Sara Hall: Don’t buy into the myth that kids can’t run a lot of mileage in high school or they’ll get hurt/bur

There is also a bit of a survival aspect: the top runners are often the ones who can tolerate the higher mileage. NCAA XC champ and one time junior 5000m record holder Suzie Tuffey ran pretty low mileage.

"Burn out" is a term with a lot of meanings and causes. Maybe Alana "burned out" because there was an obsession with mileage and not looking at how she was progressing and smartly adapting training.

This is an incredibly complicated and nuanced topic for which there is not a single right answer that fits everyone and every situation.

LoneStarXC wrote:

Sample size of one. Just because high mileage in high school worked for S. Hall doesn’t mean it will for everybody else.

I did not take that interpretation at all. I know of a good number of HS kids in Colorado who are up in that range of mileage. My take on her tweet (and no idea what prompted it) is that we should not be afraid of it if done correctly.

Too often I hear parents who run looking at the mileage of college or pro runners and extrapolating their HS sophomore instead of looking at what that pro was doing as a sophomore.

If you can run high mileage go for it. One of my teammates started running at a young age, broke some age group road records, hit 80 mpw in middle school, and went on to run well in college and after. Never "burned out" or lost interest.

semenyagoat wrote:

Kids and teens should not run high milage. Instead they should work on speed, various different sports and distances to get a muscularly well rounded body. Also running form can be a focus. Then they will be prepared for higher mileage and are able to unlock their potential. Sarah is a prime example of this problem. The only thing she got good at from her mileage is marathon running. She is too slow and not versatile enough to be competitive in any other event

So glad anonymous internet poster has weighed in. I guess there is no need to discuss this any longer.

I knew a guy in college who only focused on math. He could not quote Shakespeare to save his life (aside from a few quotes we all know). I mean where did that focus on one thing get him? Oh yeah, PhD, worked for NASA and now is a college professor, but he is not versatile enough either. But it got him where he wanted to be in his career.

What a dumb statement. I never ran more than 25mpw but ran 14:30 so that must be the optimal mileage. No.

Check with Houlihan snd Schweizer to see what they did in HS. Look at their PRs today as compared to Hall.

You make some good points, but in practice there are issues. It is true that there could be a low VO2MAX 100 mpw junior with a 5k of 17:00, and then another with a high VO2MAX, same 100 mpw and running 14:30. They both can handle 100 mpw equally well (just takes a bit longer for the 17 min guy).

They do the same workouts, like 8-10x1000, one at 3:30 and one at 3:00. Or 20x400, again at speeds similar to their skill level. Where is the problem now? Recovery rate. The high VO2MAX guy can recover much faster from workouts and intensity than the low VO2MAX guy. The problem is that the HS coach probably assigns them the same volume in workouts, so let's say both do 9x1k at their prescribed pace. The 14:30 guy can handle the workout well and recovers fast, but the low VO2MAX guy is being run into the ground with these sessions. He doesn't recover fast enough during the workout, after the workout, can't clear lactate fast enough etc.

There are many studies, like

that tested this relationship. Having more/bigger mitochondria, increased concentrations of aerobic enzymes, increased myoglobin, blood volume and hemoglobin all accelerate the recovery process and oxygen use for a high VO2MAX person, even if paces are set to current fitness level and total mileage is the same.

It's not easy to individualize training for each HS athlete, some respond better to high mileage (often ST-runners), some to intensity (FT), but most coaches don't have the level of experience to know when someone can handle high mileage and benefit from it and when not. So I'd rather have them be cautious than automatically assign 70 mpw to all girls and 90 mpw to all boys, I'd rather have them prescribe moderate training loads and only if someone is really ready for high mileage prescribe it for that individual.

Did Grant Fisher run high mileage? Did Drew Hunter? No, they had great coaches to develop them which allowed them to gradually increase the training load and reach new levels in post-HS. It's more important to keep athletes healthy and allow their talent to shine than to go for quick improvement and risk injuries and burn-out.

