German's coach: 4:00.29 off of no speed work (!)

How come no one has accused him of being dirty?

It just seems too good to be true.

I find it hard to believe that he did NO speed work this late into the season. Even if you were peaking for NON it seems you would still do some speedwork before state

the dual meets were his speedwork

"He went to the World XC this March, and he was 25th in the Junior race. So he knows where he stands. He knows there are ten other kids around the world his age who can do what he did at States."

That pragmatism... a little Bobby Kennedy in him.

Wow, I was doing faster than 30s in 200m. I bet I can kick German's ass!

how refreshing to read that interview. seems like a really dedicated and knowledgeable coach.

webb_fan. wrote:

the dual meets were his speedwork

Exactly. My son is a high school sophomore. He ran faster at one and two miles during the indoor season when he was doing only distance work because they have no track and the footing was too bad for interval work than he did during outdoors when they ran intervals whenever they had fewer than two meets a week. With all the racing high school kids do interval work is not at all necessary.

HRE wrote:

With all the racing high school kids do interval work is not at all necessary.

of course they do; just not 4 times a week like alot of lazy, uninformed high school coaches do. (2 interval workouts per week will work, if you know what you are doing)

ok, here is to all you who said he is all natural talent.

he is doing 12 workouts a week which probably means he is doing at least 75 and at most 90 miles a week! that is about double what i do and i am a 9:50 2 miler. id say that with a lot more miles we can all bring our times down and stop making excuses. or at least i can stop believing the excuse.

hard work wrote:

ok, here is to all you who said he is all natural talent.

he is doing 12 workouts a week which probably means he is doing at least 75 and at most 90 miles a week! that is about double what i do and i am a 9:50 2 miler. id say that with a lot more miles we can all bring our times down and stop making excuses. or at least i can stop believing the excuse.

I assume by workouts that means runs/workouts/races. I did 12-13 "workouts" per week in high school and rarely got over 55 miles per week. We only ran 2.5-3.5 in the mornings Monday-Friday and some of our easy afternoon runs were 5-7 miles. I really had to push it (in my mind) to get over 60 miles. I couldn't even believe that our rivals from texas and california and even our hometown were reportedly running 80+ miles. And yes we we had a good deal of success doing that. I'm not saying it's the only way, I'm just saying it can be done.

German seems like a real all around talent mentally and physically. I'm sure we're just getting past the tip of the iceberg at this point in terms of what he's capable of.

This isn't a big deal. All you need to do to run 4 minutes for the mile (assuming the natural ability is there) is get really really really aerobically fit, and relatively efficient at 60 second pace. It's not hard to get efficient at 60 second pace, tons of people can do 10 or 15 times a 200 at 30, that's all it takes. It's when people get caught up in "hard speed work" that you screw things up. Really, he just needs more of the same to improve at the mile, not add in the speed work, especially if as his coach says he's not a blazing fast guy like Webb or Ryun.

Why are you trying to down play a 4 minute high school mile? It is a pretty astounding feat.

If it was that easy you would have done it, and a lot of others as well.

Daniels' training incorporate strides 2x a week. Their importance shouldn't be neglected.

In my opinion lactate tolerance workouts are a totally waste of time and I don't think German will run any faster after doing the traditional 'speedwork'.

Aerobic stuff + strides are all you need to run fast in distance races.

What do people think about the 10 minutes cycle? Beneficial?

Hate to be the spoiler here, but when a kid starts running full time less than 2 years ago, stops playing soccer and gets down to 9:05 in less than 6 months, and runs 8:34 a couple of months later 2.5 hours after a 4:00 1600, I don't think the secret is in his training: this kid is one of those rare individuals who is talented beyond imagination and born to run.

The 10 minutes cycling each day is a great way to work on turnover. If he does it right, at 90 rpm's then he is getting the turnover without the stress of speed work.

But, the real secret is his genetic talent. This kid has IT.

I heard he had never played chess before but beat Garry Kasparov at his first attempt at the game!

Why aren't they making an attempt to get him under 4 minutes for the mile?

I know that might not be his primary event, but that would seem more important down the line as an accomplishment than anything he might do further this year in the two mile.

Bigger picture. He's much more sound at the 2mile than the mile. Plus, if he has been banged up in the past then they don't want to risk injury for vanity.