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

ritz cracken wrote:

puttin on the ritz wrote:

Um, yea he has been great at times, but often injured and may not have ever reached his full potential because of that fact. it is very likely that all that hammering in HS effed up the development of bones, tendon, musculoskeletal system. Just like running puppies too much injures there growth plates.

Injuries come with the territory of being elite. He has made three Olympic teams. He has won medals at the global level. Has ran sub 13 for 5000, 27:22 for 10000, 60 minutes flat for the half marathon and 2:07 for the marathon. One of the all time greats for American distance runners. Do you want to be great or just mediocre, take everything conservative, never push the limit and wonder why Americans are so far behind the Africans. Go big or go home.

Blah, Blah, injuries don't come with the territory for being elite. That is BS, there are guys that don't become elite because of injuries, but stop rationalizing.

And Americans are behind africans for many reasons, the biggest one is genetic.

pharmer wrote:

ritz cracken wrote:

Injuries come with the territory of being elite. He has made three Olympic teams. He has won medals at the global level. Has ran sub 13 for 5000, 27:22 for 10000, 60 minutes flat for the half marathon and 2:07 for the marathon. One of the all time greats for American distance runners. Do you want to be great or just mediocre, take everything conservative, never push the limit and wonder why Americans are so far behind the Africans. Go big or go home.

Blah, Blah, injuries don't come with the territory for being elite. That is BS, there are guys that don't become elite because of injuries, but stop rationalizing.

And Americans are behind africans for many reasons, the biggest one is genetic.

Complete BS, every runner gets injured. And east Africans aren't this übermensch you mytholize them as.

If numbers are arbitrary, shouldn't some elite runners be up to 300mpw in their 20s? That's only 5 hours per day. Most of us work 8 hours per day. High school seniors should be able to run 100mpw. I don't really believe that.

Keep it in context. Because by that measure, then 1000 miles per week is fine and not arbitrary.

So who was your college coach and where are they now?

How old are her kids now?

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Why put 14 year old and 18 year olds in the same category of "high school"

I've noticed that a lot on here. In terms of training that's a huge difference and how much milage they can handle.

It's the progression.

You work up to 45-60mpw at 18 yrs old. There is a +/- of a few miles. The main point is that you don't dump a bunch of miles on a young growing body. Ideally early to mid 20's when the athlete has matured physically (and mentally).

No. I'm not agreeing with Sara or Coach Hunter.

Again, for the vast majority of young athletes running 70mpw in their late teens is too much. I'm not saying EVERYONE needs to abide by this. Yes, there are a few athletes that have done very well having trained at higher mileage at a young age. I do know that the odds are well stacked against you in staying injury free and or less injured if you train at higher a mileage before your body is physiologically ready. It's proven science. Again, a very motivated teenager who wants to run a lot of mileage and seemingly enjoys it and is not injured (yet) needs to be watched very closely and pulled back to certain degree. At 18 years old there is NO WAY to predict what long term damage is being done. For example, a young race horse will run itself to death until the jockey pulls back on the reigns. The horse just wants to run but the jockey knows what the horse is capable of both short term and long term and allows the horse to only run as fast as necessary to achieve both short term and long term goals. It's easy to whip a young horse until it breaks. It takes a great jockey (coach) to let a horse (athlete) develop overtime while at the same time maximizing its potential.

Don't forget what the ultimate goal is. To be able to maximize your absolute potential. No one cares if you ran a 3:59 mile as an 18 year old in high school. I'll take the 3:52 mile and making the Olympic team as a 24 year old all day-every day.

Think about it..........It worked for me!!!

Genetic freaks of nature giving unsubstantiated advice making it a case of "do they want to?" versus "will this f*** them up for years to come" is downright irresponsible. That's the thing about pro athletes though, they aren't always intelligent people. Most high school girls should not touch 70 miles a week, I'd even argue most high school boys shouldn't either. In my experience coaching at the collegiate level, mostly every athlete who even hit 60+ a week in high school ended up burning out and quitting, while many 30 mile a week high schoolers ended up becoming All Americans. Now I'm a huge proponent of the benefits of mileage and aerobic development, but as far as high school athletes are concerned I think it's far better to undertrain them as opposed to pushing the envelope.

