Progress stories...from before high school to high school and beyond

Well, throughout Elementary School I'd run 1.5-2 miles with my Dad 3-4 times a week. I'm not sure what pace we were at and I don't honestly think I can make an accurate guess. However, in 5th Grade I ran on my school's track team (We were K-12 and the "Middle School" included Grades 5-8) and managed a 5:31 on the mile. That same year I ran 23:34 in a 5K, however I was slowed down at the start because I was way in the back of the pack. I think I may have run 22:50s had this not occurred. I was blown away. Then in 6th grade I had to take the soccer season off due to injury, ended up out of shape and topped out the track season around 6:04. Then I moved. I didn't participate in school sports at my new school. However, in the mile during PE in 7th grade I ran 7:16 (completely ill-equipped; no warm-up, stretch or proper shoes) and in 8th grade I ran 6:08.

Entering High School a neighbor of mine got me interested in Cross Country. I entered the season with zero base built and quite out of shape. I began at a 26:52 for my first 5K. Shameful. I ended my season at 20:36 for the 5K. I swam in the Winter and during spring track I ran 5:12 in the mile. An all time best.

Sophomore XC, my 5K dropped down to 18:59. During Winter I ran Indoor Track and swam. My mile time dropped to 4:59 before I got injured. I spent most of Outdoor Track recovering and working back into shape. Therefore, I raced only once and ran like 5:14ish.

I'm now currently in the Pre-Season of my Junior Year XC and I'm looking to break 17:30 in the 5K. I'm unsure of what my goals are for track at the moment.

If I could recommend anything, it's that they enjoy what they're doing. If they want to run more, let them run more. Make sure parents aren't pushing them too hard or forcing them to do too much. Once it's not fun, they'll stop performing well.

Again, it's tough to say how well they'll do in the future. Some kids may hit huge growth spurts and become very fast, others may peak out early and fade away. Other kids may have the will to win and will work their butts of to be the best. For now, parents should relax and let their kids have fun.

I coached the junior olympic team for our local track club for a couple of years. We had a really good group of 10-11 year olds one year.

They will be freshmen-sophomores in college this fall.

When they were 10 and 11, all of the top 5 could break 20 for 5K (most, just barely). Three of them were low 16 guys in high school, even though one of them went to a non-traditional running school where he had little coaching/training.

All three are running at D2s now, the others in the top 5 quit running in high school along the way.

They trained little for the junior olympic season. We met twice a week for five weeks. And they had workouts on their own supervised by parents. I couldn't promise those even were completed.

4:50 mile in grade 8. I played soccer and was pretty good.

4:18 mile in HS.

4:14 mile in College. Didn't really care about running at this point.

I do cross fit now and for the first time in my life feel like a man. I'm 23.

I ran cross country as an 8th grader but i was an absolute joke. A workout came along near the end of the year and it was 400s (with almost complete rest though, very low stress) and usually i was absolutely terrible but in this workout i beat everyone, running my fastest in 67. It was in trainers but still as fast as i could go at the time. 8th grade track season came around and i ran the 4x400 and 400. I started of at around 60-62. and I lost my first race. Before the last meet my time had gotten down to just barely above sixty, maybe 60.5. The last meet I ended up having a perfect day and ran 55 seconds, destroying everyone and beating kids who i had never beaten before, and i loved it. 9th grade cross country season came and i wasn't good but i was alright. In track season i ran my first 400 in 56.5 in windy conditions and eventually dropped it down to 51.6 with no sprint training. One thing that changed from when i was younger was that i started to feel almost entitled to getting first place. I started to expect to win and that made me much harder to beat. I have also ran 2:06 in the 800m but i just started doing that this track season.

Flagpole wrote:

This year we've got a couple girls running the 800 in 2:50 and one girl running the 400 in 70 seconds. It's always those parents who ask me what may come down the road.

It is not surprising that those numbers are the ones you saw in the good kids.

After years of coaching kids that age,those numbers came up so often that they are almost default numbers for good, moderately training 6th and 7th grade girls. And by moderately trained, that may mean things like soccer (for the quarter miler) or swimming or running occasionally with parents.

The 70 is very good. My guess is that she does other sports and is one of the best on those teams also.

Our track season ran 9 - 10 weeks, so we always found some kids who could hit those times with that amount of training. The average kid that age with some sports fitness (who were interested in running "long" distance) would run between 2:50- 2:55. The good girls could run about 2:50. The very good kids (or those who trained outside the season) could run faster than that.

Since 2:50 can be achieved without a load of outside training, there's not much way to tell where someone ends up when they start training.

Here's the progression of the last 4 girls we had who ran under 2:30 in 8th grade:

#1) 2:46 (5th), 2:41 (6th), 2:35 (7th), 2:29 (8th), 2:19 (9th)

#2) 2:39 (5th), 2:33 (6th), 2:24 (8th), 2:10 split (9th)

#3) 1:11 400 (5th), 2:33 (6th), 2:32 (7th), 2:28 (8th), 2:26 (9th)

#4) 2:57 (5th), 2:48 (6th),2:33 (7th), 2:29 (8th)

Thanks for this info.You are right...the girl who ran the 70 second 400 will be a 7th grader in the fall, and she got most of her fitness from soccer where she is a standout player. I've seen her run 2:53 for the 800 too, so that's decent for just being out of 6th grade. As is the case with girls though, who knows what maturity will do to her.After watching my daughter run middle school track for 2 years (the 800 and 1600), I would say that sub 2:30 is where the stars are.

Other end of the spectrum here. I started in the dark ages -- no one knew about running much so my first experience was high school cross country and then track. Track was tough because it was a big high school (3100) in southern California and they had just added the two mile for varsity by the 1320 was the longest race below varsity and only three guys could run the mile or two mile in dual meets.

