High School 2 mile trend

I believe part of it was the low-mileage trend that went on in and around that era. There was supposedly no need to run more than 40 - 45 miles a week. I think people are realizing now that mileage is king. I am not sure what contributed to the low mileage philosophy, but I do know that a lot of coaches at the time went by it. Was it to get kids out and away from the Nintendo? Is it because we have too many soccer moms babying Johnny and Sussie? Is it the "you are a winner by being out here" attitude. I really don't know. Those are just some wild speculations that are probably very minor and secondary compared the mileage principle.

I would also like to see enrollment and particpation levels before jumping to any major conclusions.

1970s:

12,299,000 average HS aged children each year.

3,887,352 participants in all sports (boys)

95 4:10 milers

84 9:00 2-milers

1980s:

10,780,000 HS kids (-12.4%)

3,387,482 participants (-12.9%)

75 4:10 milers (-21.1%)

51 9:00 2-milers (-39.3%)

1990s:

11,111,000 HS kids (-9.7%)

3,605,942 participants (-7.2%)

36 4:10 milers (-62.1%)

15 9:00 2-milers (-82.1%)

There appears to be no correlation between participation and fast times.

Thanks Malmo.

It is apparent that there is/was something else at work besides slightly falling enrollments/participation rates.

Actually, if the data were available, I'm speculating that participation rates might have actually increased in track. The cited participation rates were for all sports. Track participation rates are (were?) about 450,000 per year. Again, no solid data.

As for the factors at work during the demise, anecdotally, the elders of these forums have told you the answer. Thanks to the free flow through of information afforded by the internet it looks as though the tide is turning.

Good news indeed.

My high school coach had me running 30 mile weeks and preached that was a good strength base (yet I never broke 18 minutes in high school). I got to college and talked to the coach. I worked up to 100 mile weeks over about 6 months and held that for a good long while. I ended up running low 32s for 10k.

I always kept in contact with my high school coach and told him all about the training. That same coach now has his dedicated guys doing a solid 60 or so.

It all starts with people like me. Grassroots teaching is important.

I graduated in 1985, and low mileage was definitely the trend then. I ran about 18-20 miles a week as a senior in high school and got down to 9:48 in the 3200 and 16:23 in cross country.

It's not that I didn't take running seriously. It's just that I didn't know what serious was. I thought busting it in practice was being serious.

Here's how a typical week went for us.

Mon - 1 mile warm up. 2 miles of speed work (8 quarters usually). 1 mile cool down.

Tue - Track meet. 3200 relay leg, 1600, 3200

Wed - 5 mile run

Thu - Track meet. 3200 relay leg, 1600, 3200

Fri - 1 mile warm up. 2 miles of speed work (8 quarters usually). 1 mile cool down.

Add that all up and it's 20 miles. Coach would tell us to rest up over the weekend, so I rarely went for a run. Can't believe I ran those times with such little training. I'm certain to have gotten down to 9:20 or even faster if I had run like I should have. Did get down to 14:58 after high school with 70 mile weeks, so it's not like I missed a chance to be another Ritz, but man 20 miles a week is nothing.

Boy, was it easy to win in HS from the late 80s through the early 90s. All you had to do was get a whole team to put in about 60-ish miles per week of mostly easy running (which really isn't very much) and you'd dominate all the other schools your size, even without a lot of talent. The whole approach to running was sad back then. You'd hear lots of football coaches (who doubled as X-C coaches) saying, "I don't believe you need to run more than 35 miles per week." Their teams might do alright at the local levels, where most of the other teams did similar "training", so they'd THINK the mileage was adequate. But if they made it to the state level, they'd get paddled, since more of the teams there ran a little higher mileage. But even the best runners in the nation were well behind those of the late 70s on the stopwatch. So we had mediocre runners competing against other mediocre runners and settling for victories instead of excellence.

It was definitely an uphill battle to get acceptance for sound training 15 years ago. In private school, I was constantly being bombarded with complaints from parents about the "excessive mileage". Actually, they snuck in to the AD's office and complained and I heard about it from him. These were the same parents who acknowledged the risk of a serious knee injury in football as "coming with the territory", but they'd bitch about a kid having to ice his shin every day because he didn't run during the Summer (when he was told to) and wasn't prepared to run 8 miles in practice once school started. How hypocritical! I once took a copy of Joe Newton's book "Running To The Top Of The Mountain" into the AD's office (after another complaint from a parent) and pointed out the schedules which had kids running up to 146 miles in a week (and averaging over 100 per week for the season), telling him about the long string of state championships York had won and how this was REAL mileage. His facial expression was that of a Stone Age caveman being shown long division. It just didn't compute - and he wasn't going to accept it even if it HAD made sense.

