I'm sorry to ask all for your patience. I'm just going to finish basic details of my very simplistic running training back in H.S. that ended up yielding some remarkable results at the time. I will come back to cover some other questions after I get the basics outlined.... but not sure how long I can last tonight.
Final notes on MILEAGE: My 3-mile morning runs would be for recovery purposes only. I would start out very easy (7:00?) and then pick up the tempo as I felt better. If I felt good enough... the 2nd mile would be about 6:30 and the last mile might be under 6:00. If I felt lousy I ran 7:00 the whole way. Main point was to get the body moving and flush out the lactic acid built up in the legs from the day before as well as oxygenate my body body and open up my lungs. I would never have been able to hit 60-80 mpw without morning runs. I would do them at 6:30 AM each morning. I got the idea for these from David Merrick ... who was the best runner in the country my soph year and ran for Lincolnway H.S. in upstate Illinois.
My afternoon runs would probably start out at 7:00 pace and then go down after a mile or so to where I was running 6:00-6:30 pace for most of it. If I felt really good then I would close last 2 miles in well under 6:00 pace....if not... then I tried to just maintain low to mid 6:00 pace.
Mileage is just part of the equation of successful training. It's called quantity... but quality is also important. That's when things got hard and uncomfortable and usually painful at the end.
SPEEDWORK: In X-C we did interval sessions that were usually 660's (1 lap around the grass field behind the schools), 880's (out at the park on rolling grass field/blacktop road or also an interval session that required us to go thru a steep ravine (up/down 20-30 feet drop) once on dirt path and once on road during same interval. The hill angle was steep on both times thru the ravine....on both surfaces and this workout was a real gut buster... right out of special forces....it involved both speed and power/strength as well as good hill running technique. We did this workout once every 10 days. I was ready to puke or crap in my pants at the end of this workouts. We also did some interval miles simply by breaking up our 3 mile course into 3 x 1 mile intervals... which became a good way to really get to learn how to race our particular course because you could pay better attention footing, running form, and tangent line when you were only racing 1 mile at a time. And, if you raced 24 times a season... each race became a speed work day... much harder than simply a tempo run.
My coach left me after the state meet to coach basketball so I was on my own to train. Had no teammates to run with me most of the time. When I decided to not do basketball my soph year and run instead.... I would craft my training plan in 1 study hall per week for the next week ahead. It really wasn't that hard.. I realized I needed over distance days and some form of "hard" speed work days.... Keep in mind that we have tough winter here in Illinois ... even in SW Illinois near St. Louis. Cold (10-40 degrees average), wind, sleet, sometimes ice, and sometimes snow. We had no indoor track. I did all my winter workouts outdoors...
My first form of speedwork on my own in the winter was fartlek. Usually warm up 1-2 miles then fartlek between telephone/power line poles for 4 miles.... sometimes just 1 pole surges but then I would mix them up with longer surges...to work on different distances and different paces... point was to never get completely recovered before starting back into a sprint again. I also learned to do this on our 18 hole golf course in town.....sprinting the fairway....then jogging from hole to the next tee.... then sprinting to the next hole... jogging to the next tee....and so on. The first 9 holes were short and hilly while the second 9 holes were long and flat/rolling. I would warm up and warm down a mile each fartlek session at the golf course.. Total distance of all fartlek workouts was 7-8 miles. My heart rate would get extremely high during this workout and it was every bit as effective as a formal interval session. The short recovery was mentally challenging and built mental/physical toughness.
