Here's a question we were debating on my team. Assume a high school miler in good baseline shape, experienced, who is coming off a winter of just doing base miles but no workouts, intervals, tempo runs etc. He runs a mile at the start of the season, then starts the spring track season. Assuming no injuries and a good coach, how much could he improve by seasons end, after training? Let's assume his pre-training race was 4:20. Can he go 4:10? 4:05?
4:10? Maybe. 4:05? Unlikely. Looking at high schoolers I know that ran 4:20 or faster at the very beginning of the season, most of them have hovered around mid 4:10's, fastest one I know still being a 4:14. In order to get to 4:05, you'd have to start at like 4:10 or faster without any serious speedwork.
My junior year of high school I started out at 4:35 and got down to 4:24. I think I could have run even faster than that as that race went out in 2:16 and I closed in 2:08. I think it's possible to drop 10 or 15 seconds in a season.
I went from a 10 minute mile down to a 7, so you can take about 3 minutes off easy
Given that base, it is hard to believe the kid has a good coach.Even without that problem, this is one of those questions that is unanswerable. Some kids will get 10s faster. Some will get 10s slower (they don't respond well to the training).
hs distance runner wrote:
Here's a question we were debating on my team. Assume a high school miler in good baseline shape, experienced, who is coming off a winter of just doing base miles but no workouts, intervals, tempo runs etc. He runs a mile at the start of the season, then starts the spring track season. Assuming no injuries and a good coach, how much could he improve by seasons end, after training? Let's assume his pre-training race was 4:20. Can he go 4:10? 4:05?
Dropping 10/11 seconds from 4:35 to 4:24 vs. dropping 10 seconds from 4:20 to 4:10 or even 15 seconds to 4:05 are completely different stories. The faster you get, the much harder it is to improve. Not saying 4:24 isn't fast, but obviously once you reach faster times, you need more work to drop the times. I'm not saying it's IMPOSSIBLE, but you can't have the kind of workouts that the OP said and expect to drop 15 seconds off an already fast time.