high school girl training

Listen to your coach

listening to my coach would mean 15 mpw and workouts that are like total distance of a mile or less. he’s a great guy and i like him, he’s easily approachable and stuff but i just don’t think we do enough

What are the fastest girls over past 5 years under this coach?

Ignore the old heads who say just say “listen to your coach” when it is obvious they are ineffective. Why should you be forced to spend 4 years doing poor training that limits your potential because a school hired someone that is incompetent?

Anyways, a few things. You ran 11:17 off a 2 month injury - that’s not a poor result at all, you should be happy you retained that much fitness. And some constructive criticism - a result is what it is, no excuses whatsoever unless it is extreme. This mentality will help you race tougher as well.

As for training, it’s not so much what specific workouts you do. It’s the ideas behind them. You’ve run 30mpw in the past, I am not sure for how long, but since you’ve been out for a while I think building back up to that would and maybe slightly more would be your best bet for this base phase before outdoor season. You can go higher in the summer for XC but I am not sure doing more than you’ve done before is a great idea for a high schooler coming off a fairly significant injury. So about 35 mpw would be ideal to build back up to before outdoor. You can push it to 45 over the summer but that’s a different discussion.

With all that being said, here are some good rules of thumb for a high school pre-outdoor track phase.

1. 2 workouts a week. 1 threshold (meaning a tempo) of 20-30 minutes and 1 of something else. Choose from hill repeats, a fartlek, cruise intervals 800-1600 repeats totaling ~6000-7000 meters in volume on lower rest of under 90 seconds, a cutdown or a steady state medium long run

2. 3 easy runs, for you probably just stick to the 40-50 minute rule. You don’t even need a heart rate monitor, easy is a feel that you should get accustomed to without relying on a watch.

3. A weekly long run of about 26-27% your weekly mileage. Do most of these easy or slightly faster than easy run pace, but if you feel good one day you can let it fly. Keep it simple. For you probably about 65-70 minutes.

4. Speed maintenance and speed development - strides after easy runs for speed maintenance. 4-6 ~100m efforts as fast as you can comfortably run with ample recovery focusing on good relaxed form. Speed development - once a week, perhaps after the long run, a routine of plyometrics, alactic hill sprints & leg strengthening to work on getting your pure speed down. As an ~11:00 an ~19:30 girl I would guess that your top 400m speed would be about 65. If you can work this down to 62 by the end of outdoors you will have more than ample wheels to run sub 10:30. 400m speed will naturally get faster as you improve aerobically but the explosive pure speed improvement will boost this process.

5. Core 2-3 times a week which you seem to do. I prefer to do it on workout days. “Hard days hard, easy days easy”.

6. For the workout paces, you don’t need to be rigid or too scientific, at least the first few weeks. Just do them hard. 8-9 out of 10 effort but trying to run it smart so you even or slightly negative split most workouts. As a baseline though I expect your tempo pace at the start to be around 6:40/6:50 per mile so maybe start around there and see how it feels. For intervals, you’ll probably want to be doing these around 5k pace (unless you’re doing 1600 repeats you can slow it down a notch, so around 6:20/mile.

with all of that in mind, a schedule could look like
m 40 easy + strides
t 10 min warmup, 25 minute tempo, 10 min cooldown + core workout
w 45 + strides
t 10 min warm up, 6x1k 60 seconds recovery, 10 min cooldown + core workout
f 45 easy + strides
s long run or off day + speed development
s long run or off day + speed development

I should also have mentioned this but don’t jump right into 35 mpw. Start at 20. Work up to it over about 2 weeks, take a down week of around 25 miles then you can hold 35 the rest of the cycle. So for the first few weeks shorten all the run lengths by about 5 mins and do the workoits on the shorter end of the range.

THANK YOU! so helpful! i’m actually in my indoor track season right now. is that schedule/are those workouts still good?

no one, he’s the new head coach last and this year. i’ve never had a different coach. jim mitchell came a few years before him + mary cain, so good history at my school, but that’s not relevant because that’s not who we are now.

But how fast were his runners where he coached before? If he is brand new to coaching, was he a decent college runner? Trying to gain perspective before undercutting him. If he was decent runner or has coached decent runners, maybe he has a longer term strategy.

Don't put names of your schools. It's easy for your coach to figure out who you are. You already put your times here. Coaches don't like to be criticized.

Good luck with your training.

good idea, you’re right. thanks. today we went for a 20 minute run! only 2.33 miles. that is just not enough at all.

he’s new to coaching, but was a college runner. he didn’t go anywhere i’ve heard of, but i know he did run. not sure what level.

Yeah, I see what you mean. 20 min is barely a warm up.

At least you're doing the right thing for yourself.

Don't give away details but your posts are sounding sort of made up. Not knowing anything about your coach is questionable. It makes it seem like you are the one who doesn't care.

Some solid advice here. I'd also like to emphasize the mileage side of things a bit. The best HS girls in the country usually run 45-50 mpw as seniors. So, 30 mpw as a sophomore is totally fine.

The typical rule of thumb is every 6 months to increase mileage by 5 mpw, but if you want to increase by 5 mpw every year to be conservative that's fine too. It may not sound like much but its 10 mpw per year and 40 mpw after 4 years. That's why college girls can do high mileage and crazy workouts.

Lastly, try to have fun with it. You clearly have some talent. So don't do anything crazy. You want small improvements in training each year. Then when you get to college, most college coaches know their stuff, so you'll improve by leaps and bounds then if you manage to not burn yourself out by training too hard in high school (which is more common for kids with a bad coach that have to do extra training on their own)

ok, nothing is made up in any way. i don’t “not care”, i’m exactly the opposite. why is caring even being discussed? never said he doesn’t care. i already said it and i’ll say it again: i like my coach, he’s nice, encouraging, and good, but sends us on 20 minute runs and 15-20mpw training.

i also never said i don’t know anything about him. i know where he went to school, never heard of it. and as you and someone else said, don’t give details, so i won’t. i don’t know what division it’s not a well known school. and why would i know a lot about my coach? he’s not my friend, he’s my coach.

thanks! helpful

I ran on a national championship XC team in college. Most posters are slow and have never coached. Your coach ran 4 years in high school and 4 years in college yet you think you know more and that random slow people will know more? Maybe he has you on a long term plan. He likely has read this thread.

no, i do NOT think i know more!! everyone is taking this the wrong way. for the LAST time, i love my coach but we don’t do enough. he even has seniors doing 15-20 mpw, so it’s not a plan.

what i’m concerned about is the volume. i cant go for 20 min runs and do short workouts. so i’m asking you guys what i could do, like what workouts would be good for the 3k, what other training to do, and a sample schedule. i’ll run it all by my coach and make sure he approves first, i’d never sneak off and extend workouts without him knowing. i’ll ask him about some 3k workouts you guys give/i find, and we’ll talk. he does know about running but i’m not sure why we do so little.

you say that you want to get faster, but you only mention your 3000m and 5kXC.

What about your 1500m or even 800m? While to run 10.30 (84sec/400) might require better mileage than you have deescribed - don't ignore getting faster in itself. Perhaps you have better speed than you know.

Probably need to be able to run 18.30 for 5km for a 10.30 (unless doing much higher mileage), but trying to run 4.45 (76) for 1500m, even close to 2.20 (70) for 800m may serve you as well in the long run. Many of the better distance (5000m) women also have reasonable to good speed (close to or faster than 2.00 for 800m).