But we're thankfully turning this thing around. The Internet has spread the word on how to REALLY train as much as anything else has. It's also brought the country closer together. People in NY can now see the results of a race in California within hours of its completion, so in a way it's as though the NY guys see the CA guys as "local" competition and have a good idea of what it would take to beat them. Most of all, though, people have had the chance to find out about the ONE BIG FACTOR which set the 70s runners above the others - mileage. Prior to the Internet, you'd have to sift through reams of running magazines to find an obscure article about the correlation between 70s success and high mileage. Those articles were out there, but they were rare. And how was anyone to know what the truth was when they got so much conflicting information? One or two voices out of a hundred wasn't going to get the job done. Now people can get the scoop directly from runners who lived and trained during that era themselves.

A trend that I noticed locally contibutied to a dearth of quality runners. Coaches are very rarely staying more than two years. The old system of the assistant coach waiting for the head coach to retire, while learning how to develop fast runners collapsed. In fact, most high schools don't have an assistant any more. With the increase in teacher's salaries and perhaps an increase in their responsibilies, maybe the stipend for coaching wasn't worth it; thus contributing to a continual turnover in coaching positions and a consequental decline in the overall quality of the runners produced under this system.

I prepped from 1989-1993. My program was new, but quickly became one of the most successful in the state because we demanded -- hold your breath -- 35-45 miles per week from our athletes, and did two hard workouts per week. This was typical of athletes in most Georgia high school programs, with just a few teams not taking this approach.

My senior year, I worked up to 40-60 miles per week, and my contemporaries told me I was "crazy," and that no one ran that much. Quality, not quantity is what everyone said.

One of my prime competitors was doing 80-100 mpw, which was unheard of. His coach mentioned this at a pre-race forum at Footlocker SE in 1992 and was almost hooted off the stage -- the other coaches were ANGRY that he might put it into the heads of their athletes that they should do more than 50 mpw.

I ran 9:37 and 4:30 off that training on the track, 15:30 at the Vulcan Course in Birmingham in XC. Our "big" workout was 20 x 400 meters in track. The next year as a freshman in college -- on a steady diet of 80-100 mile weeks -- my times dropped incredibly.

I have no doubt that the obsession with low mileage was THE cause of the ebb in decent times in the 1990s. Some of my contemporaries were incredibly talented, and did not have to run more than 20 miles per week to win state titles. Only in the past five years -- as Webb, Ritz, Riley, Sage, etc. have begun to get national recognition on the Internet, have kids realized how hard you have to work.

A look at the Ga. All time lists (below) bears this out. The 70s, early to mid 80s, and late 1990s/early 2000s absolutely dominate the lists in the distances.

In some states, possibly all, teachers get precedence (over non teachers) if they want to coach.

I have heard this from several "older" friends who would like to coach in high school.

After many years of being ?out of the loop? I re-entered at the behest of my daughter, who wanted some help with her upcoming HS X-C ?career?. I volunteered to help at the local HS. After a very brief time I could see that the ?mileage and intensity' factors were conspicuously absent. I brought this to the attention of the coaches, indicating that, just maybe, if they wanted to ?run with the whoevers? some shifting of gears or major training philosophy overhauls were in order.

The reply was ?we don?t do that any more, that went out a long time ago?. As I had done some homework I replied that there seemed to be a correlated drop in top level and general performances in the HS ranks for quite some time associated with that 'we don't do that'. I further asked if anyone on the teams wanted to run nationally ranked times, as I thought some seemed to have ?the stuff?. ?Well we haven?t done that in a long time?.

The self evident paradox of that single exchange escaped them. With much resistance throughout the next several seasons we increased mileage and intensity and ... gee golly garsh ? we ended up with a nationally ranked girls team.

I vacated the premises with my daughter's graduation (perhaps I should have stayed but I tired of the 'battle') and back it came ... and back came the comfortable 3rd 4th 5th place finishes in conference and team sizes of 110+ to barely enough to field a team. Not sayin I was the only factor there but some things are so obvious that they are not ?noticed?. And I'm bettin they ?won?t do that for a long time? --- again. And who loses out?

Having been a recent high school graduate, I can attest to the huge jump in mileage amongst HS runners. I ran 4:20 and 9:30, not great times, although they would've been amazing about 10 years ago. But I was one of the lowest mileage runners I knew that had respectable times. I ran about 50 miles per week, whereas the average person I knew ran about 70, and some ran 80-90. A far cry from the guys running 30 miles a week and winning state championships not long ago.

ATL's Finest wrote:

I prepped from 1989-1993...

My senior year, I worked up to 40-60 miles per week, and my contemporaries told me I was "crazy," and that no one ran that much. Quality, not quantity is what everyone said.

I ran 9:37 and 4:30 off ...

I have no doubt that the obsession with low mileage was THE cause of the ebb in decent times in the 1990s...

Wow... are you me??? Uncanny.

Glad to hear things are turning around on the HS level... kind of sucks, though, that ATL's Finest and others (eh hem.. me)got screwed in HS just cause we were a part of the stupid slow era (OK, sorry to whine).

