I graduated toward the end of the low mileage era (2005) and found that my team's mileage was pretty low. 30 MPW was pretty typical for base phase, and our long runs topped out at 7.5 miles. The weird thing is that some of the other schools we raced against actually ran less than us.
Is/was this pretty typical? FWIW, we only had 3 guys under 5:00 for the 1600, and this was a school of 2000+ kids.
It's *very* typical.
And, as you've observed, there are schools that do a *lot* less.
it's been a while wrote:
Is/was this pretty typical? FWIW, we only had 3 guys under 5:00 for the 1600, and this was a school of 2000+ kids.
You should've had 3 guys in the 4:30s with that school size.
it's been a while wrote:
I graduated toward the end of the low mileage era (2005) and found that my team's mileage was pretty low. 30 MPW was pretty typical for base phase, and our long runs topped out at 7.5 miles. The weird thing is that some of the other schools we raced against actually ran less than us.
Is/was this pretty typical? FWIW, we only had 3 guys under 5:00 for the 1600, and this was a school of 2000+ kids.
I don't think it's typical of successful HS programs. Talented HS kids will be successful off just about anything.
Back in the 90s the kids who ran the most mileage over the year were the top runners in my small school of 400 students. In our conference it was usually the teams that did 70 a week in the off season who performed well.
Alan
Were you like me and a M-F runner? Easy to be low mileage on that schedule.
oldschoollrc wrote:
Were you like me and a M-F runner? Easy to be low mileage on that schedule.
Yes for base phase, no for in-season since we usually had races on Saturdays.
That can't be right. We do 35 MPW but had 13 guys run sub 5 in our TT last week.
I had 400 in my graduating class and we had two 4:30 milers, and I was in the 20s.
Our XC and track programs had us running about 30 miles, I hit low-40s with the weekends and AM miles I would put in.
I had 100 boys in my senior class and we had three sub 4:20 milers.
I graduated in 2005 too. I love looking through my old training logs from high school because it's laughable how little I was doing. I only ran more than 20 MPW twice, and my longest sustained run was 5 miles. However, I was running the 1600, 3200 and a leg of the 4x8 at every track meet. I managed to run 4:44, 10:48 and 17:55 off of that.
I'll never forget my first collegiate cross country race, after a summer of running the mileage that my college coach suggested. I went through 5k in 16:25 and realized that I had just PR'd by 90 seconds!
'End of Low Mileage Era'.... Ya, and that's why the US sucked at the marathon in the 2000's was because too many of our runners in the 90's and early 2000's barely ran. Thankfully 60+ miles in high school is more common now for top guys and 100+ for upper classman college and post-collegiate runners.
From my dusty old memory about the mid 90s….
My first team run was 5 miles. My first long run was 8 miles. Mostly just to keep up with the upperclassmen. During the off-season Coach gave us a sheet of paper with weekly mileage goals from 10 to 100 miles broken down into daily runs with doubles being incorporated early on. The idea was to start where you were at the end of the season and climb as high as you could, but there was a pattern. I remember it being 3 weeks up, then here across…so 40, 50, 60, 60, 60….or something like that.
I ended up at 60ish a week during my frosh winter off season. 70 that summer before soph year. 80 the summer before junior year and mid 80s before senior year. 9-10 mile daily runs were the norm with 12-14mi long runs. I think once I got up to 80s my focus was trying to run it faster. I’m not sure why I didn’t try to hit 90s or even 100 other than consistency or intimidation. 80s was a 14mi long run and 9-10 a day with a few 3mi doubles thrown in. 90-100 seemed so far away. I did end up hitting 90 a few times the summer before college but drank my opportunity away my first year.
Alan
End of Low Mileage Era wrote:
'End of Low Mileage Era'.... Ya, and that's why the US sucked at the marathon in the 2000's was because too many of our runners in the 90's and early 2000's barely ran. Thankfully 60+ miles in high school is more common now for top guys and 100+ for upper classman college and post-collegiate runners.
No. There were still plenty of guys running high mileage. The issue with the 90s to early 2000s is just population dynamics. We were the baby bust. Every successful runner I knew of in HS in my local area outside of 1 or 2 were running 60s or 70s a week in the off season.
Alan
I just talked this weekend with a sophomore at a 1500+ school with multiple (strong) state titles and right now he runs about 30-40 (4:59 PR) and their #1 (4:09/9:10) is at about 60-70.
uprising wrote:
I just talked this weekend with a sophomore at a 1500+ school with multiple (strong) state titles and right now he runs about 30-40 (4:59 PR) and their #1 (4:09/9:10) is at about 60-70.
It appears the 4:09 kid was also 8:51
I came from a non-running family and ran in HS in the late ‘80s. Coach had us run tons of track intervals and hill intervals. I never ran further than 5 miles in one go until I was training for a half marathon as a much older hobby jogger. This in a school that had a handful of very high mileage guys run sub 4:20 in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.
50s 400
4:35 mile
Broke 17 in the 5k just once.
Sham 69 wrote:
it's been a while wrote:
Is/was this pretty typical? FWIW, we only had 3 guys under 5:00 for the 1600, and this was a school of 2000+ kids.
You should've had 3 guys in the 4:30s with that school size.
Even more with that size, my school has like 800 kids and on a good day last year our entire top 5 would've gone in the 4:30s, with our top freshman going in the 4:20s.
Runningart2004 wrote:
End of Low Mileage Era wrote:
'End of Low Mileage Era'.... Ya, and that's why the US sucked at the marathon in the 2000's was because too many of our runners in the 90's and early 2000's barely ran. Thankfully 60+ miles in high school is more common now for top guys and 100+ for upper classman college and post-collegiate runners.
No. There were still plenty of guys running high mileage. The issue with the 90s to early 2000s is just population dynamics. We were the baby bust. Every successful runner I knew of in HS in my local area outside of 1 or 2 were running 60s or 70s a week in the off season.
Alan
I graduated HS in 2003. There were people who ran 70+ MPW, but they were a tiny minority who did lots of additional runs on their own. The vast majority of the team was at 20-30 MPW.
Typical week during the season:
Mon 8M long run
Tue intervals on grass loop
Wed 5-6M
Th- dual meet
Fri-3M + strides
Sat: Invitational
Sun: off
So probably about 30ish miles.
I ran low 15s, consistently.
We did do more mileage during the Summer but not a whole lot more, I'd guess we maxed out at 50.
nike shill wrote:
Sham 69 wrote:
You should've had 3 guys in the 4:30s with that school size.
Even more with that size, my school has like 800 kids and on a good day last year our entire top 5 would've gone in the 4:30s, with our top freshman going in the 4:20s.
It depends on where the school is. An inner-city school in Detroit might not have any guys under 5, while a school in an upper middle class suburb in California might have 10 guys under 4:30.