Do fast middle schoolers and highschool frosh plateau dramatically as they get older?

I don't think that's a huge jump. Freshman year I ran a 4:50 and I would've been lucky to break 18:15 if I ran a 5k

And then to answer your other question 4-5 days is definitely overkill. It might work out for them but I doubt there will be much progression at all as an upperclassman or in college.

I can see what you mean with that type of training but as a high school freshman in 1983 I ran 4:46 on a steady diet of 400's almost every session. My high school career was all over the place but the time I got with a good coach as a senior I did run 4:40/8:39 3k and 15:13 5k all on the track.

I am lucky enough to work with some very talented runners as one of my boys progressed from 4:20 to 4:07 from sophmore to senior year. He never did more than 1 track session per week, one interval/threshold session on grass, and steady doses of hills. His mileage progressed from 30-35 to 45-50 miles per week.

If athletes have talent it doesn't require too much hard running to run fairly fast. A consistent progressive approach works well.

Good luck

The guys who are running 14:30 as seniors were running 15:50 as freshmen. The guys who are running 4:05 were running 4:30 as freshmen. Fast seniors were not slow freshmen. 17:xx is not fast at all for freshmen. Not sure how you think your team is fast.

Mile time is pretty true but don't base off 5k time cuz xc is too inaccurate with all sorts of courses.

Of course, you'll have your Prefontaine and other break out stars who didn't break 5 frosh year and go on to run fast times

Some kids are talented and show it automatically others need training to bring it out.

Great post. I would recommend that you celebrate the fact that kids in your school care about track. Many, many coaches would like to have that uptown problem. You seem to care - so I would recommend you start reading and expanding your understanding of the sport.

The Jim Ryun Story is one book. Amazing Racers is another book, out of many - that may prove enjoyable. Your school may be overdoing one type of workout. The antidote is education and history lessons. The vast majority of programs woefully under train and set low standards that athletes unfortunately attain. Best of luck to you and contact me if you want to talk training more in depth.

Yea I really appreciate that people are very enthusiastic about the sport. It doesn't happen everywhere. I'm just concerned the coaching style will burn them out or peak them early. It's instant gratification, so they seem to love seeing huge jumps in improvement, although I don't see how it will benefit them long term. Most of the fast senior guys I know were not very fast freshman year or didn't run 'seriously' before middle school.

XC times obviously differ a lot around the country... I'd consider that pretty good. Not amazing, but a decent indicator of talent.

If you see fast underclassmen, you have to be able to distinguish great talent from being an early grower and training too hard too early. If you have a freshman run 1:57 but he's already training with the seniors, there's not a lot of room for him to grow past that. Meanwhile if you have one run 2:05 but hasn't done any ball busting workouts, he could very well end up faster.

I'd have to say that the majority of 4:3x feshman don't run near 4:05. If a freshman girl runs fast, people would already be predicting her burn out, yet when a freshman guy runs fast, everyone seems to be predicting them in the Olympics.

Sorry. I meant relatively our underclassmen are fast. Alot of 15:xx seniors I know did not show that much potential in their first year of running, but they did develop very quickly.

Also, I left out alot of other info: Our school record for the 5k XC is 14:57. The mile and 800m records are 4:11 and 1:50, respectively. We've had both a 15:20 guy and a 18:58 girl in the past year for XC aswell. I'd wager that those times are not too shabby for a highschool of only around 500 kids.