Why many HS runners don't succeed - the Strava stalker

Interesting topic! Understanding that a coach is a must for confident progress.

From what I have seen on Strava and what my little brother tells me (he has run with guys on multiple local HS teams), the main problem is that they run all their runs sub 7 minute pace, even the slow guys. One team runs their "easy" pace around the same pace as their "tempo" pace in the 6:30-6:50 range. The guys who run high mileage get injured or don't get better. The other team has a bit more discipline, but everyone runs 6:50 on easy days and mileage is not high. The best runners can handle it but the average guys can't absorb it and improve.

I can see this as a problem as I was a Ritz-watcher but not necessarily a stalker. Wanted to be as good as ritz therefore felt if I applied his same training volume I would attain similar results.

Turns out running 105 miles per week which definitely put me on the fine line of rigorous training/injury. Though the volume didnt injure me physically it instead caused so much stress on my body that it broke down my immune system and I got very, very sick as a result.

In retrospect I wouldve been good maxing out at 85-90 and attacking 220/440/880 intervals twice per week seeking more power and efficiency. Endurance was decent but speed was the difference maker as the movements eventually made me physically stronger.

I don’t understand why so many hs boys just try to copy pro training to the letter. It’s so short sighted. Like so unbelievably shortsighted. Like, why do they think “I wanna be a sub-4:00 miler so I need to train like one” while completely skipping over “I wanna be a 4:45 miler, so I gotta train like one” first. Nobody will tell you “copy Galen Rupp’s training” they will all say “listen to your coach, or if you don’t have a coach, just do easy running with 1 tempo, 1 interval sesh, and 1 long run per week” it’s not hard.

I like the tinman group, and I bet they are inspiring a lot of high school kids in an appropriate way, but how many kids out there do you think are trying to be like them by getting “knackered” every day, throwing them into an endless injury cycle that will kill what could be a healthy and potentially lifelong relationship with running?

peekay wrote:

From what I have seen on Strava and what my little brother tells me (he has run with guys on multiple local HS teams), the main problem is that they run all their runs sub 7 minute pace, even the slow guys. One team runs their "easy" pace around the same pace as their "tempo" pace in the 6:30-6:50 range. The guys who run high mileage get injured or don't get better. The other team has a bit more discipline, but everyone runs 6:50 on easy days and mileage is not high. The best runners can handle it but the average guys can't absorb it and improve.

Exactly! 8 min pace is enough for most freshman/sophomores or people within the 16-19 min 5k (track/road) range. Those at the lower part of the range can even do 8:30-9:00 and get so much benefit.

I saw those groups running, they don't talk and just keep a good, steady pace throughout the whole run. Then they do the workouts easier than they could (or even worse, go to the well), because they are not 100% recovered. They might improve a lot in the short-term, but it's very bad for the long-term.

The best runners are also often running with the bad ones. So for them, the pace is okay (because they have a high VO2MAX or training level), but the others just hang on and might even drop out of some "easy runs". Average/bad guys should train with girls on their easy days, and the fastest ones among themselves.

X means Y mentality wrote:

I can see this as a problem as I was a Ritz-watcher but not necessarily a stalker. Wanted to be as good as ritz therefore felt if I applied his same training volume I would attain similar results.

Turns out running 105 miles per week which definitely put me on the fine line of rigorous training/injury. Though the volume didnt injure me physically it instead caused so much stress on my body that it broke down my immune system and I got very, very sick as a result.

In retrospect I wouldve been good maxing out at 85-90 and attacking 220/440/880 intervals twice per week seeking more power and efficiency. Endurance was decent but speed was the difference maker as the movements eventually made me physically stronger.

Well that guy is trying to follow a female runner, and asking her to follow him (she probably couldn't care less about a 19 min 5k high-schooler). That's a bit creepy, even if he really just cares about his own improvement.

My coach limited me to 40-50 mpw, Grant Fisher's coach did the same (and he ran in the 14:xx 5k range during that time). He said if he could decide which college to attend, he would choose a coach that would keep him under 50 mpw. Why? To save him for long-term improvement and maximize his potential. If someone is improving at 50 mpw, it is a training mistake to run more. Let him max out (or close to it) at this mileage, then increase it. Same with workouts - Grant Fisher never did any hero workouts, or speed work at 800m pace or faster, yet he dropped a sub 4 mile.

Who trained similarly? Drew Hunter. Tinman and his CV and "keep the ball rolling" approach made a beast out of Drew Hunter. Drew ran low mileage too, even when he was sub 14 5k already he still didn't do more than 70 mpw. Expect him to be an even better runner once he gets his mileage up, he still has plenty of room of improvement considering how little work he did to get there.

100 mpw is something that sub 29 10k / 2:15 marathoner's should do, or people who just don't improve anymore at lower mileage. But never do more than necessary, even Jack Daniels said to do the least amount of training possible if it still leads to improvements, to prevent injuries/burn-out and allow for better progression and higher long-term potential.

Are you saying that you know who this kid's coach is? Or are you assuming that he has years of experience. Many high school kids are not lucky enough to have a coach who knows what they're doing. For instance, my high school coach would show up an hour after school ended and ask me what we were doing for practice (starting when I was a sophomore). Hard to not look elsewhere for inspiration and knowledge elsewhere in situations like that.

