Help a high schooler out whose coach wants him to run MORE than he is

I would encourage him to follow his coach's training. Starting him down the path of not following what his coach wants him to do creates an athlete cannot be coached.

He's also a sophomore, right? Even if he's read all of the books and all of the threads on training in the forum he's never put it into practice.

I would HIGHLY encourage him to do as his coach instructs.

A few points.

1) You are not running mileage for the sake of running miles. You are running miles to become a better runner.

2) Long term most high school milers can handle 50 miles a week. If you need to run 40 this year, that is what you need to figure out but 50 miles a week is not ridiculous.

3) Don't focus on the total mileage but what you are doing each day and each week. The mileage should be secondary.

I think you improved when you went to shorter mileage indoors because I don't think just running mileage with mile repeats is a very good workout. So when you dropped your mileage and put in shorter faster stuff you were going to see a benefit which you did. I am surprised however that you were working out hard multiple days in a row.

Now onto the summer.

I posted general guidelines here:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7385772

and I've been posting things at random times throughout the summer here:

http://www.letsrun.com/tag/summerofgreatness2016/

(Click on the all tab on the right).

As I said in that other thread, I think for the summer generally you need at least

1) one longer run a week. Try and pick it up at the end of this or do strides during the last mile. 2) One run for sure where you pick up the pace. Doesn't have to be a formal "Tempo run". Just where you try and go faster than you would. 3) One run with strides or something shorter and quicker. I would often do 2-3 sets of 6 strides during runs. Say 20-30 seconds on. Light jog for recovery. whatever you need 30 seconds to a minute. Repeat. Jog a mile in between sets Or just do unstructured fartlek. Or hill sprints. Something to stay in touch with speed.

See how this goes. Instead of focusing on the total mileage focus on your harder or longer days. Push up the length of your long run. See how you feel. But after your long run, the next day should be eaiser or off. Don't stack hard days next to each other. I think if you do that you can handle more mileage. 50 miles with E U E S E E&S L (where E=Easy, U=uptempo,S=Strides and L=long)is easer than

50 miles H H H H H H H (where H= hard)

Push your mileage one week and then take it a bit easier the next week (or every 3rd week), but give yourself days to recover. You are supposed to be tired at times, but make sure you are training properly with proper rest.

Hopefully this makes sense.

optional wrote:

I would encourage him to follow his coach's training. Starting him down the path of not following what his coach wants him to do creates an athlete cannot be coached.

He's also a sophomore, right? Even if he's read all of the books and all of the threads on training in the forum he's never put it into practice.

I would HIGHLY encourage him to do as his coach instructs.

I'm glad you said this. You can't mix training plans. It sounds like he has some leeway for the summer, but it is best for him or any athlete to have a good dialogue with his coach and say "here's what I want to do for the summer and why". A lot of coaches give their kids free reign over the summer.

It is probably very difficult for the kid to go into the coach and say, "I don't think we should do mile repeats every Tuesday." If we get to that stage, we get to that stage.

Wejo,

I'm a long-time fan of you, the site, and JK. I've emailed you several times in the past for advice and consider myself a disciple of JK (from studying his posts).

The more that you can do along the lines of your summer of greatness thread and training threads the better. Those threads are great for runners who are interested in getting better and for coaches who are interested in learning, evolving, and getting better.

It was your story that had me chase my own dreams.

Do you think there is any chance for John Kellogg to post any more of his training wisdom on this site? I believe that would be highly beneficial to anyone (runner or coach) looking to get better.

Thanks for all you guys do.

40 mpw too much?

do you want to be great next season, or in 5 years? You decide what you want. 40-60mpw will benefit you down the line. also, as a soph, it's a weird concept to be taking days off, except at the end of seasons.

I would never have a soph run 50 miles a week. He would be better off running an hour a day.

Sneaky pete... wrote:

I would never have a soph run 50 miles a week. He would be better off running an hour a day.

A hour a day is about 55 miles a week.