My second form of speed work was simply interval 440's on the grass field behind the school. 3 corners of field had a baseball backstop and the last corner had a foul line pole. The ground was lumpy but usually mowed somewhat since they were baseball fields and playground area. It was flat. I would put a surveyor flag at start of interval quarter and another flag at the 440 mark. I would usually do 12 X 440's. The field was 660 so I would walk about 20 yards and then break into a slow jog and start my next interval sprint when I hit the start line. What I discovered by accident/dumb luck was that the most effective way to do intervals was to do negative splits... in that I got faster as the workout went on. Even if it was just a couple tenths of a second. I learned to get faster initially by just getting loose/warmed up... then by making biomechanical adjustments from feet all the way to my shoulders....to get another 2-4 seconds faster (this is how I developed my biomechanical efficiency) then I simply had no choice but to "gut it out" the last 3-4 interval quarters... and I always always ran the final interval all out like in a race. If it was snowy or muddy.... I ran these intervals on the service road around the school.... from one speed hump around the property (front and back of the school) to another speed hump... the distance was really irrelevant... the effort was the key and it was important to run faster each interval and finish off the last one in a complete state of exhaustion. I would warm up 2-3 miles before and warm down 2-3 miles after. Keep in mind that we did not yet have wristwatches with stopwatch function back then. There was no coach to hold a stop watch. I did all of this untimed and by effort only. If I felt like I was gonna crap in my pants during the last 2 intervals... then I knew I was doing it right and had gotten to the bottom of my tank. Crude but effective.
I also had another interval session that was done on a road hill near my farm. It was approx. 440 long but started off almost flat for first 110 but then each additional 110 started to climb.. until last 110 was pretty acute grade but not as steep as the ravine in the park. I would also do 12 of these...and would simply jog back down the 440 to the start line as my recovery.... before pivoting around and starting to sprint back up the road hill. The road was on both sides of this hill... so when the wind was out of one direction I went west to east... if it was the other direction I went east to west. One side was more of an acute hill than the other but both were gradual which was key. I would warm up and warm down 2.5 miles. Again, no stopwatch so effort based only..... no times. Goal was same physiological response... I wanted to feel like my guts were gonna drop out the bottom of my shorts at the end of the workout for the last two intervals. I am sure this phenomena was simply a reaction of my central nervous system to extreme stress...but that' what it felt like. As long as I got to that feeling I knew that the workout had been effective. Did I mention the burning lungs and quivering quads?
During the winter my final 2 years of H.S. I developed a 3 day cycle of training. I would do 3 miles every morning. Day #1 afternoon was 7-8 mile fartlek on road or golf course... Day #2 was 8 mile run... Day #3 was 12 X 440 speed work... either on grass field or on blacktop road hill. I would do this cycle twice... then on the 7th day I would do a 10 mile run on a hilly rural road loop... usually on a Sunday. Then Monday... I would start the cycle week all over again. Unsupervised and unmonitored....and in whatever winter weather we had that week.... and I did develop frost burn/bite on my face sometimes as a result. I'm sure that Alberto Salazar had Galen Rupp on a much more sophisticated running program than this in high school. ;-)
Also, I did all this over distance training in a pair of leather Tiger Cortez although I eventually purchased a pair of lighter/thinner Tiger model (road runner model?) that had a suede upper and was more flexible than the thick sole of the Cortez. I would use those shoes for the road fartlek or hill intervals. No performance fabrics back then... just a t-shirt/short under a hooded sweatshirt and sweat pants..... If it was really cold I would wear either another singlet under the t-shirt or a long sleeve shirt under the t-shirt. Knit cap and gloves, of course. I eventually learned to put Vaseline on my face to protect it during the severe weather.... and to watch out for icy patches.
You may snort at this training but it got me down to 9:05/4:24 double my soph year, 8:54/4:13 double my junior year, and 8:45.6/4:08 one afternoon double my senior year.... I would do 3 indoor meets each winter... 2 (Feb/March) at an AAU open meet at the indoor track at U. of Illinois and final all HS meet indoors at Eastern Illinois U. in March. I would also do 1-2 road races each winter but there weren't many around back then.
When my coach returned to me in late March... we would basically do similar pattern of training but hard days were usually 440's, 660's, and 880's on the grass field behind the school. That and doubling 1-mile/2-mile or 1-mile/880/mile relay every meet. Again, my trademark secret was trying to keep moving/jogging during most of my rest/recover between intervals... and negative splits.. getting faster as the work out went on... and as I got more tired. Always running the last interval like it was the last lap of a contested race against my best rival... and sometimes I would try to have fun with my coach and predict exactly what I would hit for the last interval. Sick fun, huh? I would keep racing outdoors until my season ended... which wasn't until late July for both my last two years of H.S. as I made U.S. Junior Track Teams to compete internationally each of those summers. Then I took a short break of a week or two.... before starting cross country usually in first week of August.