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

I really enjoy coaching against people with that mentality, it allows my girls to get more scholarship money. Keep holding your athletes down in HS so they can become the next Houlihan, lol....

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.

Support for this statement? Did you grow up as a kid running to school everyday in East Africa? Are you an unemployed East African school-bus driver?

Link disappeared . . . https://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/factsheet_young_people/en/

Yea, sure? No! wrote:

Did you grow up as a kid running to school everyday in East Africa?

Here's one that did:

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.

And y'all wonder why they are so good.

50 or 55 or 60 are arbitrary benchmark numbers if you are applying it to all athletes across the board as "optimal".

Arthur Lydiard would scoff and is currently rolling over in his grave. Some may need 30 or 40, some 50-60, some 70-90.

Distribution of efforts, recoveries, stresses, off-road, vs on-road, vs track, vs quality of pace, vs ease or steadiness of tempos or long runs, influence of long run on rest of the week, physio, massage, diet, sleep SLEEP, joy of running, other sports/activities and more all factor into volumes required.

As does tolerability, experience, general health.

50 et al is arbitrary and you should not be mentoring high school kids using a set number as "optimal" pre-set in your mind.

You should get to know the athlete and the person first. Coaching is science, art and practical experience applied.

Then there is the whole mental side.

Anyone that think 70 MPW is obsessive or unhealthy. Look how demanding high school wrestlers train. Often up before school to jog a few miles. Practice 2+ hours a day. Lift several times a week. Than on top of that, many are doing it on a caloric deficit to make their weight class.

Also, people say obsession like it's a bad thing. Go to 3:42:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l4XRFE_Lk1U&feature=youtu.be

NotPC wrote:

Truth Only wrote:

What does this mean?

Are you thick, dumb, or just stupid? She's saying that discussing mileage for HS runners is as controversial as religion and politics, those are two areas of discussion that people steer away from in polite conversation.

Except that Sarah's incendiary statements are more akin to promoting/discussing the taboo topic of weight loss as a training strategy for improving running times among teenage athletes. In the short term, athletes who drop weight or run high mileage more than likely will see improvements in their times... but at what cost? That is the point. So, it's slightly disingenuous of Sara Hall to make this comparison, don't you think.

??? wrote:

Anyone that think 70 MPW is obsessive or unhealthy. Look how demanding high school wrestlers train. Often up before school to jog a few miles. Practice 2+ hours a day. Lift several times a week. Than on top of that, many are doing it on a caloric deficit to make their weight class.

Also, people say obsession like it's a bad thing. Go to 3:42:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l4XRFE_Lk1U&feature=youtu.be

ok, so what? so you're saying hs wrestlers are subjected to unhealthy training demands. Yea, I'd agree with you. But does this mean that hs runners also should be held unhealthy training volumes?

Dumb logic

I see Sara is apart of MADRGA(Make American Distance Running Great Again)

poopooplatter wrote:

??? wrote:

Anyone that think 70 MPW is obsessive or unhealthy. Look how demanding high school wrestlers train. Often up before school to jog a few miles. Practice 2+ hours a day. Lift several times a week. Than on top of that, many are doing it on a caloric deficit to make their weight class.

Also, people say obsession like it's a bad thing. Go to 3:42:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l4XRFE_Lk1U&feature=youtu.be

ok, so what? so you're saying hs wrestlers are subjected to unhealthy training demands. Yea, I'd agree with you. But does this mean that hs runners also should be held unhealthy training volumes?

Dumb logic

No, that compared to other high school sports. Trotting around for 70+ MPW is easy.

. . . elite East African runners. Indeed, Saltin et al10 describe their elite subjects as having run or walked an average of 8–12 km a day, five days a week from age 7–8 years, increasing to 90 km a week as adolescents. They also found that Kenyan children who did not have to walk great distances to school had maximal oxygen uptakes 30% lower than those required to travel to school by foot, and hence similar to that of Danish children.

