One of my high school athletes wants to skip track to train for a half marathon

Greg wrote:

There's no reason he can't do both track and a half marathon.

At age 16 while in the 11th grade, I did a 10 mile road race in the spring.

It was a tough course and I came away with 60:56.

I had never run 10 miles in my life. The race took a lot out of me. I had trouble doing workouts for the next few weeks.

I wasn't fully recovered from the race for about a month.

I still PR'd at 1500 meters on the track about 2 months after the road race.

It just took me a while to recover.

Would I recommend a 1/2 marathon for a HS kid? No, but if he wants to do it, let him do it.

This guy is the best example, not to led the kid run a Half Marathon. Usually runners who move to quick to HM and Marathons burn out too quickly.

And Greg is a Masterpiece of example. He hasn't done any races since his epic 60:56.

Now he is just trolling here what he could have run, if he had run.

it's already been alluded to but i think it's worth reiterating: the kid has the rest of his freaking life to run road races including half marathons. once HS/college is over, there is very little opportunity to run track. i do realize that forcing this perspective, which i have gained through about 11 years of ruminating on how i loved but also squandered large chunks of my track career, is probably impossible to force on a kid.

in the US we have an unfortunate skew among the running community that longer=better (but god forbid they actually do long in training.....no no just the race!). running is supposed to be about finding out how fast you can go. no better place to do that than on the track.

SouthernFriedRealist wrote:

He’s a kid and the half-marathon is what…7-8 months away? He may want to do something entirely different next week.

You or him shouldn’t be thinking about it right now. Tell him to focus on cross country and that you can talk about the half-marathon in a few months.

this^^^ He's a kid don't lose too much sleep over it.

Hey, let him do what he wants and hopefully you get him to train with you guys and do the HM. But this advice above is weird and irresponsible. 90 mpw for a sophomore is extremely high. You know nothing about this kid (what his times are, his mpw over the last year, etc.). Unless he's already been running high mileage, jumping to 11-13 miles per day is going to leave him burned out and injured. Even if you do it gradually, most kids running 30-40 can't make the jump in 6 months to 70-90. Let him develop. Focus on speed now while young and endurance later.

Also, a HM race is nothing? Jogging a HM is probably not a big deal, but racing is. Jogging a mile is easy AF, but racing it is not.

I think just ask him more about what his goals are and why. Sometimes kids have stupid reasons for wanting things and they'll realize it by you just asking some pointed (but supportive) questions. But maybe there's a deeper reason that has him burning to do it, and then you can help him along his journey. But don't triple his mileage just because some guy on the internet said to.

Actually, while we don't know this kid specifically, OP explicitly stated most of the kids are undertrained...hence, not high mileage guys. This kid probably runs 20 mpw. 90 mpw is stupid.

Flavian wrote:

This is my first year coaching and I currently coach a pretty undertrained group of kids. (Most the guys are going to break 19 for 5k for the first time this season.) I have a sophomore who specifically wants to run higher mileage and focus on a road half marathon this spring. I want to be supportive of my athlete's goals but I want to make sure that it's not too early for him to be racing long distances.

Curious if any other coaches have any thoughts or suggestions on this.

Last night I got notification that the Army 10 Miler in-person event was cancelled. I say this because it would be pretty stupid to throw away an entire season of track to focus on one event that very likely will be canceled, given the uncertainty of COVID at the present time. I ran a half marathon during cross country my season year and it was a really great, hard tempo run 2 weeks before the regional meet.

I ran half marathons during Christmas holidays ... I was the best guy on my team in XC, and track during high school. I went on to run XC, indoor, outdoor in college. I had so much more aerobic development than my peers, it almost wasn't fair. haha

its only 5k wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Your title indicates he intends to skip track to train for a HM. If so, that's a poor choice on his part. He has only three years to run HS track compared to about 50 for running HMs.

Your viewing track as the pinnacle of running, it probably isn’t, who cares about whether the kid runs track, cross country or road, they are out running.

Track can be fun and you can run it when you like which is no difference to road. I did short distance when I use to run but if the focus is middle distance jog and kick, yawn how dull, then no wonder the kid what’s to run their hardest from gun to tape in another form

I really enjoyed running track. There was camaraderie with my teammates including even the sprinters.

I do care about my kids participating in HS sports. I would far prefer for my son to run track rather than training by his lonesome for a HM.

The kid is not a middle distance runner and even your take of racing the shorter distances is true, and it's not, running the 1600/3200 is not a jog and kick. A 15-year old with no experience and much of a base, is not going to run hard from gun to tape in a HM. It s more likely he won't be satisfied with his result and there is at least a 50/50 chance he'll go out too fast and run a miserable positive split.

LRers are obsessed with run long races on the roads, but after his competition career in XC and track is over is the time to run marathons and ultras.

Racing a half marathon for a high school sophomore who should be running a long run of 12 miles MINIMUM every week is nothing, yes. Just as with any race, some minimal recovery is needed, but 3 days out from racing a half marathon for a high school sophomore who had been doing long runs of 12 miles each week for months is all it will take. Yeah, not a problem at all...nothing.

