Letsrun claims every child prodigy will burn out

Complete list of pre/early teen distance achievers who made it to pros:

Mary Decker

Jordan Hasay

...aaand we'll even give you Galen Rupp who was running 17:00 5K off of 9th grade soccer training.

https://giphy.com/gifs/punk-clint-eastwood-dirty-harry-136d9RrAau4OWI

Did I miss the part where you said you were a "child prodigy"? If not then what's the titles relevance to you? You're talking about training intensity, and your case is so individualized and so sharply summarized that it's impossible to even make a huge generalization as your thread title assumes.

Bobbler wrote:

Complete list of pre/early teen distance achievers who made it to pros:

Mary Decker

Jordan Hasay

]

Um, ever hear of Mary Cain? She made it to pros, she just had a short career after.

I'll give it 2/10. You need to write like the age of the person you pretend to be . No kid in his first weeks of high school is writing about his ATP metabolism .

OP,

You are running better now based on the mileage you did over the summer. Dropping your mileage to 20 MPW will make you not improve as you should over the season, and there is a good chance you will actually get slower (staying about the same is like getting slower because as the fall wears on and the temperatures drop, you should be running faster even if at the same fitness level)

With a max of 50 miles per week in the summer, you should keep it at that level (with a drop down to 40 if you feel you need a break for a week) until the week before your target race at the end of the season...then the drop shouldn't be much more than 10%. Intensity of workouts should stay the same and you cut down your long run, your second longest run and then run a very modest 3 miles the day before the race.

You're a 10th grader and holding yourself up as an example of a child prodigy that didn't burn out? LOL. You ARE a child.

800ftw. wrote:

Truth is nearly every child prodigy does.

Truth is every child prodigy dies

Bobbler wrote:

Complete list of pre/early teen distance achievers who made it to pros:

Mary Decker

Jordan Hasay

...aaand we'll even give you Galen Rupp who was running 17:00 5K off of 9th grade soccer training.

https://giphy.com/gifs/punk-clint-eastwood-dirty-harry-136d9RrAau4OWI

Kevin Sullivan--world age record for 800m at age 14 (1:53)-->5th place at 2000 Olympics in 1500 at age 26.

Hounddogharrier wrote:

I'll give it 2/10. You need to write like the age of the person you pretend to be . No kid in his first weeks of high school is writing about his ATP metabolism .

it's a good effort troll, but this^ gives you away.

The average LR Poser is probably in HS or up through junior college who was sure they were the next coming of Bekele. Did not work out for them, so they are certain it can't work out for anybody else. If they had to give their real names, this bashing of everyone would almost come to a halt.

Usain Bolt was a child prodigy.

Had quite the satisfactory career

LR_PopulationProfile wrote:

The average LR Poser is probably in HS or up through junior college who was sure they were the next coming of Bekele. Did not work out for them, so they are certain it can't work out for anybody else. If they had to give their real names, this bashing of everyone would almost come to a halt.

If Bekele is the measuring rod, it's a really safe bet that most people won't hit it.

Keep running 3-4 all out workouts per week with no easy miles and you're gonna be just another burned out child prodigy by senior year, running times way slower than your PRs.

You really think you're doing anything differently than any of the other wannabe studs who burned out?

I will only respond to the name of the post as your post really doesn't seem make any sense. Get back and do a write up when you're thirty. Besides some of the child stars turned pro that were already mentioned, there was a family of "forced" child prodigies from Greenville, PA back in the 90's and early 2000's. Most of them started strong especially the girls and burnt up before 12th grade. The oldest boy Jed Christiansen was running 18:00 5k's at 9 years old. He was running low to under 15 by 12th grade. Not sure how college went, but I do know he twice qualified for the Olympic trails marathon (finished 44th last year). So he is proof that not all burn out (although I think he has like 7-8 brothers and sisters that did). His youngest sister whom I saw dragged by hand to the finish of a 5k at age 3 did have a exceptional carreer clear through college running 16:45 for 5k at Stanford invite in 2014

Did you just call yourself a prodigy? Don't get me wrong, those are terrific times for a freshman, and if you continue developing at a normal rate you'll have scholarship offers at the d1 level, but prodigy would be people your age running better than 4:15 at 1600 meters. Again, those are fantastic times, and far better than mine (sophomore 17:28), but they're nothing that's going to make the news either.

Okay, you are a freshman in high school. You are not a child prodigy in the slightest, no offense. Also, 4:46 for the 1600 isn't that great to be brutally honest. Do you have any experience with this training method over time? Do you ever consider that you are racing fast 3 months before the state championships start? You have a very long season ahead and it is a lot different than middle school. On another note, "your ATP metabolism improves while the rate at which you consume oxygen stays the same as when you ran your peak mileage" that literally made no sense. I understand that you want to say big scientific words to make your statement more believable. But that did quite the opposite. Seriously, take it easy and race fast when it matters.

Nah wrote:

Okay, you are a freshman in high school. You are not a child prodigy in the slightest, no offense. Also, 4:46 for the 1600 isn't that great to be brutally honest. Do you have any experience with this training method over time? Do you ever consider that you are racing fast 3 months before the state championships start? You have a very long season ahead and it is a lot different than middle school. On another note, "your ATP metabolism improves while the rate at which you consume oxygen stays the same as when you ran your peak mileage" that literally made no sense. I understand that you want to say big scientific words to make your statement more believable. But that did quite the opposite. Seriously, take it easy and race fast when it matters.

It does make sense. If you took any form of biology in high school or college, you would understand you burn ATP in most forms of aerobic exercise. While you build your base, you gain aerobic fitness which allows you utilize more of this energy over the course of a period of time. While you may stop improving your endurance, you still need to maintain it over the season with a 'strong aerobic stimulus' like I stated before. You said a 4:46 isn't good for a freshman, but I ran it as a middle schooler. My 1600 time will probably be in the low 4:30s or high 4:20s as the season progresses. Also, to update this thread, my new 5k PR is 16:23 as of last Saturday,

precocious morans wrote:

Well you're no prodigy so you have nothing to fear.

Haha, I was thinking the same thing.

1.) What state are you in where you are the best freshman? I'm from Illinois, where every single year I feel a freshman runs sub 9:30 for the 3200, aka the same pace as the 4:46 you were bragging about for a whole mile more.

2.) You are a 15-year old kid, yet you are challenging the knowledge of adults with years more running experience and much faster PRs. You are trying to make the argument that the training programs of every good coach that ever was are all a bunch of BS. Do you really think you know more than Alberto Salazar? I know Galen doesn't run all out 4 times a week.

3.) Very, very few freshman go into high school running 45 miles a week. Most coaches don't have incoming freshmen do any workouts at all over the summer, opting to build them up a bit first. The other freshman in your state are going to get much, much better, and probably very quickly. That's because they will start doing speed work in October, when their coaches tell them to, and then their times will really drop in late October/November.

4.) I have 3 college teammates who ran sub-5 in middle school. I go to a NCAA Division-III school. Great runners, obviously, but hardly superstars.

5.) You are less than a month into your high school career. Times may be great now, but know that this could all go south really quickly. We didn't say that child prodigies burn out as soon as they enter high school. It's after they graduate that we see who really made it.

I don't want to be too hard on you because you are only a kid. But please, for your sake, do not be bragging about times you run the first week of September. If you can't replicate this success in November, none of this will matter. You need to be able to sustain this intense training for 2 more months. If this actually works, great, but I doubt it will. I urge you to take the advice of your elders seriously.