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

Although I suspect this poster (as do most these days) is about 180° from me on this topic, I actually do agree with this sentiment. School-employed coaches have a job to do: manage the actual official school team for the sport in question. If long-distance road racing is not what they're paying you to coach, don't. XC coaches attempting to become the year-round managers of every student in the district who can run a mile without stopping is way out of line, yet apparently common lately.

No verbal support. No training advice. Exactly! Why don't all of you coaches here go that way? Ignore us, please. Nothing for road racers. No calling our parents. No interference.

Of course, the poster is probably right on when pointing out that social acceptance of teenage road racing will lead to an epidemic of such. If you're older than 50, you may remember a time when it was considered OK and it was ridiculously widespread. I suspect the poster and I disagree on whether or not this was good. When I was the 16-year-old in question, I thought it was great. Those wishing to play soccer were allowed to . If you were obsessed with lifting weights, nobody stepped in. Perhaps all of you coaches who would be out of work if nobody showed up may feel differently.

The next time 'your' athlete (for those of you in countries where human ownership is still legal) comes to you with marathon plans, simply point out that the baseball team didn't come to you for approval. Tell them to feel free to sign up for your team and obey your orders if they wish. Otherwise, Godspeed! In the meantime, please take 600's advice and offer no 'assistance' to the road runners at school. I (and a lot of others) didn't get any and was grateful for it.

oinion wrote:

I hate when kids do stuff like this. I don't see why. There is really plenty of time to do that later, and more importantly there are only a few years you can run XC and track races and really get the best out of them. No one races track miles or XC races very much in their twenties. You just don't have a lot of access to them when you're older.

I think about Alana Hadley and other kids who did too much too soon and the way they quickly burnt out. We also have to stop glamorizing and glorifying young talent doing this too. Hadley's time was good but had she been older she wouldn't have made any headlines. Instead she was bizarrely deluded into thinking she'd be an Olympic champion by transitioning to the marathon early and improving. Of course that improvement never came.

Of course there is plenty of time for the kid to run a half marathon later. But he wants to do it now. People change over time. Nothing guarantees he'll want to run a half marathon later. And the miles he'll likely do in preparation will make him faster at track distances should he want to run track.

Sham 69 wrote:

Al Sal as a teen was told by his adult training peers to develop his speed while young and to not think about the marathon. Speed development is key at a young age according to some coaches.

That said, we can do ‘both/and’.

I trained a boy with very little natural speed to a 1:19 half marathon. Going in to the training, he could barely break 1:10 for a 400m. Post training, he was well under 60.

Done right, nothing benefits the 400 and up more than endurance training.

possible wrote:

so new question for this post, what time would a high schooler need to run in order for you guys to consider him actually racing a half marathon?

I have a question for you. Do you think a football coach would encourage an athlete to play 4.5 football games in a row during the offseason? What would a coach need to do to get his player ready for 4.5 football games in a row?

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possible wrote:

so new question for this post, what time would a high schooler need to run in order for you guys to consider him actually racing a half marathon?

At high school off XC training I ran:

Age 15- 1:24

16- 1:13

17 - 1:12

HRE wrote:

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.

Completely serious, longest run we've done until reading your post was 150m @ mile pace. We did 400m @ mile pace today.

"stronger, more mature ones, three or more times what they're doing."

Okay so 4 times 150m is 600m. I'll have them do 600m @ 2 mile pace Thursday. Their rest days will be 15m sprints.

Does this sound good?

"mile" and "2 mile" pace is completely hypothetical btw, they're never ran that far without walking.

That’s as about as stupid response i’ve every read on this forum and that’s saying something! most high school kids should be doing long runs of between 10-13 miles any way so they can obviously already run 13.1. My question is what’s considered a time to be called racing vs being called just a lsd run. my kid runs 13 on saturday a couple times a season for training runs at 1:24 for mast majority of half marathons that would be considered racing.

Stupid Questions wrote:

possible wrote:

so new question for this post, what time would a high schooler need to run in order for you guys to consider him actually racing a half marathon?

I have a question for you. Do you think a football coach would encourage an athlete to play 4.5 football games in a row during the offseason? What would a coach need to do to get his player ready for 4.5 football games in a row?

That’s as about as stupid response i’ve every read on this forum and that’s saying something! most high school kids should be doing long runs of between 10-13 miles any way so they can obviously already run 13.1. My question is what’s considered a time to be called racing vs being called just a lsd run. my kid runs 13 on saturday a couple times a season for training runs at 1:24 for mast majority of half marathons that would be considered racing.