So..... wrote:

Sneaky pete... wrote:

I would never have a soph run 50 miles a week. He would be better off running an hour a day.

A hour a day is about 55 miles a week.

Exactly!!

Agreed! Good response and guidlines for this kid. He probably needs better periodization during the season to see improvement in his times. My athletes i have always had do progression runs, a long run, easy runs and strides a few days a week all summer and seen great strides in their fitness running 30-70mpw.

The kid is saying he thinks it's too much, but he improved 3 seconds which is still a good amount. He should not expect to improve 5+ seconds on the 800 between indoor and outdoor. Also one can argue that he basically tapered and did the type of speed workouts you would do at the end of the season, like when you tune up for state. So it's not surprising he ran faster then felt bad later. I would listen to my coach and keep things lower intensity until sharpening up for the important races.

Everything that has been said is right. But don't forget the fire. Train to train. 90% of training should be training with intention to increase your capacity for higher intensities, higher volume, and higher frequency.

Get the miles in. Suck it up and do it. If you get hurt, train what got hurt. If you get tired, train to handle that load better.

Running is hard. Even a 19:30 guy can train hard.

Be smart first, other posters have elucidated how. Then train hard.

Hs runner:

Keep in mind there is an improvement curve that shallows as time goes on. It gets harder and harder to make gains. Your PR's will get fewer and farther between—especially if physical maturity doesn't give you an extra boost. I only dropped four seconds on my 800 time from freshman to senior year… I looked like the same kid though. I had teammates drop a lot more time but they grew a lot. Your days of easy PR's may be behind you.

Also, 3 competitive seasons is a lot of racing for your first year of running. It may not be the coaches' training, but instead all the accumulated fatigue from pounding the course and the track.

For new runners, it is SO tempting to think things are going wrong when they stop improving at different points. This is normal sometimes. You'll hit plateaus even with the best coaches.

Having said that, I also remember what it was like to run for a coach whose training didn't really benefit me… or so I felt. Approach the topic gently and inquisitively. Say, "Hey Coach, I am concerned because….. what do you think?" See what the coach says. If he doubles down and insists you need to keep grinding his way, then at least you know where things stand. I know that's hard, but it's really the only way to go about it. If you don't like the way the conversation goes that's when you can perhaps involve parents in the discussion, but it will look better if you talked to him first.

Another thing:

There is NO "normal" for durability. Some runners can just absorb incredible amounts of training and run 80-100 mpw by the time they are sophomores. Others break down at 15 mpw (I had a girl I coached who I really liked who just could not stay healthy… with me or the track coach in the spring). Most runners are in between. You probably will be too.

There is no set limit for durability where you should say "By age X, everyone should be running Y." The general limits of 20-30 mpw for freshman, 30-40 for sophomores, 50 for juniors, and 60 for seniors have some reasonable consensus around them, but many runners aren't that durable, and some can handle more. I was able to stay on that schedule until junior year when I kept getting overtraining symptoms over 40 mpw.

There is no right system or right number for everyone. One of the absolute HARDEST things about being a coach is determining how to individuate your program for different athletes without seeming like you're playing favorites.

Again, my advice is to talk to your coach politely and diplomatically. He may not know you are feeling this way.

"3) Don't focus on the total mileage but what you are doing each day and each week. The mileage should be secondary."

This^

Worrying too much about some abstract weekly mileage total is for old farts running marathons.

HSers need to worry more about their workout and quality days. THAT is where the progress is made.

You have to coach the athlete, not the event. Looking at his personal bests my opinion is he is a middle distance runner as to me a 2:09 is much better than a 19:30. Some kids actually respond to intervals... And those are usually the middle distance type.

But he does need to work up to 40-50 mpw even as a middle distance runner. That's just 5-7 miles per day. If you do a 2 mile warm up and 1 mile cool down you are half way there already.