Yeah, Ritz ran 60:00 flat for half marathon. Impressive, except that Kipchoge will run two of those in a row this Fall.

If Ritz didn't have cramping issues and not so fragile body, he would probably be a 2:04 marathoner.

Am I Crazy? wrote:

If Ritz didn't have cramping issues and not so fragile body, he would probably be a 2:04 marathoner.

Body was damaged from too much too hard at a young developing age.

yes, you are wrote:

Am I Crazy? wrote:

If Ritz didn't have cramping issues and not so fragile body, he would probably be a 2:04 marathoner.

Body was damaged from too much too hard at a young developing age.

Haile G. ran 2:03. Grew up running 10k to school and back.

Dude, you can't compare an african's upbringing to an american, different world. and EPO works

Haile seems legit to me.

You've been to the Olympics? Congratulations, and if holding back your mileage in high school was part of how you did that you make a good point. But Jim Ryun, Gerry Lindgren, and Cathy O'Brien also made it to the Olympics and obviously did not hold back their high school mileage. No offense, but without knowing who you are I think I'd rather have Lindgren's or Ryun's careers than yours but I can't be certain. On the other hand, Shorter certainly did keep his mileage low until he was out of college and I might take his career over anyone's so that's a point for you. Really, when you're talking about people who actually make an Olympic team you can find various things they did and didn't do while getting there. Jack Foster got to a couple Olympics and didn't even start running until he was 32. It's really too small a population to draw much in the line of conclusions from.

But here are a couple disagreements I have with you. One is the analogy to horses. Yes, a rider can drive a horse to run until it dies. That's a one off thing though, i.e, an exceptionally brutal experience. The closest human analogy might be people who die during marathons on hot days. On their own, horses will run until they don't want to run anymore and then stop until they want to run again. If they needed humans to rein them in they'd have died out in the wild and there wouldn't be any horses anymore. The human analogy here might be a coach or parent who drives a kid to keep running when the kid clearly has had enough and as part of an ongoing experience as opposed to one particular session. Yes, there are some people, kids included, who do self destructive things and some of them find their way into running. Those people probably need a coach to hold them back but that doesn't mean everyone who wants to run lot of miles is self destructive or needs someone to hold them back.

And while I agree with you that I'd rather make an Olympic team at 24, or really at any age, than run a sub 4:00 mile in high school, I will also say that you can defer too much of the present to the future. We can look at Lindgren's career and say that if he hadn't run so much in high school and made the '64 Olympic team he might have made the teams in '68, and '72, maybe even in '76 when he'd still have been just thirty or even in '84 when he'd only have been a year older than Lopes was. Or we could say that by '68 and beyond life could have taken him in a different direction and he'd never have made any Olympic team, never won any major international races or held a world record. There is an argument to be made for seizing the moment. Every accomplishment becomes a past accomplishment very quickly and there's no guarantee at all that deferring an accomplishment now will bring a greater one later on. At 66, I'd love to have a sub 4:00 mile in my past and I wouldn't care at this stage when I did it. If I had the chance of a sure 3:59 in high school I'd be as happy with it as if I'd done it in college or later and would not have traded it for a potential 3:55 later on.

BUTTHOLE SURFER wrote:

I do know that the odds are well stacked against you in staying injury free and or less injured if you train at higher a mileage before your body is physiologically ready. It's proven science.

Lol. No it's not.

yes, you are wrote:

Am I Crazy? wrote:

If Ritz didn't have cramping issues and not so fragile body, he would probably be a 2:04 marathoner.

Body was damaged from too much too hard at a young developing age.

Had he not run a lot of miles in high school he likely would have been an above average high schooler and a decent D1 runner who quit the sport right after college. You would have never heard of him.