Not the best time, but looks like this kid could make a run for it at the end of his high school career
Not the best time, but looks like this kid could make a run for it at the end of his high school career
Whatever.
i ran that fast in 7th grade and never amounted to much. it's really not a fast time, brutal as that sounds.
OMG! OMG! He's going to be a world record holder, he's going to be an Olympian, he's going to win a gold medal!!
More likely, he'll burn out in 2 years and never run a race again. Fast times in junior high and even high school mean absolutely NOTHING.
He beat Mary Cain's 7th grade PR by a second!
He'll be fine as long as he doesn't do too much mileage too early.
A kid from bama ran 4:26 for 1600 in 8th grade a few years ago...
Have him run 60 mpw next year, should break 4:10 freshman year.
Solid time, but it isn't exactly unheard of. I've coached middle school for 15 years and I've had 10 or so kids under 5 by the time they left 8th grade. 3 of those ran DI and one of them is a 3:58 guy right now. The rest were middle of the packers by the time they were juniors and seniors.
Keep the mileage low and have fun with it for as long as possible!
Military salut wrote:
Not the best time, but looks like this kid could make a run for it at the end of his high school career
It's a decent time for a 7th grader, but other than that, there is NO reason to be impressed at all. There's such a range of maturity at that age. He could be one of the older kids in the grade, ultimately being just a few months younger than SOME 9th graders, and a freshman running 4:59 is nothing.
Watching my kids go through middle school running, I've seen it all...super slow kid who turns into a high school monster to the super fast kid in middle school (a boy even) who now struggles to run a 5,000 under 19 minutes.
Being fast in middle school compared to the others just means nothing.
That's nothing, I know a 6th grader who runs 7 min pace for his easy runs.
does he look relaxed when he does it?
Rogaine wrote:
That's nothing, I know a 6th grader who runs 7 min pace for his easy runs.
Thanks for responding. I don't want to burn him out, as so many have done before. What workouts would be good to get him to 4:10?
Happens a lot. Physically mature kid with a little training. I witnessed two 8th graders run sub 4:40 a few years in the same race. Both ran in college on D-1 schlarships and had solid HS careers (although neither was a state champion).