Morning Runs for High School athletes...

The ones who are advanced enough can do 45min easy before school a few days a week. No big deal.

man, i knew a few teams that had those, and alot of those athletes burned out by college. do it with caution and probably only some of the athletes. not everyone can handle running that much. heck, i barely ran in high school, and during college i got up to 70 miles per week in singles. never did doubles and I ran plenty fast.

but seriously, it is high school. they dont need to be doing doubles. and that makes it easier on you too, you wont have to work as much.

the benefit/risk scenario is mainly what I am worried about. I'd rather have kids a little undertrained, but healthy, fresh and motivated than run-down. Just wondering who has used these and what the effect was.

Personally, I'm not overly concerned about mileage. Benefit being equal, if 4am/4pm is less stress than 7 miles after school, i'd lean towards the double...anyone else with expertise?

I went to a high school that had a pretty solid program. We had morning practice 4 days a week. More often than not, we were running in the pool as opposed to on the roads. It pretty much sucked getting in a pool at 6 am but it was worth it.

Biggest problem with AM runs for HS students is that students often are lacking rest because they're trying to burn the candle in many places at once.

I experimented with this one year, only went 3 days a week for about 20-25 min; my belief was that the AM run was a warm-up for the afternoon workout. We even did AM runs on meet days and days before meets, and through mid-season, we were getting excellent results.

But then most of those who were doing AM runs got sick in the last half of the season. These were probably typical HS athletes who were trying to balance part-time work, social life and running, and were clearly short of rest or not eating right, despite efforts to teach the necessity of doing so.

I've never done AM runs as a team since then. But occasionally an athlete comes along to whom running is a major priority, and is focused enough to manage their lifestyle to handle the extra demands. It WILL make a difference IF a runner will make this small sacrifice, and by only going a short distance roughly every other day, the risk of burnout is minimized.

We do our main run in the morning during cross country season to avoid the heat of the afternoon. Ideally we would do doubles during track season, but until daylight savings time, its too dark for them to run in the mornings before school starts, and by that point in the season I'm not overly concerned with increasing their mileage anymore.

I have seen hundreds of people with the same attitude as the above poster for my whole life.

While in HS we had morning practice M, W, F in XC. One season (in track) we had it EVERY morning, even had it the morning or meets. That was, not coincidentally, the season before we had three straight years of NO dual meet defeats, three conference titles and two Regional titles and a bunch of different people running sub-2:00, sub-4:30 and sub-10:00. We also had a 1:54 runner, 3 sub-4:20 and 5 sub-9:30.

Our team sucked at the beginning of the season (right about now -- the eve of March) and we had a time trial over 1600 and the winner was 5:07. I was a freshman and not on varsity yet.

The varsity coach (who was a grad student and a decent runner himself) declared that we would have AM practice every day in order to improve.

I was invited (since I was as fast as the rest of them) and a week went something like this:

M:

AM: 4 mi easy

PM: 5 mi med

T:

AM: 3 mi easy

PM: WU, 8 x 400, WD

W:

AM: 4 mi easy

PM: 5 mi med

Th:

AM: 3 mi easy

PM: Meet, some guys -- 800/1600, some 1600/3200 -- some guys would single -- emphasize even splits and improving 1 sec per 800 since last race.

this was before our state had the 3200mR.

F:

AM: 4 mi easy

PM: 5 mi med

S:

AM: 10 miles moderate with team

Su:

AM: 5 mi by yourself

It was about 60 mpw. Even though I was a freshman I ran wtih them every day. I had a solid base of 40-50 mpw over that winter, but still the twice a day easy running was the best training I ever did.

I improved from 10:59/5:06 at the very beginning of the track season to 10:20/4:50 at the end.

It works.

It makes you a better runner than running 35 mpw faster.

It also works better than intervals 4 days a week with one day off/one meet day and one easy day (I have seen that program many times).

Usher, if you wouldn't mind, could you leave your e-mail address or maybe send me an e-mail so I can ask a couple of questions. You always have a good grasp of high school running.

I graduated from Naperville North, consistently a top 10 team in IL. We ran morning practices twice a week durring cross. They were real easy 4-5 mile runs, and I think the pm run was usually a work out. We'd do weekly doubles durring the late winter and early spring, but by outdoor track season we stopped morning runs all together. Attendance to morning runs were manditory for the varsity 7 in xc, recomended for the next 5 (the state team alternates), and any one else could come if they really wanted to. Pretty much the same group of 12 were the ones at track morning practices. If you were sick, hurting or needed the sleep, you didnt have to come. The kids that probably are ok to be doing extra runs might not like getting up early, but dont think anything of a few more miles.