Specialization in sports at a young age is dangerous and puts individuals at considerably higher risk for over use injuries later in their careers. For girls who have completed most of their growth, it is safer than for younger kids who are growing (so for Hall to do that in high school is probably safer than for someone to do that as an 8 year old since most of her growth is completed at that point). My kids did some JO track events for the first time this spring (have mostly been in soccer and swimming up to this point along with family activities like mountain biking and hiking) and it amazed me how long and how hard some of the kids their age were running. My kids placed at the state meet and went to the regional meet off of 10 mpw. Meanwhile some of the "elite" kids had been competing in cross country, indoor and outdoor track since they were 5, and while their times are impressive now, I would have concerns about long term durability given that they are training over 30 miles per week while they are just starting to grow as bantams and sub-bantams. You really don't see people with recognizable names with junior records until you reach about 12 years old for girls and 14 years old for boys as I imagine there is a lot of burn out for these younger age groups.

not enough oxygen to her brain wrote:

Sorry, Sara is wrong, just because it worked for her doesn't mean it works for everyone. She is not speaking from proven science, just from her heart. Pure stupidity.

Except Sara didn't say it works for everyone. She didn't even say that anyone should do it. She simply said, "Don’t buy into the myth that kids can’t run a lot of mileage in high school or they’ll get hurt/burned out. "

I was a low-mileage guy in HS and ran reasonably fast (4:00 1500), so I don't believe high mileage is a must. My son built up from a max of 15 MPW before HS to 50 MPW the summer after 9th grade -- and he thinks he'll do 70 MPW before 12th grade. So far his mood is great and he has missed only one day of training this year due to a cold, and none due to injury. If he feels too fatigued, he'll scale back. He takes easy weeks at least once/month.

Watching him develop, I have to agree with Sara. If a kid wants to do it and seems to take the mileage in stride, don't get hysterical. An hour or 90 minutes of controlled running each day isn't going to destroy a 16-year-old. If you care a whole lot about whether a kid runs too much or too little, maybe you should step back and let them do what they want.

There are just as many or more examples of runners who burned out on low mileage versus high mileage.

It’s a sign of their age rather than mileage level in most cases. When you are in your teens your interest tend to change as you experience more in life.

As far as Hadley goes it seems to have been much more to do with not want to put up with all the nay-sayers, critics and over opinionated school coaches than it was the mileage she did. She got older and realized she wanted to do other things and not have her every move critiqued. Without the threat of athletic scholarship removal and support of her family she was able to that.

Incidentally good thing Hadley didn’t run for her high school, the coach she would have run for at the time has been fired and gotten into legal trouble for soliciting and blackmailing sexual favors from teen girls he taught or coached. Creepo extreme.

I’m not saying that high mileage in high school doesn’t work. And I’m not saying it does, either. All I mean is that we can’t look at S. Hall and conclude that, since high mileage worked for her, it must be the optimal training strategy.

That’s like saying that, since I ate the contents of an entire tube of toothpaste when I was five (true story, BTW) and lived, every kid should eat a tube of toothpaste.

As a kid, that’s what I did on my journey to school every day. It was 4-5km away, and I would always come home for lunch, so I covered that distance four times a day, carrying my school books on my back.

But it wasn’t serious training, never about going a certain speed; it was just running – slowly.

No less than 20 kilometres a day, and about 140 kilometres every week.

Haile Gebrselassie did something similar too, running 10k to school and back.

I know, not all east Africans do this, but a lot of them do it.

Not necessarily volume that burns people out(Arthur Newton averaged 20+ miles a day for years). But losing interest and too much intensity.

not enough oxygen to her brain wrote:

Sorry, Sara is wrong, just because it worked for her doesn't mean it works for everyone. She is not speaking from proven science, just from her heart. Pure stupidity.

This guy gets it. I'm sure Sara really means it and she just wants to help kids get faster and reach their dreams. But using herself as example is absolutely terrible.

She is an EXTREME slow-twitch athlete - these tend to prosper on high volume training. Like one guy said, she literally had no kick at all - no one ever considered her a threat during the last 200m of a race.

Fast twitch athletes? Laura Muir ran 30-40 mpw in school, 50-60 mpw as pro.