JK,

While I definitely agree with you, allow me to play devil's advocate for the moment. So many times I see on these boards when a respectable time is run by someone young--early teens (sometimes younger)--it is knocked down by people complaining "oh, that person is training too hard too soon! They will burn out or peak at too early an age. Just another flash in the pan who will be out of the sport before their time." I don't get the feeling that the nay-sayers are referring to said young runner as having done too much anerobic work, but rather running "too many miles." How would you refute the claim that a far more gradual progression is neccessary, than say the "extremes" of the York HS program, which has runners @ +110 mpw?

I have even heard Ryun knocked for running "too many miles at too young an age."

I also find it interesting that many runners retired at much earlier ages in the '60's and '70's, ending their careers @ 30 when they felt like their best years are behind them. Now a days, you see runners retiring in their mid- to late-30's, but running unexceptional times all the way through, probably due to having a much more gradual and gentle increase of mileage.

I look forward to reading your msg.

Thanks,

Adam

Running high weeks for months on end isn't the best strategy for teenagers. The key is EXPOSURE to progressively higher mileages over the years. It's also vital to keep most of the higher mileage pretty low in intensity. For a HS Jr. or Sr. who has run a couple of 80 mile weeks in previous preseasons and has averaged in the 65 mpw range during those preseasons, this might entail alternating high weeks with lower weeks in the manner of 70-55-78-60-85-65-90-65-etc. in the CURRENT preseason (and there's nothing wrong with older HSers running over 100 per week, either, but I'd personally keep the highest weeks of the HS career at no more than 120 despite what I pointed out about York). Occasionally, two moderately high weeks could be put back-to-back in lieu of one very high week. When the preseason ends and the competitive season starts, the mileage should be reduced (in the above example, the mileage might be reduced to 50-65 per week for a HS Jr., 55-70 per week for a Sr.). Some people might point out that this (reducing mileage too soon in the season) could cause a loss in fitness, but for FUTURE dvelopment of a teenage runner, this is better than trying to continue with the higher mileage while adding the stresses of racing and faster training. In other words, periodization needs to be pretty strict for young runners. College-age runners can keep the mileage high a little longer during the season, since they are presumably more mature and have more training background (plus, their race distances demand it).

Where most high mileage HSers (and new high mileage runners of ANY age, for that matter) boink the beagle is in trying to FORCE fitness to improve during the high mileage periods rather than LETTING fitness improve. This might be a problem during a preseason in which a runner says, "I was doing my easy runs at 7:12 pace LAST Summer, so THIS Summer, I should be doing them under 7:00 pace. And my tempo pace was 5:45 last year, so it needs to be about 5:35 pace this time around." To that, I say that the watch should usually be left at home during the preseasons. "Overtraining" with high mileage might also occur as a result of a guy coming into the season having done everything right for the previous 2-3 months, then deciding to continue the high mileage while upping the intensity. There's another no-no for a young runner. A more mature and experienced runner CAN get away with this.

So it's exposure to progressively higher mileage (NOT running high EVERY week) in the preseasons, followed by a substantial drop in mileage during the regular seasons that will benefit young runners. The older and more experienced the runners get, the higher the mileage can be, the longer into the regular seasons they can continue their high mileage, and the fewer low weeks they'll need during the preseasons.

JK... I think you're nuts! 120 a week? 100 a week? 80 a week? In high school? Most high school Juniors (going into their senior year) have jobs working 40 hours a week. They have social lives. They have other obligations. I'm all for running more in high school, but as someone who graduated in 1996 with 15-20 miles a week behind him, and then college where I saw what real training is like, I think working a hs athlete up to 60-70 is more than plenty. 20-30 a week freshman year, 30-40 sophomore year, 40-55 junior year, 55-70 senior year. This provides them with a good base for college where they can progress from 70 to 80 to 90, to 100 and 110 (if a 5th year is used). That leave one at 6 years of 70 or more a week, no injuries (because of gradual progression), and leaves one with a great base for post collegiate life of consistent 100s. I also feel that if this type of progression is used, it allows for hard workouts and races instead of straight mileage all the time.

Michael.

Well, it's all a choice isn't it? I know I didn't work 40 hours a week while in high school - even in the summer. Personally if one of my two kids becomes a high school phenom and will get their way paid through college because of it, I'd be more than happy to give them spending money that they might otherwise earn while working so that they can run if they so desire.

As Scott Fry said, "Being good in high school is cake. Put in the work because others don't." That was more true in 1985 when he was a senior in high school, but that is still very true to some degree today. Obviously there aren't too many high school kids running 120 miles a week, but if an elite kid loves running and can handle it, then why not? I'm certain that JK wouldn't have a high school kid running 120 miles a week every week for months on end. An 18 year old is better able to recover than those of us in our mid-late 30s.

I agree with Conto, there should be a degree of development to moving up in mileage. I myself ran on the average of 50-55 in high school and saw results of 4:10/1600m and 8:58/3200. My college coach then told me to come in my freshman year at 65-75. The next year(soph) I moved up to 75-85 and held at 85-90ish throughout my college career before retiring. By the way I was in H.S. during the 80's, and was kind of during the transition from high to low mileage, some coaches were still some preaching high, some low.