Which isn't to say that I disagree with your main point, obviously it is silly to train way over your head like that. But a high school kid without much outside knowledge may not really know any better

People do this all the time. They will read the training plans of accomplished runners and then they only pick out a few of the jewel workouts and try to do them.

They ignore the build up the athlete had before they did The Michigan (as an example), or they simply look at the weekly mileage totals ignoring the context.

typical letsrun argument....you saw one kid do something that doesn't work and then you jumped to conclusions and cliam "why many hs runners don't succeed"

barry wheelhouser wrote:

typical letsrun argument....you saw one kid do something that doesn't work and then you jumped to conclusions and cliam "why many hs runners don't succeed"

Precisely.

I agree a lot of people train too hard, but I don't think that's the reason most of them don't get fast. They're running too hard on their easy days, and then they don't push through the discomfort when it really matters.

I trained stupid in high school but still got fast, nearly every day I was running 8-10 miles at around 5:50 pace. This was stupid, I should have ran good workouts a couple times per week and then a few nice easy days to recover. I still ran 9:05 for 3200 meters which I'd say is above average.

So what I'm saying is that a person can still get fast by running too hard, they just might not hit their top end race that season because they could have trained smarter. A lot of people in general can't push past the discomfort to run a fast race. Running 6:45 for easy runs isn't THAT fast to really get that discomfort feeling.

Strava is the worst workout app ever created. Only morons (aka Democrats) would use it.

About 93% of HS cross country athletes quit competitive running after high school, so there’s no reason to think long term.

Distance running IMO is actually one of those sports where if you’re smart and patient you can actually get a lot better and run competitively in college off of very little talent. Most other sports it takes a lot more skill to be a college jock.

And then a high percentage of ncaa xc/track athletes quit the sport at age 22-23. If they continued to run even 70mpw into their late 20s, they’d be surprised at what they could do.

Long term outlook is key

"knackered" is a joke, mostly a play towards Mo Farah's vernacular.

Tinmen actually train very smart and conservative

I think over stretching and dumb warmup routines like super high kicks and leg swings get HS runners in more trouble than a few really hard workouts. Then, I would agree with the above post about sub 7 min miles on easy days as leading to overtraining and injury. Otherwise, HS kids are made of rubber and can take a beating. Workouts that are too hard are more an issue of holding back progress as the stimulus and response is out of balance. Of course, if a kid week in and week out tries to blast out a pro schedule, he will get hurt. But I think more often than not the kids trying pro workouts blast one or two and then are too tired to keep up with the schedule. So, they bounce in and out of the pro training schedule which does very little to develop them long term.

Any kid who acts the way you described has some kind of mental or emotional disability.

It sounds like something Derrick Rubis would do.....

A surprisingly high number of HS kids barely run at all over the summer before the XC season. You can't get away with that crap at the college level though.

How many times do we see a group of kids running 19-20min for 5K in mid August and end up at high 17s and pushing varsity top 7 by October/Nov? Obviously kids those ages can improve a lot but a lot of times the kids who barely run over the summer start off as top JV kids and end up on varsity by the time the important meets come around. The kids who were running over the summer might run 17s at the beginning and 16s later in the season.

I'm not saying this is bad but if you're in HS and you don't run some easy chill distance over the summer to get some easy volume conditioning in, you may be setting yourself up for injury when you try to join the varsity top 7 for hard workouts come in Sept/Oct

I saw a high school kid was commenting on a lot of runner's posts I follow on Strava. One day I scrolled through his feed a bit and noticed he was obsessed with running, to the point of making terrible decisions to run through injuries, ignoring coaching decisions to rest or take easy days, and running 2-3 times a day because he "didn't have anything else to do". He wasn't running as well as he should and seemed to be obsessing over older runner's workouts etc.

I decided to chime in and say he should listen to his coach and not worry about the infinite amount of ideas floating on strava, often by much better or more experienced runners. A few others agreed with and he ignored it and had a bad spell of races because of an injury. I saw potential in him but he just needed to ignore results and other runners and be a high schooler.

I checked in 6-7 months later and saw he had a lousy XC season because he was trying to up his mileage over the summer and into the season. Like 35 mpw to 55-60 mpw. I asked how much money I could pay him to quit Strava. He didn't like that question.

The best high school coaches can keep their runners healthy and convince them to turn off their brains. Otherwise, most are nutcases who make the wrong decisions.

I am a believer that one as a rule should run 6 days a week, twice or three times a day if the circumstances permit, most of it at a comfortable pace way slower than what one would race the marathon if he was properly trained for the marathon relative it his shorter distances. How much slower, how many miles exactly, how fast to do the intervals, what kind of intervals, etc - all of that is very individual, and what makes a great recipe for one runner could make a disaster for another. With or without a coach, you have to learn what is best for your body by gentle trial and error (e.g. if going from 60 to 70 miles a week gave you improvement, maybe try 80, but not 90 right away before you saw what 80 does).

That said, you can improve your mileage/intensity tolerance by sleeping more, eating better, and stressing less. And, of course, it goes the other way, and a lot faster too when you sleep less, eat worse, and stress more.