Thus, I mainly ran XC, and at a mediocre, slowly improving level that got me to 7th man on the JV team until the last couple of races where I finished 5th in the league JV race (beating 95% of the runners that had beaten me during the season). In the spring my only 'race' was a 600y fitness test in 1:19; much better than anything I ever ran in track. One issue is that I grew from 4'11" to almost 5'11" in high school. You will find the variations in growth spurts have different effects on different runners, I think.

I ran sporadically in college and biked some (especially for transportation). I started running regularly my second year of grad school and ran with a DIII XC team at the school so I got their workouts and quickly ran ~2:50, then 2:40 and finally 2:35 for marathons. Then hurt my plantar fascia, could not run enough to match (much less improve) PRs, so I raced on the bike for a few years, doing better in my niche (lots of climbing).

I ran track from kindergarten through 3rd grade, quit to play soccer for a couple years, then resumed from 7th grade through high school/college. Before high school, track practice pretty much consisted of practicing long jump, discus and doing 100 meter sprints. I can remember exactly 1 distance-oriented workout that we did during those years.

Estimated progression (I can't remember all my exact PRs):

800: 2:44 (grade 8), 2:42 (grade 10), 2:21 (grade 11), 2:18 (grade 12)

1600: 6:53 (grade 3), 6:48 (grade 7), 6:44 (grade 8), 5:50 (grade 9), 5:55 (grade 10), 5:12 (grade 11), 5:11 (grade 12), 4:58 (college sophomore)

I didn't start running distance until 8th grade. I'm not sure what my PR was for CC but I think it was in the high 12s - low 13s for 2 miles. I ran 63 and 2:27 400/800 in 8th grade track and ran the following times for 400/800/1600/3200/3 mile XC in high school:

9th: 60/2:17/5:11/11:39(only time)/17:53

10th: 58/2:08/4:50/11:08/18:20

11th: 56/2:06/4:47/10:50/16:50

12th: 57/2:08/4:40/10:34/16:30

chicka wowow wrote:

Estimated progression (I can't remember all my exact PRs):

800: 2:44 (grade 8), 2:42 (grade 10), 2:21 (grade 11), 2:18 (grade 12)

1600: 6:53 (grade 3), 6:48 (grade 7), 6:44 (grade 8), 5:50 (grade 9), 5:55 (grade 10), 5:12 (grade 11), 5:11 (grade 12), 4:58 (college sophomore)

Why do you think you stagnated between Freshman and Sophomore year, but then had a huge breakthrough Junior year? Injuries?

Progression in middle/high school:

800: 2:27 (6th), 2:17 (7th), 2:17 (8th), 2:07 (9th) 2:01 (10th), 1:57 (11th), 1:57 (12th)

1500: 5:10 (6th), 4:45 (7th), 4:36 (8th), 4:10 (9th) 4:10 (10th), 4:10 (11th), 4:02 (12th)

3000: 9:55 (8th), 9:14 (9th), 8:55 (10th), 9:19 (11th), 8:53 (12th)

The drop off in progression the last few years of HS was due to injury. I don't think that I was overtrained or burned out, just had some bad luck.

Ended up having a decent college career, nothing to write home about. Ran 1:53, 3:54 when I wasn't injured.

I know you aren't asking for this advice..but I'm pretty passionate about it so I'm going to write it down anyway.

My advice from watching youth athletics first hand from 6th grade on is DON'T OVERTRAIN MIDDLE SCHOOLERS...or even train them much at all.

The majority of the kids who ran faster than me in middle school were burned out by the second year of high school, and then either quit or got slower. These were the kids who were doing structured, five day a week training from 6th - 8th grade.

What runners on my school team did was run around the neighborhood for a "long run" on mondday, run fast laps around the soccer field the next day, then have an off day on wednesday, meet on thursday, off day, meet saturday, off day.

Meets should be fun! Would do the 4x100, mile, long jump, high jump, 4x400, etc.

Kids have all the time in the world to be championship athletes when they are older. Let them just run around and have fun during middle school. They can compete pretty well off that anyway.

I always wanted to run 19:08 for 4 miles, thus, running twice as fast as I did in 8th grade, but, I never got there.

8th grade (12 years old): 2 miles: 19:08

12th grade (16 years old): 3 miles: 16:05

16th grade (20 years old): 5 miles: 27:00

Later (24 years old): 5k: 15:12

i also have helped with and had my kids involved with a youth program and i always stress that running can be like the stock market: past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

my progression is an example:

9th grade (this was still middle school for me in los angeles): running a mile-1600/day for a few months, i managed a 6:15 mile.

10th grade (first year of real running, but no training in the off seasons): 5:45 during x-c; 4:57 during track--probably couldn't break 70 in a 400.

11th grade (still no training during off seasons, but probably running around 40 miles/week): 4:30--maybe ran 60 for a 400.

12th grade (same as 11th grade training): 4:15--late bloomer with puberty, ran 53 for 400.

college: 3:47 1500 as a redshirt freshman; 3:42 as a 5th year senior.

post-collegiate: 3:37 1500/3:55 mile.

there are tons of 8th graders (male and female) now who are crushing my 10th grade times. my 9 year old daughter is crushing my 9th grade times. does that mean they'll be sub-4 milers eventually? the odds are against most of them. there is nothing to be gained from trying to extrapolate future capabilities from present performances at young ages (you could argue ANY age!); while you obviously want to use each year to steadily build experience, parents and coaches can best serve the kid by taking each year in its own right. with girls obviously developing earlier, what they do as 12 year olds can set unrealistically high expectations for their h.s. career; for boys it can be the opposite, where you may pigeonhole a kid as being slow early on and set unrealistically low expectations for their h.s. career.

hope this helps...