Progression of miles run thru high school

Any thoughts or experience with this progression

What is her 400m PR?

Was it 20 miles per week for summer, XC, indoor and outdoor track for 6th, 7th and 8th grade or 15 to 20 miles per week for XC and outdoor track during 8th grade, 10 to 15 during 7th and 5 to 10 during 6th?

If it was the first, doing 25 mpw on 6 days will change little and most changes will be due to maturity. If it was the second and she is now headed for 40 mpw by the end of Sept, she could take 30 seconds off her mile...

Thanks. She didn't run an open 400 meters this year, but I think based off of workouts that she could run 76 or 77 seconds currently. As far as the mileage questions, it was the later. Going into 6th grade she probably ran 5 to 8 miles a week. Into 7th grade, 8 to 12 miles a week, and last Summer 15 to 20 miles a week. She probably did 10 to 20% less mileage during the winter and spring track season. Any toughts? Thanks.

I'll let you know what I recommend. This would be for a varsity runner or someone who shows promise. The type of kid who will be one of the better runners on the team when he/she graduates.

Middle school: Not much in the summer. Just be running every day for a couple of weeks before practice starts.

9th grade: Build up to a peak of 30 miles a week for 3 weeks before practice starts.

10th grade: Same thing, but shoot for 40.

11th grade: Same thing, but shoot for 50.

12th grade: Same thing, but shoot for 60.

That is for a strong runner. A "typical" high schooler should just try to run 5 miles a day, 6 days a week, for as many weeks as possible before practice starts.

Baby all injuries like crazy over the summer. Don't worry a bit about speed, maybe one tempo run a week to keep you from going insane.

Assuming good coaching at your HS...I would expect around 20:15 for 5k by the end of XC this fall, around 5.35 for the mile indoors, and then around 5:20 for the mile outdoors.

Thanks for all your replies. I have just one question. Do you count the warmup and cooldown in the total mileage. I.E the girls usually do a mile warmup and a mile of ins and outs as their cooldown. So is a 5 mile day a 3 mile run plus the warmup and cooldown?

GVW wrote:

Just curious what everyone's experience is with mileage build up from Middle School thru High School for the typical female runner. My daughter will be entering high school in the fall, and has run thru Middle School. She probably averaged between 15 and 20 miles a week on a 4 day schedule. She will go to a 6 day a week schedule this Summer. For what it's worth, her pr's are 2:50 in the 800 and 6:10 for the mile. What can she expect with the bump up in training?

That's more than my daughter ran in middle school...seriously, they ran 2 miles a day and that was it.

Hopefully the HS coach has a plan for the runners. At the HS my kids go to, freshmen run 5 days a week together in the summer (optional of course until August) in the evenings and are suggested to run by themselves on Sat. also. They get to pick the group they want to run in on a given day, and those range anywhere from 4 miles a day to 8 miles with most runners doing 6.5 miles a day. Some of the Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors will throw in a 10 miler a couple times a week. ALSO, the Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors run 3-5 miles in the morning too.

Training definitely helps big time, but for SOME runners it takes a while to bear fruit.

In middle school, my daughter was only a 6:41 1600 runner. Increased training and being a year older, she managed a 6:16 as a freshman. As a sophomore she busted through to a 5:23, and then she has continued to improve from there.

In middle school there was a girl my daughter ran against who got down to 5:35 for 1600. She graduated this past year and had a high school PR of 5:28. She was from a different school, so I don't know what her training was, but she obviously didn't improve that much. But, all kids are different, even under the same training programs. Two girls who destroyed my daughter in middle school cross country (same team) can't come within 2 minutes of her now for 5,000 meters, and they all do the same training and did the same training.

The biggest thing I've seen with new high school runners is that they don't manage injury potential very well. Some of the freshmen boys from last year didn't do enough summer training and then jumped in on Aug. 1 as if they had been and ended up injured...one missed almost the entire season, and he is a talented one. Manage any recurring pain, go see a sports med doctor if problems persist so that perhaps she gets orthodics (my daughter had an injury as a sophomore in CC and was in a boot for half the season and now trains with orthodics...has been a big help).

My main piece of advice is to have your daughter build up the training slowly. Add a mile to the long run each week for 3 weeks and then step back and then start to add again (but go no more than an 8 mile long run as a freshman) and begin then to add to the other days too.

Up to this point she has pretty consistently running around 4 days a week ( occasionally 3 days depending on her schedule). Starting in 2 weeks they will run Captain's practices 6 days a week thru the end of August (start of school). Does it make sense for her to go right to 6 days, or do I have her run 5 days the first few weeks, then in August add the 6th day?

GVW wrote:

Just curious what everyone's experience is with mileage build up from Middle School thru High School for the typical female runner. My daughter will be entering high school in the fall, and has run thru Middle School. She probably averaged between 15 and 20 miles a week on a 4 day schedule. She will go to a 6 day a week schedule this Summer. For what it's worth, her pr's are 2:50 in the 800 and 6:10 for the mile. What can she expect with the bump up in training?

Wow that's great! Most people don't start running until high school, having that early start will do wonders.

I say don't put an expectation on it. Kids improve a lot from middle school to high school. Some even drop like 40 seconds on their 1500/mile times 8th to 9th grade.

She'll do fine, don't worry about it.

Thanks for your replies. Anyone else have any thoughts or experience with daughters going from Middle School to High School running programs?

We go totally by the individual.

Someone like your daughter would probably start off 3-4 days per week and increase a day per week each week until up to 5 days for the summer (I think weekends off are fine for younger runners.)

Then we begin to bump up the daily runs by .5 mile every 2 weeks. So a moderately trained athlete might come in at 3 miles 3 days per week and then bump up to 5 days for a couple of weeks then end up moving to 5 days of 3.5 miles then 5 days of 4 miles, etc.

We get almost all freshmen up to 5 miles per daily run in an 8-12 week period.

We add long runs once their typical daily run is over 3 miles.

We'll have Monday be long run day and we'll start at 30 minutes and add 5 minutes weekly. They get to about 60 minutes and we just hold it.

Sophomores and everyone else build to about 90 minutes.

We've had freshmen run up to 90, but they had more extensive backgrounds and it was done over several months.

The key is to avoid too many abrupt changes at once.

Then again, I could be totally wrong on all of this....but the general pattern in our program is that the majority of girls improve a lot.