Shelby ran 20 mpw in HS, 30 mpw as college Freshman then built it by 10 mpw each year. These are fast-twitch runners with strong sprint-kick who respond better to intensity than grinding miles. When Shelby came to BTC, she started with 60 mpw which is still incredibly low especially for a Schumacher athlete. Jerry knows how to individualize training loads and assigns the proper amount of mileage to his athletes. He probably would have put Sara on a high mileage program right away (100+).

If good nutrition and mileage is kept easy, it’s OK. Sports medicine doctors have told me as an adult never to run that much but that’s because they don’t understand the sport

For me the biggest thing that made running not fun was training too hard with too many intervals under a coach and seeing race times get slower. Been running since 1999. Running miles with some higher intensity worked in here and there was always fun

Hghggg wrote:

It’s not mileage that burns runners out, it’s the duration intensity being too much.

East Africans spend their childhood running EASY miles to and from school.

In terms of training volume its not about distance but duration. A fast runner covers more distance in a certain duration. For instance, a 22 minute 5k girl running 70 mpw covers much more training volume than a 18 minute 5K girl. Obviously they race and train at much different paces. Therefore, the 22 minute girl should top out at 50 miles a week but still be training as much as the 70 girl.

Going by your statement, the kids who live further away from school should be better runners than kids who live less than one kilometre from school. Show evidence that the kids who live ten kilometres from school have better running results than the kids who live less than a kilometre from school.

webby wrote:

not enough oxygen to her brain wrote:

Sorry, Sara is wrong, just because it worked for her doesn't mean it works for everyone. She is not speaking from proven science, just from her heart. Pure stupidity.

Except Sara didn't say it works for everyone. She didn't even say that anyone should do it. She simply said, "Don’t buy into the myth that kids can’t run a lot of mileage in high school or they’ll get hurt/burned out. "

Exactly. But what we see on here is literally every top female high schooler gets accused of over-training. Good for Sara calling BS on that

I'll defend Sara here. While I"m not sure about running high mileage all of HS, I do think most should run significantly more than they do. Most of them are never going to run another competitive step after HS so why not at least train by the time they are seniors in HS.

I used to give an annual speech to a HS xc camp. I called it "Rojo's 10 minute/10 mpw plan for success."

Think about how long the average HS soccer practice is, basketball, etc. 2 hours? How much running does one actually do at track practice? Hardly any.

If you run 7 minute miles, then the time you run per day is the miles per week.

I used to hand out a flier that said you should try to do this at a minimum. If you do this, you'd be outtraining most people and it's very doable.

9th - 30 minutes per day

10th - 40 minutes per day

11th - 50 minutes per day

12th - 60 minutes per day

That's an average.

Long run - 9th - 60 minutes

10th - 70 mins

11th -80 mins

12th - 90 mins

Now most aren't running 7 minute miles and aren't running 7 days per week but you get my drift. If you get up to that as as senior in HS, then you'd be training way more than most and ready to handle a college level of training when you get there.

I guess people will say what I have is way different than Sara as I don't have them even getting to 70 and she has them doing it all the time. But I just believe in building up to do more. The average runner whether youth or adult doesn't run enough.

Ok, so what's the point? Is the goal to outtrain most people?

Did you hand out a training log to everyone and tell them to bring it back next year to see who trained the most?

Or is the goal to enjoy the sport and realize your potential?

Would be interesting study to do, if I was getting my degree in statistics, I would do my thesis on that. Wait, isn't Jared Ward does something at BYU in statistics? Jard, if you are reading this, please do a study on this. Here are two starting points, Haile Geb ran 10k to school and back, Paul Tergat ran 3 miles to school and back.

But I think we are missing the forest by only looking at a few trees. East Africans, not all, but a lot of them run easy to school and back for years before ever doing any hard workouts. So they are building a huge aerobic base. We evolved (or made, depending on your beliefs) to go long distances at very easy pace. Trotting around for 10+ miles a day isn't that hard on the body. To quote George Young, " In all seriousness, it was not too hard to run 100 miles a week-physically. Mentally it is much harder too run 100 miles a week than physically.".