Coaching a mega-talent sophomore - Am I right to think he could run ~4:10 over 1600m this season?

younger private coach AM wrote:

Note: I've changed some details on his profile so he can't be identified, but I have a feeling most of the country will know his name soon.

History

Freshman year: Kid did not run a step until summer of 2021 - his first XC season he comes out opens up at 18:02 and PR's at 17:16 mid season on 15-20mpw and with no summer base. Takes a month off, joins the indoor track team, goes 5:06-4:50 in 2 indoor races (is still running with an inept high school coach having him do 15mpw doing all sorts of little things wrong). Goes right into outdoor, opens the season at 4:40, drops down to 4:28 in his last race in May on the same training. He also split 2:01.x on a 4x8 at some point and ran 10:00 for 32 on a double. Not too surprising seeing as he had zero aerobic development. Never ran a 400 of any kind unfortunately.

I heard about this kid and reached out to him because, honestly, what private coach wouldn't want to get their hands on such a talent - the school he goes to is notoriously bad at middle distance/distance running development, the school records are 4:20/9:20 from over 15 years ago - and I really wanted to see what he could do on something other than 15mpw with 8x400 every week during base phase. I've been working with him since this June.

I had him take a few weeks off after track then started base building. The second week back, he got into a moderately bad car accident. His injuries were non life-threatening but he was still out for 6 weeks late June to early August on doctor's orders with a concussion, an internal laceration and a fractured ulna (point being he got pretty banged up). I had thrown in the towel at this point on the XC season, I told him that it would be best to start from scratch and start a long build towards outdoor season, maybe hop in a few indoor races to break up the monotony and stay hungry and whatnot. However I realized it was best to just let him race the XC season as he is young and I don't want to keep him from that team experience - after all, he had success last year off of no summer as well.

He opened up the first race at 17:04 and ran 15:55 a month later on the same course (flamed out a little at the end of the season but that wasn't entirely surprising given that he ran less than 100 miles before the XC season started.

And now, I have finally got him doing an uninterrupted, full cycle buildup for the outdoor season, and the results have been absolutely spectacular even this early.

Recent workouts:

30 minute flat-ish tempo @ 5:26 (yes, a tempo, I tell him not to run all out but "comfortably hard")

25 minute extremely hilly tempo @ 5:25 (I personally was running this route @ 5:28 pace a month out from a 4:01 1500)

60 minutes @ 6:15 pace. on paper the workout was "1 hour uptempo" - he says 6-7 perceived effort.

5x1200m w/ 2 minutes recovery on trail at 3:42

7x1k w/ 90 sec recovery on trail at 3:02

14x400m w/ 1 minute recovery on trail @ 69.1 avg

A boat load of hill repeat workouts as well that won't have any meaning to any of you but seems are similar to things a few 3:5x-4:0x 1500m guys I've worked have done.

I know I've got him training like a 5k guy but it is only December, and I know that this kid has an absolutely unlimited aerobic reserve in there waiting to be tapped into. I've got him doing weekly pure speed stuff and speed maintenance strides as well so he'll be alright when we start running faster in February.

Every single workout I throw at this kid he knocks it out of the park and gets faster seemingly every run. I'm not having him blast these workouts to pieces either, he is running within himself and the next day is perfectly fine. In fact, I tell him to reign it in on the easy runs, he always wants to run sub 7 pace but I tell him to back off a little even if it feels easy.

I've built him up nice and slow since November from 20mpw to 40mpw and we have been holding steady there. Once February rolls around that figure will be ~30-35 with some more quality speed endurance injected. and yes, don't worry, strides after easy runs, he's doing core, etc.

Honestly I'm just excited that a talent like him has fallen to me, it seems like I can do no wrong with this kid and he will improve no matter what. I sort of already have an idea, but do these workouts seem like the base phase stuff you'd expect from a 4:10 miler? I've just never coached a young high schooler of this caliber and I can hardly believe my eyes - and I feel strange telling a 15 year old his season goal should be in the 4:10 range - I don't want to put expectations too far out there but I also really feel like he's bound to be knocking on the door of 4:0x this season. Thoughts?

P.S. any thoughts on his training? I don't proclaim to be a genius but I do feel like I have a pretty good grasp of training theory, but any feedback on how to optimize this further would be appreciated. I just want to avoid messing this kid up as much as possible, I've read too many stories of potential sub-4 talents gone to waste from shoddy high school coaching.

M 40-50 min easy run and strides

T tempo run (been 22-30 minutes for the most part, it's a little different every week). maybe a fartlek every third or fourth week

W 40-50 min easy run and strides

T long interval or hill repeat workout (usually totaling about 6-7km, stuff like 8x800 with 60-90 rest)

F 40-50 min easy run and strides

S - off

S - 65-80 minute easy run and pure speed

Regards,

Coach AM

coach AM wrote:

fast dad wrote:

Be supportive. My son expected to be a 4:05 miler and ended up at 4:20.

Of course. I’m not gonna be visibly down around him if he “only” run 4:16 this season. He doesn’t owe anyone a time, I am just so excited about him that I felt like I had to post it because his workouts seem to indicate he could get into sophomore superstar territory, but I don’t want to be that guy who tells someone they’re gonna run 4:30 when really they’re in 4:38 shape or something. I coach other athletes in the area as well from 6 minute 1500 gals to a 1:53 senior in college, I’ve had some experience with both failure and success and I know not to react to failure in any negative way.