You slow people always think that runners should do a bunch of miles. Check with Coburn, Hocker, Schweizer, Fisher, Purrier, Frerichs, Knight, Brazier, and most of the top North American runners to see that they never ran over 10 miles in high school. My son ran 4:10 in high school on 30 MPW and a long run of 8 miles.

Not fast enough wrote:

You slow people always think that runners should do a bunch of miles. Check with Coburn, Hocker, Schweizer, Fisher, Purrier, Frerichs, Knight, Brazier, and most of the top North American runners to see that they never ran over 10 miles in high school. My son ran 4:10 in high school on 30 MPW and a long run of 8 miles.

Agreed. The mile fetishists on this board are insane.

Not fast enough wrote:

You slow people always think that runners should do a bunch of miles. Check with Coburn, Hocker, Schweizer, Fisher, Purrier, Frerichs, Knight, Brazier, and most of the top North American runners to see that they never ran over 10 miles in high school. My son ran 4:10 in high school on 30 MPW and a long run of 8 miles.

Agreed as well. Kid I coached in HS ran no more than 6miles, probably 30milesMPW max. Ran equivalent of sub-4.04 mile, and sub-1.48 800m. The point was to leave it for College - made every ncaa final in and out (bar last one) with a couple of medals.

While others certainly need to do more than this if they are slow, 70- 90 MPW is best left for College. You can get a lot out of 40-60 MPW, even for the 2 mile. Mo Ahmed was a high mileage guy, racing 10000's at championships his Junior year, yet that was on 70 MPW, He has turned out okay.

I forget how scattered kids can be as sophomores until I recall my own thinking at the time. I was serious about my running but didnt think it was inconsistent to triple jump at meets and play basketball over the winter instead of train.

I agree with the advice to let him train for the half but make an appearance at meets as part of his training. The thing to watch out for will be the disruptive effect his solo mission might have on the team. If you have one guy doing his own thing you may have others.

Sham 69 wrote:

Al Sal as a teen was told by his adult training peers to develop his speed while young and to not think about the marathon. Speed development is key at a young age according to some coaches.

You made that up. Salazar was always competitive AF. He wanted to run against other HSers and would have had no interest in running a marathon. Given that his lifetime 400m PR was rumored to be 57, the recommended "Speed Development" didn't turn out so well.

No, this does not sound good nor does it sound like someone to take seriously.

Raced a guy who did both. Used track as training and hit 1:10 as a 16 year old. The high mileage at that age destroyed him though, especially without enough nutrition to match. So I would be careful and let him know he can try both (in most states)

possible wrote:

That’s as about as stupid response i’ve every read on this forum and that’s saying something! most high school kids should be doing long runs of between 10-13 miles any way so they can obviously already run 13.1. My question is what’s considered a time to be called racing vs being called just a lsd run. my kid runs 13 on saturday a couple times a season for training runs at 1:24 for mast majority of half marathons that would be considered racing.

Well if a football team does 4.5 hour practices then they should be ready for a 4.5 hour game right?

???!! wrote:

This brings me to the quoted post. Not picking on this guy: the same sentiment appears all through the thread. He talks about compromise and fitting in road races. How is it that you are a participant in the planning of a whole year of running for these kids? If I am at your school and planning a marathon, how would you even be aware of it? How would you be aware of me? Admittedly this was decades ago, but there wasn't a central running planning group at our school. Neither the school district nor any of it's employees (coaches) had any input or participation in my running. Why isn't that the case now?

I absolutely understand your point (and don't totally disagree with it either). I do think that expectations of many communities have changed from what you mentioned. In our community, there is an expectation from families that off-season training opportunities are offered. They are not at all mandatory (about half of my team participates in off-season running activities and about half of our team participates in sports other than track or xc), but the majority of parents prefer their children run under supervised groups with an adult rather than on their own. There is not an active teen road race or club running scene around here, so high school coaches are the primary source of training (for better or worse...honestly there are some very very bad coaches around and it's frustrating to watch kids get worse under them).

I'm not going to chase down kids to run, but I will provide flyers with information to middle school teams in our school district and post info on off-season running opportunities on our school websites. We work really hard on our team to have a culture where kids can go all-in on running if they want to but also can have a great team experience while pursuing other interests if that's the direction they want to go. I've noticed from experience that most kids want to be able to do multiple things but don't have the skills or knowledge on how to prioritize or structure that in a way where they have fun but aren't overloaded. If a current athlete comes to me asking for advice, I'm going to see if a compromise exists where they can pursue both interests.

Admit it. You think you're underpaid for coaching and want to get practice done in less than 30 minutes.