Jakob Ingegbrigtsen was running 70 miles a week as a 9 year old?!

That sounds borderline abusive.

He went to a Kenyan style school exactly 6 miles from home as they all are in Kenya.

That’s wild. He has older brothers that run, maybe he wanted to tag along. Was it running or XC skiing?

I saw a kid around that age(possibly Indian) running with what looked to be older siblings. They weren’t hobby jogging, they looked like an XC team running a strong pace. Very impressive.

wejo wrote:

Are we going to see US parents trying to start copying this? The success of Jakob is unbelievable but that amount of training is unhear of in the US. Does it sound accurate to you all?

The answer is never.

American kids can't even go to a backer y or visit their friends on a bicycle. Suburbia and the great American dream destroyed all of that.

Now the only choice they have, is getting obese and being an obedient Amazon customer.

wejo wrote:

Not sure if this has been discussed on here but I found these comments really interesting. A journalist translated some comments from a podcast Jakob did and he apparently was running quite a bit before he was even double digits in age.

"When I was 9-10-11, I was running 120-140 kilometers some weeks." That's 70-80 miles a week.

Are we going to see US parents trying to start copying this? The success of Jakob is unbelievable but that amount of training is unhear of in the US. Does it sound accurate to you all?

https://sportindepth.com/index.php/2021/03/26/jakob-ingebrigtsen-normally-i-run-181-5-kilometers-a-week-during-winter-training/

Although that is working for him to this point I don’t think overall that is good at all. I can think back to Stormi Ann from Michigan in the early 80s preteen and teen phenom. Kids get burned out

Pretty much came up in every thread when a fanboi would say “and he is only 16,17,18” In reality his training age was already 8-10 years. Most people stop improving after that, so good on him.

Should kids be running more at younger ages? I think middle school runners could definitely run more than they do. We would see more depth at higher levels for sure.

jakob is a freak

I guess it ruined him. He only ran 3:28.6/7:27 last year.

To be able to handle that kind of milage and intensity at that age, regardless of outcomes, is freakish. And he is well accomplished at this point.

School of 10km away wrote:

He went to a Kenyan style school exactly 6 miles from home as they all are in Kenya.

Ha ha. Yes, 6 miles is mentioned so ofter. I'm pretty sure I read that Lagat lived 1.5 miles from his school. But he ran to it in the morning, then home for lunch, then back to school in the afternoon and home at the end of the day. That sums to 6 miles per day. Plus he had to milk the cows or do some other farm chores.

I would take a 3:28 even if I stopped improving.

He wasn’t running 70 miles and racing a local 5k every weekend. He was was running easy miles and threshold to develop long term. There’s a huge difference. Geb ran 15 miles round trip as a school boy. Just like countless other East Africans. Take the over-racing and hard workouts out of the American approach and every 9 year should be running 70 mpw.

Pretty sure Brad Hudson has said on a few occasions that he was running close to 100mpw as a 10 year old with a young Mark Wetmore coaching him through the NYRR.

You must be joking... I almost DIED on a 15 miler. I'm a 4:30 guy and NOT 10 years old!!

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=10524812

If true, there'd be no reason for him to peak just yet, because it would still take a few years after he physically matured for him to realize his full ability. The style of training they do is relatively easy no the legs, because they aren't asked to do that many high speed sessions or fast tempos. They do many threshold sessions of 3 minutes, 6 minutes, and 10 minutes, plus weekly hill sprints and some hard track sessions as they move toward races.

Sham 69 wrote:

You must be joking... I almost DIED on a 15 miler. I'm a 4:30 guy and NOT 10 years old!!

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=10524812

Yes but you are a moron that doesn't understand the value of easy days and long runs unlike Gjert. Kids in the US get burned out because they have a fixation on metrics, times, and making sure they "work hard". Ridiculous. Countless times we hear about these Africans really taking it easy likely running slower than your average US sub elite but nah just discount that. Kenyan cooldown is a nice walk or 13 minute mile. In the US we put down two 6:50s and that's the cooldown. So stupid.

on the legs.

The Suburban tragedy wrote:

The answer is never.

American kids can't even go to a backer y or visit their friends on a bicycle. Suburbia and the great American dream destroyed all of that.

Now the only choice they have, is getting obese and being an obedient Amazon customer.

sadly, i have to agree. very well said.

13 minute mile?? I could speed walk that in 16.

sdfkjbndsbvksndfklvnskdfvkj;sdfnvdfslvbn wrote:

The Suburban tragedy wrote:

The answer is never.

American kids can't even go to a backer y or visit their friends on a bicycle. Suburbia and the great American dream destroyed all of that.

Now the only choice they have, is getting obese and being an obedient Amazon customer.

sadly, i have to agree. very well said.

That analysis applies to Norwegian kids as well. Gjert and Jakob are products of a very special breed.