To peach pit, I will most certainly update this thread. The goal we’ve been focusing on/discussing has simply been the school records of 4:20 & 9:20 - he’s really competitive and he talked about wanting those, so I told him that’s what we’ll aim for. However I think at this point he and I know those are most likely formalities, hence why I started the thread. I’m not sure if it’s better to just keep the conservative goals or shoot for more ambitious ones with this kid because he’s run so well off of just showing up and balling out, so maybe putting higher expectations on him could be detrimental in some way. Or maybe not.

No indoor races on the schedule so far, overall I’m not a huge believer in the necessity of indoor races, or at least a full indoor season. That may be the wrong mentality though, let me know. He seems ok just training so far because he knows he’s making a jump, but maybe one race under distance race to test the speed couldn’t hurt. Had he had skipped XC we were going to do an indoor season because he would then have gone almost a year without racing, but he did run XC this year so the plan has been just to train November-February.

younger private coach AM wrote:

Note: I've changed some details on his profile so he can't be identified, but I have a feeling most of the country will know his name soon.

History

Freshman year: Kid did not run a step until summer of 2021 - his first XC season he comes out opens up at 18:02 and PR's at 17:16 mid season on 15-20mpw and with no summer base. Takes a month off, joins the indoor track team, goes 5:06-4:50 in 2 indoor races (is still running with an inept high school coach having him do 15mpw doing all sorts of little things wrong). Goes right into outdoor, opens the season at 4:40, drops down to 4:28 in his last race in May on the same training. He also split 2:01.x on a 4x8 at some point and ran 10:00 for 32 on a double. Not too surprising seeing as he had zero aerobic development. Never ran a 400 of any kind unfortunately.

I heard about this kid and reached out to him because, honestly, what private coach wouldn't want to get their hands on such a talent - the school he goes to is notoriously bad at middle distance/distance running development, the school records are 4:20/9:20 from over 15 years ago - and I really wanted to see what he could do on something other than 15mpw with 8x400 every week during base phase. I've been working with him since this June.

I had him take a few weeks off after track then started base building. The second week back, he got into a moderately bad car accident. His injuries were non life-threatening but he was still out for 6 weeks late June to early August on doctor's orders with a concussion, an internal laceration and a fractured ulna (point being he got pretty banged up). I had thrown in the towel at this point on the XC season, I told him that it would be best to start from scratch and start a long build towards outdoor season, maybe hop in a few indoor races to break up the monotony and stay hungry and whatnot. However I realized it was best to just let him race the XC season as he is young and I don't want to keep him from that team experience - after all, he had success last year off of no summer as well.

He opened up the first race at 17:04 and ran 15:55 a month later on the same course (flamed out a little at the end of the season but that wasn't entirely surprising given that he ran less than 100 miles before the XC season started.

And now, I have finally got him doing an uninterrupted, full cycle buildup for the outdoor season, and the results have been absolutely spectacular even this early.

Recent workouts:

30 minute flat-ish tempo @ 5:26 (yes, a tempo, I tell him not to run all out but "comfortably hard")

25 minute extremely hilly tempo @ 5:25 (I personally was running this route @ 5:28 pace a month out from a 4:01 1500)

60 minutes @ 6:15 pace. on paper the workout was "1 hour uptempo" - he says 6-7 perceived effort.

5x1200m w/ 2 minutes recovery on trail at 3:42

7x1k w/ 90 sec recovery on trail at 3:02

14x400m w/ 1 minute recovery on trail @ 69.1 avg

A boat load of hill repeat workouts as well that won't have any meaning to any of you but seems are similar to things a few 3:5x-4:0x 1500m guys I've worked have done.

I know I've got him training like a 5k guy but it is only December, and I know that this kid has an absolutely unlimited aerobic reserve in there waiting to be tapped into. I've got him doing weekly pure speed stuff and speed maintenance strides as well so he'll be alright when we start running faster in February.

Every single workout I throw at this kid he knocks it out of the park and gets faster seemingly every run. I'm not having him blast these workouts to pieces either, he is running within himself and the next day is perfectly fine. In fact, I tell him to reign it in on the easy runs, he always wants to run sub 7 pace but I tell him to back off a little even if it feels easy.

I've built him up nice and slow since November from 20mpw to 40mpw and we have been holding steady there. Once February rolls around that figure will be ~30-35 with some more quality speed endurance injected. and yes, don't worry, strides after easy runs, he's doing core, etc.

Honestly I'm just excited that a talent like him has fallen to me, it seems like I can do no wrong with this kid and he will improve no matter what. I sort of already have an idea, but do these workouts seem like the base phase stuff you'd expect from a 4:10 miler? I've just never coached a young high schooler of this caliber and I can hardly believe my eyes - and I feel strange telling a 15 year old his season goal should be in the 4:10 range - I don't want to put expectations too far out there but I also really feel like he's bound to be knocking on the door of 4:0x this season. Thoughts?

P.S. any thoughts on his training? I don't proclaim to be a genius but I do feel like I have a pretty good grasp of training theory, but any feedback on how to optimize this further would be appreciated. I just want to avoid messing this kid up as much as possible, I've read too many stories of potential sub-4 talents gone to waste from shoddy high school coaching.

M 40-50 min easy run and strides

T tempo run (been 22-30 minutes for the most part, it's a little different every week). maybe a fartlek every third or fourth week

W 40-50 min easy run and strides

T long interval or hill repeat workout (usually totaling about 6-7km, stuff like 8x800 with 60-90 rest)

F 40-50 min easy run and strides

S - off

S - 65-80 minute easy run and pure speed

Regards,

Coach AM