That's average, so many are covering much more than that.

Kickapoo wrote:

this again wrote:

Aerobic capacity is genetic. It ain't built. And having a high VO2 max doesn't make you a better runner.

Please back that up with science. They have done many studies on Eastern Africans which show they have NO PHYSICAL advantage whatsoever other than starving to death and being hungry for victory!

Aerobic capacity is genetic. It ain’t built? This may be the most ridiculous thing I have read on let’srun. Maybe it’s just being sarcastic? Basic science and training principles should be totally thrown away I guess.

webby wrote:

The World Health Organization recommends a MINIMUM of 60 minutes/day of mostly moderate or vigorous physical activity for youth under 18:

https://health.gov/paguidelines/2008/midcourse/youth-fact-sheet.pdf

. So a high school senior could run 70 miles/week and barely meet the minimum WHO guidelines.

The recommended minimum for adults 18 and older actually drops considerably. So this seems to contradict the wisdom of forbidding 17-year-olds from running 70 mpw at a moderate pace while at the same time encouraging higher mileage for adults.

PE class, goofing off at the park after practice, playing travel soccer and such adds up real quick in addition to the actual running in my experience.

I don't know where you are but in eight years of following local high school cross country very,very,few kids got as high as 50 miles a week and only my youngest son got to 70, which is not really that high, or more. It is a much smaller group but it will draw more attention for doing something unusual. So again, most successful older runners will not have a high mileage high school background.

re: East Africans

A few things:

1. Their runs were rarely more than 5-miles in a single run; the ones who ran more than that where outliers.

2, Their total mileage was accomplished in doubles, they ran back and forth to school.

3. Their runs were generally only slightly more than a jog.

4. They generally only ran 5 days a week.

5. A lot of East Africans didn't run to school at all, they walked or were driven in some cases.

From what I was told, this running several miles each day back and forth to school is somewhat of a myth. Not a complete myth because it something most athlete's parents decades ago and still happens in rural areas. Many East Africans live in cities where schools are only a short distance away and people actually have cars in East Africa.

I agree. Frankly, a lot of the "low mileage" HS coach advocates are old school coaches who don't continue to learn and just do what they did back in the late 80s and 90s and then wonder why they don't have great teams, just a few good individuals (the ones with a ton of talent who can get away with a low mileage approach). I do know several 'low mileage' coaches who do an amazing job with their teams, but these guys are still actively learning, networking, teaching other coaches, etc. and have legitimate, well thought out reasons for being low mileage programs (like the only surfaces they have to run on are concrete!)

Even better than having a one-size -fits-all approach, whether it's low mileage or high mileage, is having a somewhat individualized approach based on the runner, their abilities, their preferences, how injury prone they are.

I just want to laugh every time I hear about the 'upside' of a talented low mileage kid going off to run in college. How often do those kids successfully transition to a higher mileage college program? Sometimes it works out, but many of those kids don't make the transition either due to injury, or due to the higher time commitment required to train at the college level. If your 30 mpw high school program didn't do any supplemental strength work (which is astonishingly common), how long can practice last? 45 minutes? An hour? Quite a shock to go off to practice in college and realize you are going to spend hours each day training. Not every college coach is willing to change their training 'system' for these kids- they just hope the kid eventually can handle their training. I try to get our kids to a mileage level that will make their transition to college running a bit easier.

Having said that, I have had plenty of kids who can't handle mileage, so we modify their training and help them become the best they can be on lower mileage. Some of them are pretty good at the state level. But most of our better boys are able to build mileage over their HS career to the point where the boys can handle 60-65, even 70 miles per week or more by their senior year. Our best girls have been able to run 50-55, with a couple hitting 60 mpw for part of the season. For some of these kids, if we had stayed at 35-40 miles per week, they'd be OK but probably not running what they do by senior year, since many are kids with little speed, modest natural ability, who need the volume to be good.