Going long term for high school runners

So speed reserve is irrelevant for a 3km runner, is it?

I'll leave it to you guys. The best thing long term for a 16yo distance runner is hit the mileage. America's answer to everything. Well, maybe I should say Let's Run's answer to everything.

The example you just used is basically saying that I should work on endurance now... And then when I'm 25 start to hammer the speed

My tongue was very firmly planted in my cheek when I wrote that.

IMO long term, the most important thing you can do now is improve your speed. You also work on your endurance, but that part's comparatively easy. You don't neglect your endurance. But anyone can add endurance training later. Few can add speed later.

I do not think that speed is the most important part of developing a high school aged male distance runner long term, but I think it is highly underrated. Physiologically, the male body (girls mature earlier, so this applies more to a middle school girl aside from late bloomers) responds to max velocity, strength, and biomechanical work better from 14-16 than it will at any other time in a boy's lifetime. So if that kind of work is something that will ever be important, that is the time to do a lot of it, because it will be easier to adapt to at that time than any other time. There are some important things to note about speed though. When distance runners think about speed, they often think about "How fast can I run my last 400m?" That's not speed. Even 100m and 200m reps are not speed. When I say speed, I am talking about max velocity. These are things like fly 30's, 8 second hill sprints, 50-60m reps. 3-4 minutes recovery between them. Sprint work, with good sprint mechanics.

Here's the hitch: You will not get as much out of this in the short term by doing this type of training and the training is long, exhausting, and hard to execute well.

If you are going to include a speed development day in your training plan, you will have to give up something else. Consider that a workout of this type might be something like 6x8 second hill sprints with 3 minutes rest. You need to warm up and do the sprints. In order to prepare for max velocity, you will have to do a pretty significant warm-up (running and drills might last more than 30 minutes). Then approximately 20 minutes spent to do less than 1 minute of running. So you're at least 50 minutes in with maybe 2 miles of work completed. If your warm-up run is more than 10 minutes, you probably have to factor in more time. So to do this, something else has to go.

The bright side is doing it now will have more of an effect than doing this type of work will when you are in college. The lame part is that it will have less of an effect on your current fitness than doing a VO2 max workout or doing base mileage.

On the other hand, if you want short term success, the quickest way is to do VO2 max type work, as that is at least fairly specific for every high school distance run (even at 5k and 800m you aren't straying too far from VO2 max, although the 800m is a bit of a stretch). That type of work though will have the least amount of carry over into following years.

For a runner that age, I would say the most important element is still aerobic training as that system will always be able to develop, but behind that I would put pure speed, followed by working on movement patterns, and then strength. Although the specific speed is critically important to how the athlete races in that season, if the goal is years in advance, race specific paces could be put to the back burner for a while (not totally ignored, but not emphasized).

Well said Ozzie, and I agree with almost all of that.

When I said it is the no.1 priority, it is because I assuming the athlete will train endurance anyway. No need to emphasise it if they're already doing it right. Obviously a distance runner needs endurance more than speed, but as you say, speed is the oft forgotten component of training.

On this comment: "Here's the hitch: You will not get as much out of this in the short term by doing this type of training and the training is long, exhausting, and hard to execute well."

As I have said, it's a lot harder to teach speed than endurance. You need a good quality coach.

Also, you need an easy or off day the day before speed. It needs to be done fresh to be done properly. So you're not just giving up one session to focus on it. However, you can train endurance the day after speed (different energy systems) or if you insist, in the afternoon after speed in the morning. You can work around it.

Also, you need an easy or off day the day before speed. It needs to be done fresh to be done properly. So you're not just giving up one session to focus on it. However, you can train endurance the day after speed (different energy systems) or if you insist, in the afternoon after speed in the morning. You can work around it.[/quote]

Agreed, but I think depending on how you implement your speed workout, you can train almost anything the next day. If I do a short enough speed session (10 minute warm-up, drills, 4x50m with 4 minutes rest, 10-25 minute cool down run, core) we have even raced the next day with very good results. I wouldn't do that in front of a really important race, but the nice thing about doing speed development, you can do anything you want the next day as long as you pick appropriate volumes on the speed development day.

But point well taken. You have to be more careful the day before than the day after.

I find the knee jerk reaction to the word "speed" pretty hilarious. The problem is most people equate speed with gut busting "anaerobic" workouts, which really aren't true speed or form workouts.

Even Lydiard supposedly had his runners do 60m strides several times a week during the base building phase. The point was to keep working on form, turnover, neuromuscular coordination stuff over a short enough distance and with sufficient recovery to avoid "going under". Most people forget that part.

Form drills, plyos, short hills, strides, accelerations are necessary at least a couple times a week.