I ran a HM each year when I was 15,16 & 17 at the end of XC. No specific HM training, probably running about 40 MPW by the time I was 17. I really enjoyed it and ran well. It didn't take me long to recover (not like it does now).

A HM isn't that hard to run well, not like a marathon.

So many posters bring the possibility of receiving a scholarship into the equation so I guess the world has changed drastically since when I was in HS. During the 4 years I ran XC and track, there were a total of 4 runners in the Sac area that received scholarships and many ran at a JC. The Sacramento Bee selects an All Sac area football team that I used to see before I stopped reading newspapers. There would be a mini-bio for each player, and typically only 1-2 were going to college on a scholarship. It's close to being a pipe dream for parents to expect that their child will receive one.

OP said that his team is "pretty undertrained." Somehow I doubt he's been running 12 miles minimum every week, given that a LR should be about 20-25% (30% at most) of the weekly mileage. You are replacing what you'd hope he's already doing for what he's actually doing, and then extrapolating that he can get to 70-90 mpw in a few months. That's why this advice is dangerous. Find out what the kid is actually doing before giving this advice, which is liable to get the kid injured.

All of that isn't to say he can't go for it, but he's not going to be truly racing a HM if he's doing 20 mpw now. He's probably going to go a little faster than easy pace and finish. Which is fine. Maybe it motivates him to up his mileage to a reasonable amount, which helps him long-term. But be realistic with where this kid is likely at.

You are correct. I have been coaching for 20 years. I have had dozens of sub 9:25 guys and 3 sub 9:10 guys. I think one guy got 10% and the rest were walkons. We had a 47-1:50 guy who got 50% but he didn't train with the D guys.

1) I did say "IF he turns into a high school stud".

2) I am not sure if your stats are correct about the Sacramento area, but I can assure you that at least here in Central Ohio, that is far from the reality. When my son was in high school, just in his senior class at that one high school, two distance runners received D1 scholarships (he was one of them), and one received a D2 scholarship. In the year prior, 2 received NAIA scholarships and two others ran on D1 teams but didn't require any athletic money because they got full-ride academic scholarships...however, they were good enough to get some D1 money or large D2 or NAIA money. There are a TON of distance runners out of Central Ohio each year who get NAIA, D2, and D1 athletic scholarship money. It is still a rare athlete who gets any athletic scholarship money, but not anywhere as rare as your Sacramento example would make it seem.

Big car daddy wrote:

You are correct. I have been coaching for 20 years. I have had dozens of sub 9:25 guys and 3 sub 9:10 guys. I think one guy got 10% and the rest were walkons. We had a 47-1:50 guy who got 50% but he didn't train with the D guys.

If you know some sub 9:10 who were walk-ons, then they went to very elite schools for running. There are a ton of colleges that will give very good scholarship money for a sub 9:10 guy.

I'll give you one right now - Davidson. If you run 9:10 and you have the grades to get in there, you will get $10,000 per year minimum which might not sound like a lot, BUT if your family income is less than $125,000 (and that's the case for a lot of families), the aid based on need will take you to ZERO cost to attend there.

How could you possibly know that? One of my runners claimed that he got a large scholarship to a P5 school. I know the coach and he told me that the kid walked on while getting about 25% off due to having a 35 ACT. Kids like to claim that they got an athletic scholarship. Many don't even understand that they didn't. Many parents and kids claim that they received athletic scholarships at D3 schools which puts all of these D1 claims into perspective.

Flavian wrote:

This is my first year coaching and I currently coach a pretty undertrained group of kids. (Most the guys are going to break 19 for 5k for the first time this season.) I have a sophomore who specifically wants to run higher mileage and focus on a road half marathon this spring. I want to be supportive of my athlete's goals but I want to make sure that it's not too early for him to be racing long distances.

Curious if any other coaches have any thoughts or suggestions on this.

I'm not a coach, but if he builds the mileage gradually and keeps the pace slow and steady for the vast majority (80-90%) of the miles, then what's the harm?

If he's actually that dedicated, he probably would crush the longer track races and definitely come back in the Fall and perform very well for CC, if he kept up the high mileage during the off season. Then you do the fun part, which is to sprinkle in a tiny bit of speed work to fine tune him for races, and he's a star.

But as far as high mileage being harmful to kids, I don't know. I'll defer to the experts on. that. But I'm also a 48 year old guy who just ran 80 miles this week for the first time, and my body is holding up better than I though it would. Most people would have predicted it wouldn't.

Seriously? Your team's weekly mileage is just under 13 miles and you wonder why they "drop off" after the first mile? I considered ignoring your post because I find it hard to take seriously but maybe this is on the level, so just in case it is, your kids have almost no endurance. That's why they drop off. They need to run more, at least two times what they're doing and for some of the stronger, more mature ones, three or more times what they're doing.

Are you any good as a coach?

Can you guide him correctly?

It seems to me the real question was about letting sophomore go feral.