TMC wrote:
No clue what his 40 time was...the street we ran it on was from residence to residence in my uncle's suburb....so it's an estimate. He cut in front of me a bit but he had a lead on me to do that.
Troll
2/10 got some takers
40s in the street rough guesses not
Lol 40 mpw with a 10 mile long run isn't really training all that hard. I was 215 pounds running 50 mpw. No wonder he beat you. (He would beat me too)
how about wrote:
>15 year old son
>building his train set
OK.
For the training, just hand him over to the high school coach and give half an ear to make sure he isn't doing anything dumb. With most high school coaching, they under-work the kids anyway, so your biggest concern might be that the volume isn't high enough in the first place.
If he did 2:30 comfortably, he will probably fit right in on the lower end of Varsity within a year, and should have other kids to push him.
"most high school coaches under-work the anyway."
In my experience it's the other way around! They try to have them do
8 X 800 or 20 X 400 every day.
TMC wrote:
It's true....and we are trying to figure out what event he should run in HS now that he wrecked his old man. I'm 39. I run about 40 miles a week with one interval session and a 10-mile long run, so you can imagine my surprise this weekend when he beat me by about 2 yards.
I used to be quick...4.8 / 40 as a former college football punter....but it's seems I've lost it after a good 11 years of slogging through 5K-10K training.
Later, I brought him out for an 800-meter run with me and we easily knocked out 2:30 and he looked barely tired. This might not seem impressive...but he spends most of his time watching movies, reading, and building his train set. He had no interest in sports until now...but he seems to have inherited some athletic ability.
There was a kid in his 8th grade class that ran a school-record 2:11 or 2:14 800. He says he can't catch that guy but I'm thinking he might be able to move up in distance since he's about 5-7 and 117 lbs and has that typical distance build that I have.
So the question is this....what are some of the best ways to get him interested in the sport without forcing it on to him or getting him discouraged by the demands of training? What would be a good training program for him to with that is easy and a good starting point for young runners.
Thanks!
I think what happened to you happened to me when my son was 13, although he was not sedentary. If a sedentary 15yo can knock out 2:30 800s, I would say he has some talent. Btw, he's probably a 400/.800 type, why are you talking about moving up? - Good luck and keep us advised.
TMC wrote:
He has never done sports in his entire life. We tried getting him involved with soccer and he just didn't like it. Baseball was too boring for him. I tried to teach him to punt/kick a football because I did that all my life and he didn't see the fun in that either. He has a bike but it's not like he's racing on the thing.
How long did he do each of the sports? How do you know he isn't racing or going up the occasional hill on his bike? Sprint training takes a very minimal amount of repititions. 2-3 short 5-10 second efforts is sometimes an entire training session.
If your son had run 5flat mile pace for a whole mile then that would be interesting, but for only half a mile? Seems close to normal. I ask you again: exactly how slow do you expect an extremely lightweight kid to run for a half mile untrained? I'm not saying your son is slow. I'm just saying it seems pretty ordinary.
Huckleberry wrote:
Seems close to normal. I ask you again: exactly how slow do you expect an extremely lightweight kid to run for a half mile untrained? I'm not saying your son is slow. I'm just saying it seems pretty ordinary.
Most untrained kids of any size can't even run continuously for 800m.
let him sprint first and get in shape from it, he could be good you never know but running lots of distance could slow him down and make athletics too hard.
Stravabeans wrote:
Lol 40 mpw with a 10 mile long run isn't really training all that hard. I was 215 pounds running 50 mpw. No wonder he beat you. (He would beat me too)
So 50mpw is training hard, 40mpw is not training all that hard.
The things I learn on LR.
As though either 40 or 50 MPW would have anything to do with sprint speed.
Runfastrunfar wrote:
Dear TMC:
That does address some of the questions I had. But at his age, if you start with the LSD (long, slow, distance) stuff and adding up miles, you will hurt his top-end speed.
Sprinting is much harder than distance training. It also has a very finite shelf-life. That is why you have everyone and their mom (literally) are running 5ks, 10ks, half, and full marathons and not 100m, 200m and 400m sprints past the age of 30. You can always add in miles.
