15 year old 3200

When I was 15 I ran 8.57 (3000m) and 1.59.5 (800m)

That's about 9.30 for 3200m.

I was running about 50 miles/week and I was doing intervals like 8x400, 6x600m, 4x1000m. I was part of a club in Europe and in those kind of training environments you get a lot of attention. We also didn't race like you guys do here in the US. There would be no racing every weekend. As a matter of fact we would have a 3-4 month buildup before a competition.

With the exposure track has in this country, there should be some better performances. Les racing and more training, would be a better way to develop youg runners.

15yrold: that wasn't even close to answering the kids question

in the winter of 2003, my teamate ran 9:32 as a soph. indoors and was notified by someone that he had the 2nd fastest soph. time in America. But recently times have improved, but I would say as a 15 year old, that puts you in the top 30 nationally. The question now is can you improve on that. 9:30 as a soph. is great, but 9:30 as a senior, when looked at from the national level, isn't anything noteworthy or special. (the key to that one is "on the national level")

I plan on being considerably faster as a senior and barring injury i will be.

wat state you from? u run xc or wat not?

i ran 17:21 in xc. ive improved quite a bit.

That will put you in the competitive but not brilliant category for your age group. To be amoungst the elite runners in any country with exception of Kenya/Eithipia where 15 year olds train at the same intensity as seniors the following times should be your goals.

3000m around 8:45 - 8:50

3200m around 9:18 - 9:23

1500m 4:00 - 4:05

800: 1:57 - 2:00

I would recommend that you do lots of quality sessions when you are younger instead of pounding your legs away and when you get to around 17 - 18 years old start increasing the mileage.

doing quality when you're younger is stupid. the reason the africans run so fast is the miles they put in from an early age, not the speed sessions they do. you are an idiot and ill disregard anything you say.

Dude, you need to settle down a bit. Dorks like yourself assume that they can chop 15 secs off of their prs every time they race. I'll bet the next time you race that you will not crack 10:00 for 3200m. Then you will go home cryin' to yor momma.

keep reelin em in ole timer. This is gonna be the first chat room to be on ESPN's Cheap Seats.

15yrold wrote:

When I was 15 I... Less racing and more training, would be a better way to develop youg runners.

i couldn't disagree with you more. quite possibly the most idiotic comment i've read on this site, and that's saying a lot.

Good job, runnerhigh3333. Breaking 10:00 for the first time feels good doesn't it? You're right where I was at your age -- you've got a long career ahead of you. Keep at it. FWIW, the kids who run 9:20 at 15 rarely make it in the sport.

To extrapolate that Kenyans are good because they run lots of miles when they are young is not neccessarily true.

A 6 mile run to and from school everyday is not high mileage. 35 mile a week. Which is what some Kenyans would do as youngsters. In fact most of them walked a couple of miles to school or caught the taxi or lived within a stone throw of the school.

What did happen, was they landed up training very hard from a young age - most guys in Kenya start serious training around 16 or 17 years of age, some around 14 or 15 and then its very serious training 90 miles +

Also most of them dont progress past their junior years. Burnout amoungst Kenyan Juniors is very high.

My point is dont read into this lyiard theory at 15 years old and bang out 100 mile weeks - you will screw up your body, while you are still growing and join the pile of Kenyan burnouts.

Do some good quality sessions - mix it up with lots of fartlek and generally run your 40 miles a week at a good solid pace. When you hit 17/18 years old start introducing lyiard type sessions and boost your mileage and watch the times comes down.

When we were all sophomores Galen Rupp had run 8:58, Deak was at 9:00, I was 9:04, Erik Stanley was 9:05, Leonel Manzano was 9:07 a couple hours after running 4:11, and Mohammed Trafeh was 9:08. While those were clearly the fastest soph times in the country you still need to be under 9:20 to make some noise nationally. However a 9:30 isn't bad at all and in two years you should have as a goal to break 9. Good luck the rest of the season man.

Its not that stupid.

When athletes are young instilling confidence is the main aim and getting to step up the levels at a moderate level, getting beaten but still feeling the next level is obtainable. Keeping them in the sport.

Throwing a 15 year old into races every weekend may be the answer if the kid is confident and is winning races.

If the kid has not yet developed it may be wise to hold them back from racing and only expose them to races that challenge their ability rather than undermine it.

Also we as adults under estimate the pressure of racing every weekend on youngsters , as we get older we become more capable of handling the stress, but at 15 too many high pressure races is not a good thing..

Anybody else really getting annoyed with this runnerhigh guy. Either he's really cocky and thinks he's the next great thing from American distance running, or hes pulling everybody's chain. He has a distinct style of posting where he says what he has to in order to respond to the previous poster, than he adds in a really arrogant comment or a prediction of how great he will become as a runner. Give me a break, quit feeding this child's ego by responding.

oh and also, he started another thread about himself called "another Pr!" yesterday. enough said.

actually, if you look on paula radcliffe's website (or read her book), I think you'll find she advocates putting in QUALITY training at a young age, not quantity, and I think she is fairly authorised to speak on this subject...!

paula radcliff is the most obvious doper out there. she ran a 2:15 with like a 30 something p.r. for the 10k. thats obvious when shes five minutes ahead of anyone else.

9:30 as a freshman (which is what you are) is excellent and good progress. I have a 12/30 birthday and so I am about 1 year older than you at that point in sophomore year. I ran 9:50 and I believed that I could probably break :30 for 10k and 2:20 for the marathon.

If you hit 9:30-35 at age 15 you will be at the top of the age-lists (if they have such a thing) for America. Don't worry about much else.

All these posts about how you should be shooting for 9:18 and 4:20 are stupid as you can't dictate how fast you are going to be. Additionally there are a lot of great Americans who didn't run 9:20 when they were 15 years old. There are a lot of great runners who DID run 4:20/9:20 as freshmen or sophs and didn't get too much faster or didn't last very long.

I look at it this way:

This fast / at this age

10:00 / 15

9:30 / 16

9:15 / 17

9:00 / 18

8:50 / 19

8:40 / 20

8:35 / 21

... etc.

is far better than 9:20 at 16 and 9:00 at 17 and then quitting the sport or gettign frustrated that you aren't running 7:35 3k's like the African "juniors" supposedly are.

Running isn't a linear exercise in number like some seem to suggest up above. You cannot will yourself to run an 8:45 3k just because that seems to be where you should be in order to run the World Champs 5k before age 19 like some of the African seem to do.

Bottom line: you have some talent, it might be enough to run sub-14:00/sub-29:00 someday, it might be more, it might be less. Might be considerably less. The fun is in the working for it.