of me were just generally faster than me, until I joined track and realized I could mop the floor with them in anything in the mile or below. I suggest running a 400m time trial to see what kinda speed your working with, I suspect it will be quite good. Soccer players tend to make good 800m runners, and also if you run xc well on little mileage/training it’s usually because you are fast. I was not the fastest guy on my team either but the 800 ended up being my best event because apparently speed comes few and far between among distance runners.

Yeah, I was going to post about the OP's speed. To be at a national caliber level in XC, he's going to need a minimum of 54 second, 400 speed.

Whats that Seth Hirsch kids 400 or??

If you can reach and maintain 65 mpw for a few weeks during the summer, and maintain about a 60 or 55 average throughout your season with quality sessions included, you should have no problem running sub 15- it will take hard work and determination.

Depending on your region, I believe you could qualify for FLN or NXN.

Just train smart and listen to your body.

Hi, search summer or Malmo here and do that. There are some good q+a threads in there that will reveal just how slow the intervals should be --- much slower than your PR 5K pace! I guarantee if you follow that program and listen to your body and stay healthy you will improve extremely. You sound talented.

Yeah I was totally thinking about SOM but was initially somewhat demotivated because meeting with people regularly to run proved rather difficult with the whole coronavirus.

HSSSSSSSrnr wrote:

Yeah I was totally thinking about SOM but was initially somewhat demotivated because meeting with people regularly to run proved rather difficult with the whole coronavirus.

ok just don't do that part and do everything solo, it still counts. The point is one easy relaxed not-near-max-effort 4-6 mile tempo and one easy relaxed not-near-max-effort repeats plus lots of doubles. You still should have 6-8 weeks or so, and might want to take the last week of pre-season easy to arrive at real fall training totally fresh. You can get very fit with 6-8 weeks of doubles and moderate relaxed workouts. Don't set arbitrary weekly mileage limits (or minimums), and back off with short easier runs or off days if you feel tired. It's all been said before and will certainly work if you get out there and don't run the workouts and other days too fast.

ozboi wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Yeah, I was going to post about the OP's speed. To be at a national caliber level in XC, he's going to need a minimum of 54 second, 400 speed.

Whats that Seth Hirsch kids 400 or??

I don't know who that is, but for the OP to be a national level XC he's going to need to be able to run near 9:00 in track, which requires 54 second 400 speed or faster.

National class?

You should have picked better grandparents.

genetics can only take you so far