Let me put it to you this way, Mo Farah can run his LAST 400m AFTER running 9,600m in 52.2 seconds. That means that even IF, and that is a big if, you can run the last 400m in 60 seconds, you would need a a 41m "cushion" in order to not get beaten. The chances of that happening are not realistic.
For a second there I thought you were comparing an 8th graders times to the olympic champion. That would of knocked me off my rocker if that was what you were doing
Have you actually asked your son what distance (if any) he would like to run? Maybe he wants to be a sprinter, maybe he wants to be middle-distance, maybe he wants to be long-distance, maybe he doesn't want to run at all.
As a coach of children I can honestly say that I will see one or two parents who are forcing their kids to do something they don't want to so they (the parents) can live their lives vicariously through their kids achievements.
My 16 year old son plays a LOT of video games and hasn't run a step since cross country last year. He did decide to run cross country again this year to my surprise. The coach just told me that he was running repeat 800's last night (day 3 of season) in 2:35 which I thought was pretty good for someone that is 5' 7" 130 lbs and no training. He is exhausted from 5 practices in 3 days but surviving. He will not make varsity but maybe this year he will break 20:00. Last year he managed 20:30. Get your son to join his high school team.
Yes...200s, 100s and 40s, but with running (not sprinting) starts to minimize hamstring risks.
He won't get bored with sprint workouts. The 200s should be run on an outside lane. Lots of stretching.
Dear Let'sprint:
I am sorry for the confusion in my reply.
I was basically saying that if you can not sprint (regardless of age or competition level) in any event UNDER 10,000m you will have very little chance of being among the elite.
I would not compare a child to an elite. Nor would a "discourage or bad-mouth" a child to his father.
Huckleberry wrote:
TMC wrote:He has never done sports in his entire life. We tried getting him involved with soccer and he just didn't like it. Baseball was too boring for him. I tried to teach him to punt/kick a football because I did that all my life and he didn't see the fun in that either. He has a bike but it's not like he's racing on the thing.
How long did he do each of the sports? How do you know he isn't racing or going up the occasional hill on his bike? Sprint training takes a very minimal amount of repititions. 2-3 short 5-10 second efforts is sometimes an entire training session.
If your son had run 5flat mile pace for a whole mile then that would be interesting, but for only half a mile? Seems close to normal. I ask you again: exactly how slow do you expect an extremely lightweight kid to run for a half mile untrained? I'm not saying your son is slow. I'm just saying it seems pretty ordinary.
You are absolutely incorrect, most untrained 15 year olds cannot bang out 2:30 800s. Perhaps if they play soccer or lacrosse. It is hard to get a sedentary 15 year to run 800m faster than a jog. I suspect the LRC is made up of above average runners, but in the regular world, breaking 5-minutes is a reasonable goal for a high school freshman and a track team.
I'm a 54-year-old Dad with two sons. I think your first choice is having him be on the school team. He's a 9th-grader? If he does not want to be on a team have him work out with you. Do a little research and figure out good workouts for someone who may race long sprints to 2-miles and mix it up. Don't coach him but train with him. Your ultimate goal is two-fold. First it is making him active and healthy and second is creating a stronger father/son bond.
My son's were mostly not into track. But the older one played baseball through high school and the younger may. I'm not a huge baseball guy but I coached the youth league teams and I think some weeks I was throwing 2000 pitches combined of whiffle balls and batting practice. When I see my older son now (he's 22, active duty based in Norfolk) what does he want to do? He wants to play catch and hit.
Why wrote:
Have you actually asked your son what distance (if any) he would like to run? Maybe he wants to be a sprinter, maybe he wants to be middle-distance, maybe he wants to be long-distance, maybe he doesn't want to run at all.
As a coach of children I can honestly say that I will see one or two parents who are forcing their kids to do something they don't want to so they (the parents) can live their lives vicariously through their kids achievements.
Obviously, this is the correct answer. Don't make him run if he doesn't want to and if he does want to, he picks what distance he tries / starts out at.
Also 2:30 is fast for an untrained kid. Maybe not for some letsrun.com-ers, but most would be over 3 min. Not saying 2:30 is ridiculously insane or anything obviously but definitely some talent.