Looks like there's a lot of great advice on this thread already. I would point out that I think if you only care about the 800 then maybe you can do with low mileage and lots of interval training like you described. However, if you want to improve in XC or even in the mile in track then long-term you will need to get used to running some higher mileage. 50 miles a week sounds fairly reasonable; moreover, your coach seems to be prescribing decent workouts (maybe not the best, but the fact of life is that you'll never find a coach who everyone agrees with). You haven't had any major injury issues under his system, so it's better to do what he says for the most part.

Additionally, I would have expected you to see a lot of improvement during your indoor season. Typically it is easy to drop one's PR's significantly during the first competitive season, just by virtue of doing any running at all. As others on this thread have already pointed out, as your times drop it will take more work to improve.

It is pretty obvious what is happening here. The higher mileage is causing the athlete to be pre-fatigued during his races. At these low mile totals (40-50) there is no way that he is not getting benefits. It is just that the benefits are not evident in races because he is too tired at the start line.

This is actually entirely expected if you think about what he is doing. He is running what for him is lifetime high mileage. He is running a hard workout of mile repeats each week. He is racing almost every week as is the norm for high school teams. Of course he is tired! I would speculate that he probably runs too fast in his volume runs, probably races his workouts, probably does not eat with a mind toward recovery, and probably does not get the right kind of rest and sleep. He probably does not know that he needs 4 months of consistent higher volume for it to make a big difference but once he has it then the difference is enormous. He does not know that he will be able to handle 50 mpw ,but he will be able to. He is just a little scared because it is a new concept. Those are all typical of teenagers.

He needs to be instructed about long term development and how to look at the big picture. He should have a goal of running a PR in the championship meet at the end of the season, and various goals related to training harder and better that he ever has before. He does not need to PR every race or even run well every time.

To repeat much of folks said already, though I'm not sure why:

You did well in the low mileage season because you were fresh and getting the most short term benefit from your workouts.

You're not used to more mileage, so while you're in the midst of higher mileage than you've done regularly before you're not going to run as fast AT THAT MOMENT.

If you keep doing the low mileage high intensity stuff, I'll concede there's a good chance you'll probably improve faster for a year or two, but you will probably hit a ceiling and then have a hard time improving without sucking it up and adding in the mileage, which at that point might even cause you to regress as you get used to it. None of this is guaranteed, but I've seen it a lot.

If you try and do more mileage (and 50/week should be very manageable), you stand to run better in the future. This might be at the end of the season, might be a couple years down the road. Hard to say. But if it were me I would do the mileage.

As a sidenote, I also would recommend doing core strengthening exercises (focusing on pelvic muscles), so as to handle the mileage and run more efficiently. Definitely something that I wish I had done in high school and didn't until several years later, and saw benefits quickly. But that's just me.

Some physiology - aerobic running encompasses the use of both type 1 and type 2a muscle fibres. Longer running will activate primarily type 1 fibres, shorter running will activate primarily type 2a fibres. It is an easy trap to fall into to believe that as the 800-5000m all derive power primarily aerobically, high, gentle mileage is a good training method, as this is aerobic. However, this method of training only really trains the type 1 fibres, which become increasingly less important as the distances go down, whereas the type 2a fibres are largely neglected, which are far more important for 800-5000.

This athlete should stop worrying about long slow mileage and instead BUILD UP TO 2-3 interval sessions at 3k - 5k pace a week (eg. 8x600 @ 3k pace, 8x800 @ 5k pace, 4x1600 @ 5k pace) as well as 2-3 tempo runs a week between 15-30 minutes. A long run and a few gentle recovery runs interspersed within this will provide more than enough type 1 fibre stimulus. If the 800 and mile are going to be a focus some anaerobic 800 - mile pace workouts should be done as well.

Summary: 40-50 mpw of slower running is an inefficient and ineffective training method for 800-5000. The times being run are very slow for the training volume being done, and the athlete is capable of going much faster. 20-30 mpw of higher quality work will easily be sufficient and far more effective. 50mpw shouldn't even be considered until they are running sub 2 and sub 17, and even then the focus should be quality, not quantity.