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

Most runners and coaches would be shocked if they looked at what swimmers do for training and at what early ages. The main difference with running is risk of injury. Outside of that runners are usually under developed as if they are going to peak mid to late 20s. When in reality most are done competing after HS and the majority of the rest stop after college.

A bit of U.S. v. Kenya regarding running. Sarah Hall thinks the gap gets closed with running more miles in high school. Rojo, you largely agree with her. U.S. is closer to Kenya in 800m, both men and women than other events. High school kids running seventy plus miles per week will not close the 800m gap. How often on let'srun are 2:15:45 Marathoners praised? Too darn much! 2:15:45 Marathon is equal to roughly 47.9 400m. How often are 47.9 400m kids praised, ages 16 to 20? Never on here. I am not talking about kids who race 400/800 in high school and/or college, just kids racing sub-48 400m in high school and/or college. Potential 800m gold medalists will be earned by young sub-48 400m runners. We all trade on our speed when racing a Marathon. We race Marathon (32.5 to 36) times our 1500m P.B. or potential at best. We all need to work on our speed as teenagers. We always can add mileage in our twenties. More futbol/soccer participation would help. Greater youth participation in 800m would help. Three-K high school XC would help encourage 400m/800m runners to participate in high school XC. Five-K XC for both men in women, NCAA would make college XC more 800m friendly. You guys advocating for high mileage will make youth running worse! Talk of high mileage scares away potential 800m gold medalists.

I'm not sure who to reply to but I've been thinking about this tweet for 2 days now - why is that all elites think that their success is only because of their work - it's not. They have immense talent and work ethic. So god-given gifts that enable them to train unlike others...to quote one twitter response "she's a unicorn"

But really - this is a dangerous statement....Sara - did you ever miss your period? I know you brush by "nutrition" but I was naive enough to think in HS that missing my period meant I was getting good "like all the other fast runners" so talking about your period with your parents or coaches is super fun for any teenage girl....and that can happen from HIGH MILEAGE.

Elite runners don't necessarily work harder than other sub-elite runners - they just have other things going in their favor (genes, VO2Max, build, etc). The ability to handle mileage at a younger age could be one of them.

Fully agree with you, but still fully disagree with Sara. You put a nice plan, and brought arguments why many HS programs should be doing more mileage. I agree they should be encouraging more mileage, and slow down a bit on the workouts. Tinman and Loudon Valley (Hunters) are doing exactly that, and it works very well for them (still, they don't enforce super high mileage like 70 mpw girls or 90 mpw boys).

But Sara put an arbitrary number (70 mpw - what is 70 mpw? a 18 min 5k girl can do that in a 9 hours, a 22 min 5k girl needs considerably longer), and her reasoning was that it worked for her (extremely high VO2MAX, genetic outlier, never getting injured, she is the 0.00001% not the 80% of HS girls).

90 mpw is high mileage but it is not super high mileage.

I thought I'll give my opinion on this, since the thread has blown up:

As far as the mileage debate and how much should high school kids run, I'd say it should be up to the kid. They should run as much or as little as they want. Just focus on encouraging and developing a love of the sport. Now if I was coaching high school kids, I would go with tinman guideline of aiming to run a hour a day. Which isn't a lot, but it is more than what most kids are doing.

2nd part of the tweet:

https://twitter.com/SaraHall3/status/1150528785269133312

Sara coaches her daughters who are in HS so that is probably what prompted the tweet.

Her oldest daughter in less than three years went from not being able to run a quarter mile to being an Arizona state XC champ and 2nd at NXR/SW this past year. I am guessing that daughter is running a lot of miles this summer.

By the way her daughters are Ethiopian so genetics and living at high altitude are also likely success factors but they reportedly had never run or participated in athletics before she adopted them.

No doubt. There about two kids in each state that would be interested in grinding out high mileage like that.

You want to allow a kid to make their own decisions if they are unhealthy or dangerous? Nice parenting. My kids want to stay up all night playing video games, eating junk food, and skipping school. What are parents for?

Sara is correct.

It's not mileage.

It's not intensity either. It's hard training that goes beyond what the athlete can handle physically or mentally at that point.

Girls are more susceptible thanks to puberty. But it happens even if the coaching is spot on. Even if you are careful and "saving" your athlete.

Grace Ping will have the same result. Even with Tinman being "long term" focused. You already have seen the signs. Hopefully she stays patient and gets through it, but just watch. Ping won't improve. Tinman will blame someone or something else. The truth is, the girl shouldn't of had a private coach in 7th-8th grade.

We need to recognize that kids don't really have a choice that young. Even if it seems like they do. If you are hiring private coaches at that age, it's not going to end well. Even if that coach is Jerry Schumacher.

If a kid reaches 11th or 12th grade and is choosing to run 70-80 miles per week, then good for him or her. As long as their are no injuries, he or she is motivated, and the parents are taking a hands off approach, then he or she will be fine.

The greater question is does it make much of a difference long term if kids focus on running early or if they do a variety of sports when they are young and focus later. I saw both types in college (guys that ran exclusively for years and guys that started running in high school and played football, soccer and other sports). The guys that played multiple sports seemed to improve the most when they were brought up in mileage while the guys who had been running mileage for a long time experienced modest gains and spent a lot more time in the training room dealing with overuse injuries. It was probably 50/50 among guys that earned All American status. 90 mpw for a high school boy sounds insane, but that is coming from someone who rarely ran over 25 mpw in high school.

You are dead wrong. Sydney Masciarelli is not an 18 yr old sophomore.

Get your facts straight before prognosticating personal details about supposed ineligibility.

Health nutty wrote:

You want to allow a kid to make their own decisions if they are unhealthy or dangerous? Nice parenting. My kids want to stay up all night playing video games, eating junk food, and skipping school. What are parents for?

How did you get that from this?

BergLaufer wrote:

I thought I'll give my opinion on this, since the thread has blown up:

As far as the mileage debate and how much should high school kids run, I'd say it should be up to the kid. They should run as much or as little as they want. Just focus on encouraging and developing a love of the sport. Now if I was coaching high school kids, I would go with tinman guideline of aiming to run a hour a day. Which isn't a lot, but it is more than what most kids are doing.

Why is everything a blanket statement. Yes some kids can do high mileage. Yes some kids get burned out or injured. Running/training is not one-size-fits-all.

Allowing a kid to decide to run as much as they want. Running can be addictive. Running too much causes injuries. Some girls use it like an eating disorder to maintain an unhealthy weight. Even adult professional runners have coaches. How could you let a 16 year old decide how much is safe if a 26 year old professional needs a coach?

no fun zone wrote:

No doubt. There about two kids in each state that would be interested in grinding out high mileage like that.

You must not interact with many high school runners because tons of them are running 70 or more miles per week, and it's not because their coaches are making them do it. What's changed is that coaches are no longer telling their athletes that mileage is going to kill them. They've somewhat let the reins loose, but athletes who run mileage are doing so because they want to.

Long Time Charlotte Observer wrote:

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

Yes. If they aren't running 'easy' mileage, the question is what are they doing at practice. John Kellogg thins super hard stuff on young people can ruin them, particularly when they don't have a base.

what's the goal??? wrote:

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?

The point? The point is to have fun, learn about hard work, improve and hopefully beat others in races.

I also always made a point of telling my guys, "Look they don't ask you to turn in your training logs before the meet so they can give a head start to whoever has trained the best."

The point of training is to show up ready to place as high as possible once the gun goes off.