Morning Runs for High School athletes...

A thread bumped from 13 years ago talking about “MySpace.” 🤣

Danny Bandana wrote:I am bumping this to see if peoples thoughts have changed after 13 years. I personally don’t think kids need doubles to be successful in high school, and it might actually hurt their future progression a little.

I agree with this statement and don't think that high school kids need to do doubles. They need sleep and they need rest and recovery from workouts. I'm not even an advocate of running seven days a week and especially at the high school age. I'd rather have an undertrained high school athlete than an overtrained one.

Moderation wrote:

Danny Bandana wrote:I am bumping this to see if peoples thoughts have changed after 13 years. I personally don’t think kids need doubles to be successful in high school, and it might actually hurt their future progression a little.

I agree with this statement and don't think that high school kids need to do doubles. They need sleep and they need rest and recovery from workouts. I'm not even an advocate of running seven days a week and especially at the high school age. I'd rather have an undertrained high school athlete than an overtrained one.

very few kids are overtraining because of mileage. as people point out the sleep issues are the killer. school started at 8 and I was getting up at 645 to make it. Going to bed at 1030 gave me almost enough sleep. would have been tough to shift things 40-60 mins forna run.

now over the summer, I should have doubled. could have run 60-65 miles instead of 50. things like a 5/5 would have been much easier than a 7 mile run especially on the hot days.

I am happy to see many people with my line of thinking. In my times with serious athletes, I have contemplated morning runs, but never gone for them because I respect sleep too much. I do not expect that high school kids with running, academics, and social on their plates are getting to bed at a decent hour. Sleep as much as you can.

I have probably done 2 or 3 early morning workouts in 10 years. These were for key workouts that were to be done on a day with blistering heat later in the day. And always limited to only my most serious athletes.

The best team in our conference in HS had all the varsity kids and some of the jv kids run 2 miles on their own in the morning before school. Then they'd do the normal stuff at practice. They probably always had at leaat 10 kids running 60-70 mpw. Occasionally they'd have a kid do 70-80 because they either ran on Sundays or ran longer in the mornings.

The 2nd best team in the conference ran 50 mpw for boys and 40 mpw for girls. Rest of the teams in our conference ran 30 mpw with no weekend practices with usually 1-2 kids that ran 50-60 mpw by running more on their own.

The mileage definitely helped. The morning runs though, not sure.

As a parent and a teacher and a coach... I think sleep and nutrition trumps mileage. Here kids start school at 7:30. Most kids have 10-20 minute ride to school.. to eat a good breakfast , get a run in the AM and be ready for school and afternoon practice is tough. On top of this most distance runners work hard and excel academically so they are usually not able to be in bed super early. Summertime seems to be a good time for a few kids to do light doubles. and if an upperclassmen can ever get a semester where first period is free then maybe it could work . but again sleep trumps mileage for high schoolers.

It depends. you’re only running 4-5 miles in your afternoon practice then a AM run to boost mileage makes sense. But if your running 6-8 miles in the afternoon then I wouldn’t bother with it for high schoolers. In college though it should become a staple. Especially since I’m college your morning schedule is more flexible.

Would be interested to know others thoughts as well.

Personally I don’t think doubles are needed for the vast majority of kids unless they are a mileage monster and need to get over 60 miles a week in.

SamCellar wrote:

Personally I don’t think doubles are needed for the vast majority of kids unless they are a mileage monster and need to get over 60 miles a week in.

In my era, running 100 mpw was common and doubles were far preferable to a long run of 12-15 miles everyday.

But also… kids times are faster than they have ever been now.

Obviously there’s lots of factors, but I don’t think more is always better.

Danny Bandana wrote:

But also… kids times are faster than they have ever been now.

Obviously there’s lots of factors, but I don’t think more is always better.

US population is up like 50% since 1980. Number of all weathee tracks is way up. so is traveling to time travel meets. And so on.

100mpw is excessive for most kids. But 60-70mpw is better than 40mpw for pretty much everyone. 3 doubles makes 60-70mpw pretty tolerable. obviously the issue is always can you do the work and get rest.

Yeah I have 3 runners that are at the point they could probably benefit from them. They ran them last year with the previous coach, bur they said they were exhausted all day at school, I know they don’t get to sleep a good time.

Danny Bandana wrote:

But also… kids times are faster than they have ever been now.

Obviously there’s lots of factors, but I don’t think more is always better.

My point is more that there is a mpw amount where doubles are the more palatable approach. It does seem that HS kids are now running fast with 60 mpw which doesn't require doubles. I didn't switch to doubles until I got up to about 80 mpw.