i was a real big fan of allen webb through his high school years.. and ive been thinkin latley about kids these days running sub 4:00 minute miles.. as we all know the europeans didnt think much of allen performing his feat.. it seems to me that our standards for high school runners is pretty low...... we need to start issuing that it can be done... a lot of the problems start with coach.. sure there are several good coaches out there but there are too many that dont know what the hell they are doing... many of them shy away from high mileage training... the best runners in high school did high mileage training.ex.(jim ryun,and dathan)... we as a society are scared that high mileage training will hamper are athletes and cause them to "burn out".. if you go about the training right and take caution when it is needed there isnt anything to worry about.. just look at allen webb... during high school his pr for mileage was only 65 miles... that is why he didnt have that much success in college.. he wasnt ready to step up.. we need to start preparing our young runners right now so one day we can have more of them can be considered world class.........
high school high mileage training
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Right on man...My coach highly encourages high mileage training and it pays off. Allthough my running buddies and I have much less natural talent than other guys in our section, we still leave them behind. What high schoolers get burned out by is that they are not prepared to make the move up to college level running, not high mileage.
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Saying Webb didn't have success in college really isn't fair or accurate. He won the Big 10 CC championships, turned in some awesome CC times and then after injury still managed to finish 4th in the NCAA 1500 finals earning All-American status just as he did in Cross Country. Wish I could have been as non-successful as that.
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You can't trash Webb for trying to find the training
system that works for him. You might trash him for failing
to admit that everyone gets injured, and that you cannot
dominate every workout. At some point you have to back off. -
Success is not based on mileage, but on what is best for your body. Don't get trapped by more is better.
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It won't keep working for him for very much longer.
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Come on. It is common sence. Most everybody has the speed to win almost every distance from 800 meters on up. But they don't have the endurance to keep that pace up for very long. So what do they need, more speed? Of course not; they need more endurance. How do you get more endurance? Do more intervals? Of course not. You want to do better in the races 800 on up; do more endurance. Longer runs, more mileage. I am not talking LSD training though.
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People love to forget how great a cross season Webb had because 1. running a 3:53 in high school raises the expectation bar a little, 2. he later got hurt, and 3. he apparently did a fair number of things to alienate the other members of the Michigan program, although I should not say too much as I am not privy to those goings-on.
I don't think it's truly fair to call him a "low mileage" runner given that his main track event is the 1500/mile. He was doing a bit more as a prep than some other national-class U.S. middle-distance guys supposedly did at the height of their careers (Padilla and Masback being oft-touted examples). If Webb truly injury-prone this might have revealed itself when he was still at SLHS - Goucher was already getting hurt left and right before he got the UC. -
From what I've read and seen, Webb is a very strong athlete. Spending many years in competetive age-group swimming will do that. My question does not regard muscular strength so much as it does aerobic background, a ton of which Webb garnered as a youngster in that swimming environment.
If you take a kid who has a shitload of aerobic ability, as he does, and put him on some fast, anaerobic track work, he will put out some seriously good times. However, those good times will be limited because you're performing off of work that was done years ago. If no further aerobic development takes place, all the anaerobic work in the world won't get you anywhere. That's my feeling with Webb. Rackzo's training produced an 18 year old 3:53 miler because of Webb being Webb, meaning that if you had a kid with similar speed (47-48sec 400m) that they would not perform nearly as well as Webb did at the 800m/1500m distances.
South Lakes' Richard Smith is an example of that. My guess is he's a 47 or 48 second quarter miler. I'm farily certain his season's best for the 800 was 1:49, about two seconds behind Webb's senior best, and I haven't seen any results for him at 1500m/1600m/mile.
Webb had a lot in the bank, so when Rackzo's training went to make withdrawls, there were some big goddamn withdrawls, a 3:53 mile for one of them; but if you look at what he preaches, his training ideology doesn't seem to have any deposits in mind. -
Does Krumm put in so many miles?
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noitall wrote:
Come on. It is common sence. Most everybody has the speed to win almost every distance from 800 meters on up. But they don't have the endurance to keep that pace up for very long. So what do they need, more speed? Of course not; they need more endurance. How do you get more endurance? Do more intervals? Of course not. You want to do better in the races 800 on up; do more endurance. Longer runs, more mileage. I am not talking LSD training though.
Try telling this to Krummenacker. If you don't get what I'm referring to, read the articles and interviews that have come out lately, where he talks about how his training changed when he started working with de Oliveira.
