Ideal weight for runner

Cannot recall Tergat’s best 1500, but think it was 3:36. If wrong on that, my bad.

There is no ideal weight. Look at nick symmonds and Alan Webb. Personally I went from 130 and 17:43 to 152 and 15:32

Your coach should lose his job. High school athletes should not be striving to get the ultra-lean body composition of elite runners, for a lot of reasons:

1) Even if you've reached your full adult height, you have not yet reached physical maturity. While you're still developing, it's better to have too much available energy than too little.

2) Getting ultra-low body fat, without starving yourself, is something that elite athletes do with the aid of nutritionists, and they don't stay at racing weight all year. You don't have a nutritionist. You may not even have great control over your diet (depending on what's available at home and school).

3) Trying to get ultra-lean at a young age is a recipe for eating disorders. That goes double when your goals are based on things like what your thighs look like rather than objective criteria like DEXA scan results. It may sound patronizing to say that you're at risk of a psychiatric condition, and people obviously have different predispositions, but what you do now can affect your relationship to food for many years to come.

4) There is no long term benefit. Most of the training that you do now will continue to pay dividends for years to come in terms of aerobic development, coordination, strength, etc. Getting really low body fat, on the other hand, will make you fast momentarily, but it isn't cumulative. A lot of top runners appropriately view getting lean as a finishing touch after everything else is done.

To be fair, leanness does make you fast, at least for a little while (again, that's why elites aren't a racing weight year round). I think too many coaches make the mistake of saying food doesn't matter, weight doesn't matter, etc., because they don't want their athletes to develop eating disorders. The problem with that approach is that when you tell people things that obviously aren't true ("weight doesn't matter"), they discount everything else you say.

Ghost1 - do you realize you're talking to a ~15 year old girl who's new-ish to running and not a national-class athlete? Esp in a sport where eating disorders are too common?

To original poster: Your coach absolutely should not be telling or hinting that you should lose weight. Your weight is completely reasonable - I (male) was also 5'9" and ~138lbs in high school, and ran 1:55 800m. Later ran a couple seconds faster in college at 145lbs. It's great that you do some lifting, I did too. Do not worry about the size of your thighs, everyone has different bodies (I have really short legs). Worry about how fast you can run with the body you have.

Your goal should be to develop as runner over the next couple of years. The single most important thing for that is stay healthy, physically and mentally! Worrying about your ( perfectly good) weight is a great way to injure yourself and also to develop an eating disorder which will not only mess up your running but also mess up your life.

If you're comfortable with it, you or someone (parent, team captain?) should tell your coach to cut the comments about weight to athletes so he doesn't negatively impact other athletes on your team or in the future.

I agree with everything 800 dude (post above me) said.

Here are a couple stories about pro runners talking about their relationship with their bodies:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/sports/olympics/alberto-salazar-nike.html

https://runningmagazine.ca/health-nutrition/corey-bellemores-struggle-with-an-eating-disorder/

Your weight shouldn't be any of his concern if you thinks it's a problem then do something. I personally think your fine. An extra 4-5 pounds isn't gonna do anything. He should be fired.

I didn’t intend to put any pressure on this person I was just giving information regarding typical elite athletes and their body compositions in terms of BMI which are around 18.5 - 19 or 20 at the top scale. They don’t have a choice of trying to attain that goal or being comfortable with a heavier weight. Many Japanese female runners are actually underweight in the 17 BMI range and their coach is actually encourage this weighing them every day and penalizing them if they put on a few grams.

Japanese obsessiveness to weight is something once sees in Japan and to a certain extent also in China. I’ve been teaching in China for many years and my female students even when they are rake thin have the impression that they are quite fat. It’s an image and societal problem.

You are right however, that people should always be aware of eating disorders and obsessional disorders which can lead to severe dieting and then missing nutrients in the diet which long-term cannot be sustained.

Typo: “They don’t have a choice of trying to attain that goal or being comfortable with a heavier weight.”

Should read “They do have a choice of trying etc...”