One summer I ran two days all summer. I was undefeated in my division and got hurt at midseason, almost costing me a medal at finals. It's fine to do them but no more then twice week.

I would agree with the nervous nellies that it can be hard on people. I had to walk to school (could not afford a bike I guess). It was a mile to school.

Laft for school at 6:00 AM, running by 6:30, sometimes we did weights after and tried to make them last just 20-30 minutes. Shower by 7:00 or 7:15. Eat breakfast at 7:30.

It was always cheerios and milk with water to drink out of the fountain. God my parents were hard on me. No wonder I was 5'9"/120.

I walked home (again a mile) after afternoon practice at about 5:00. Ate dinner, did the dishes, tried to do my homework, but usually ended up watching TV until 9:00 and skipping the homework I should have been doing and going to bed by 10:15.

I was walking such a fine line that if I went to bed at 10:30 or later I was toast the whole next day.

So, I would say that with all the distractions that kids have in 2008 (that I didn't) -- they have to check their MySpace page every 15 minutes -- that they will likely have a hard time living the distance runners lifestyle.

But who knows? The US has had an awful lot of sub-9:00/sub-4:10 runners the last 7 or 8 years so the youth must be doing something right.

When I read the profiles of the top HS'ers in The Harrier they all have pretty impressive training -- even in the summer. Not as impressive as kids in 1976, but a lot of males who are doing 70-100 mpw -- and they seem to understand why they need to do it also.

There are a lot of programs that turn out great teams on one workout a day, there is more than one way to skin a cat, but there are a lot of programs with morning runs as well.

Not as impresi

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I completely agree with usher. This was my experience with morning runs when I was in HS. The benefits of added mileage were severely outweighed by the costs of lost sleep. I was exhausted by half way through the season and could not even keep my eyes open to study at night.

If they need more mileage. Have them do longer warmups and cooldowns on interval/workout days. If some can handle it tack on 5-10 minutes to their medium distance runs.

I do this now, run 15-20 miles more a week than in hs and have a much stronger aerobic base.

You can always just get your sleep, do your morning run and then come to school late. School is secondary anyways.

I am a HS athlete. Right now for indoor the team all practices in the morning, 6AM, it's hard to get used to, but we pull it off. I am higher mileage than the rest of the team, so my coach has me run on my own after.

Once we hit outdoor, the team goes after school, I go both before and after. I don't meet with my coach he just tells me to continue with my miles(no point in him waking up to "see me off"). I figure I wake up at 5 I can get up to 15 miles in maybe even with time to nap...

Blaze

I'll add that we only do an intense workout once every three days with a bigger emphasis on getting maximum benefit from workouts and recovery. Do you think this hs an impact on whether or not you'd have kids do some morning runs?

I remember when I visited Haverford talking to coach Donnelly and being really surprised about how willing he was to let athletes do their own thing RE: the morning run. He said it was an option every day, and some guys would show up every day and do 4-6, some guys would show up every other day and go shoter, some guys would do some combo of lengths/frequencies, and some guys would never show up at all.

As far as morning runs went, he figured that for many guys the substantial rest they would be losing was more important than the training benefits they would be gaining; he said he even told some of his most successful runners never to come to morning practice after seeing them dragging ass after doing it a few times.

All this is a long way of saying I don't think it should ever be required at the high school level, and also that you have to check in with and monitor your athletes to make sure that they can handle the AM practice along with other training.

Builds character.

If I were coaching college, I think that would be my preference. I saw enough evidence during my experiment with AM runs where they definitely make a difference...if the runner is focused enough to manage their time properly.

I also think that if you make the commitment to AM running, it's a season-long commmitment. I don't think there's anything to be gained by doing AM runs until mid-season and then "singles" until championship time. If you are getting benefits from doing doubles, you need to keep doing doubles.

Secondly, I'm assuming that everyone is looking at a second daily run in addition to what you're already doing. I think we're all in agreement that it's better to do a single 6-mile training run than it is to do something like 4 miles in the AM and 4 miles in the PM, even though you'll be getting a little more overall mileage in.