Running a lot of mileage in High School. Long-term Development?

BUMP/

dan hutty wrote:

It seems like many of the good high-schoolers run off of low mileage then increase it during college.

Really? Who?

After a heavier mileage plan was implemented for my high school cross country team, almost everyone's times improved a lot. Except for my own, f my life.

Hardloper wrote:

dan hutty wrote:

It seems like many of the good high-schoolers run off of low mileage then increase it during college.

Really? Who?

No "good" high schoolers do low milage. lowest i can think of is haney, who does about 60 mpw. the arcadia and cba teams all do over 80mpw. apparently estevan de la rosa does over 100 mpw.

The truth of the matter is if you're talented train "smart" and be conservative. If you're not talented, just push the envelope and get up to 90-100 mpw by junior or senior year. Get to 60-70 mpw for a few months in singles then just add doubles Mon-Sat and boom 100 mpw. Like do 10 in the morning and 5 in the PM and then a 15 miler on Sunday and thats 105 mpw. If you do high mileage and stay healthy (big if) you should see big breakthroughs, but its not for a couple days or weeks or even months, but years of hard work that produces results.

And remember with mileage, everyone has a sweet spot. For Ritz its 100-110 mpw. He's been there since HS. At 120 he gets injured and at 90 he runs poorly in races/workouts. Everyone has their sweet spot, it just takes a few years of training and maturation to be able to find your sweet post. Lagat's is 60 mpw in singles, same for Nick Willis. For Lawi Lalang and Stephen Sambu is 70-80 mpw. For Mo Farah its 120-130 mpw, for Galen Rupp its 110-120 mpw, for Jordan Hasay its 110 mpw.

If you don't take a chance and ignore the doubters, you'll never know if you could have been great. Take a chance, do the mileage. Reap the rewards. And good luck!

NotAustin18 wrote:The truth of the matter is if you're talented train "smart" and be conservative.

This.

If you're talented enough, be conservative with your training and probably end up only running "moderate" mileage by the time you're a junior/senior. It'll likely keep you healthier, and give you more room to improve by greater strides as you bump up the mileage.

If you're not talented enough to get looks from colleges as a junior/senior off a smart/conservative training plan, you'll probably want to bump up the mileage to try and garner some more interest if you intend to run beyond HS.

Our school record holder who ran 4:08 ran about 35-45 miles per week. Any more than that and injuries started creeping in. As a program we probably average 40-50 off 6 days a week (I encourage a day off due to very high academic demands the need a day to be a kid). Some of the kids get up to 60-70. So I had to adapt the training and make adjustments drop adding more quality.

Lower mileage is not the enemy, remember this is only 4-ish minute race and quality should not be neglected. But if you can handle the mileage do it, mileage increases aerobic capacity, strength and makes the mile feel like a short fast race, which it is.

What about the Dartmouth guy on the front page

Gerry Lindgren and Jim Ryun did high mileage in highschool. It's great if you want to start sucking in your early 20s.

NotAustin18 wrote:

And remember with mileage, everyone has a sweet spot. For Ritz its 100-110 mpw. He's been there since HS.s/workouts. Everyone has their sweet spot, it just takes

Ritz never ran more than 90 in HS, and even that only once or twice his senior year.

SMJO wrote:

Gerry Lindgren and Jim Ryun did high mileage in highschool. It's great if you want to start sucking in your early 20s.

It's better than sucking in high school AND in your 20's which is the fate of most low mileage folks.

whoa nelly wrote:

NotAustin18 wrote:

And remember with mileage, everyone has a sweet spot. For Ritz its 100-110 mpw. He's been there since HS.s/workouts. Everyone has their sweet spot, it just takes

Ritz never ran more than 90 in HS, and even that only once or twice his senior year.

No, NotAustin18 is correct. Read Ritz's own blog.

Low mileage folks can become high mileage folks through their 20s and beyond. That's the better recipe for 95% of the running population.

de Castella ran 8:48 for 2 miles in HS training 50 mpw.

High mileage was commonplace in the 1970's. It was typical for every high school coach to recommend a 1000 miles over the summer for all cross runners after their freshman year. In three months do the math. Its high mileage.

Not surprising that distance school distance running was at its best the years 1974 -1978 in this country. And the all time peak for US distance running was in 1982 until the last 8 years which has greatly surpassed that. But there was about a 20 year period of slow decline which really hit bottom in 1996 when 28:10 10,000 runners were Olympians.

The observation was the majority of the best school distance runners didn't go on to become great college runners and beyond.

Couple that with the success of Sebastian Coe in the 1980's and Peter Coe his coach who popularized quality as the key and dismissed slow overdistance training as having no benefit.

And also the success of a freak talent like Bob Kennedy who reportedly never ran over 40 miles a week in high school and 60 miles a week in college. When you are the best everybody else figures you have it figured out and use your training as the example.

The Coe and Kennedy examples dually drove running in this country into the dark period of the 1990's. It was assumed that high school runners running over 60 miles a week would burn out.

A lot of credit should go to that high school coach of Dathan Ritzenhien who did moderate high mileage in high school and had success. In those days he probably got a lot of criticism for that.

The key is gradual development. If you have a real talent you want to leave some room for improvement and mileage is not the only answer but 70-80 miles a week for a high school senior that built up to easily handle that is better than keeping at 50 miles a week or the same running 100 miles a week at a young age.

There are now 20-25 US high school runners running under 9:00 now. Not all have the talent to keep improving to the top national class level but that movement brought back the 8:40 two miles and 4:01 miles that disappeared at the high school level for about 15 years.

This is spot on.

why thank you, good to see others agree

high milage as a teen worked for me, 2:04 betches!!! silly mericans, worried about "burnout"...haha! all in your head. we playin chess while y'all still playin checkerzzz!!!

NotAustin18 wrote:

For Lawi Lalang and Stephen Sambu is 70-80 mpw.

Lalang was injured, took three weeks off, doing nothing, not even cross training. I'm with you on the mileage thing but let's not underestimate talent.