How Do i outwork my competition and “Go the extra mile”

run mileage most of the year. high mileage means different things to different people, but I'd start

with at least 40 miles per week as freshman. From there, you can likely go up around 10 miles per week, each year, which will get you up to 50/60/70 miles per week as an upperclassmen. A lot of tempo runs throughout. A couple times per week during base, at varying paces and distances. Something like 10x100 fast strides or 8 to 10 second hills near full speed, once or twice per week. As you get closer to competition, you will most likely need to follow what your team is doing, which should hopefully include a decent amount of mileage, tempo work, and intervals at and around the pace of whatever race you are training for.

Out training the competition is not about working faster or harder in each practice. That is often more detrimental than beneficial. Out training the competition comes from putting in the work day in and day out, around 50 weeks per year.

The answer is in your title "Go the extra mile". I recommend looking into summer of malmo (don't do it, just look, your coach probably knows what he is doing based off what you said) and start adding in doubles. Just start with 1-2 a week and every other week add 1 more until you hit 5 or 6. Start with 15 min and if you still feel good after 2 weeks at 5 or 6 doubles of 15 min, add 5 min. Add 5 min every other week if you feel good, otherwise stay at that amount. Stop once you get to 25 min. That is a lot more work, so you'll need a little more sleep too. The only way to get ahead is to do more and if they're doing everything except more mileage, that's how you have to do it, just be smart about it.

By litteraly running the extra mile.

NWARunner wrote:

The answer is in your title "Go the extra mile". I recommend looking into summer of malmo (don't do it, just look, your coach probably knows what he is doing based off what you said) and start adding in doubles. Just start with 1-2 a week and every other week add 1 more until you hit 5 or 6. Start with 15 min and if you still feel good after 2 weeks at 5 or 6 doubles of 15 min, add 5 min. Add 5 min every other week if you feel good, otherwise stay at that amount. Stop once you get to 25 min. That is a lot more work, so you'll need a little more sleep too. The only way to get ahead is to do more and if they're doing everything except more mileage, that's how you have to do it, just be smart about it.

Actually have looked at summer of malmo before. Team runs during the summer 5 days a week, sometimes 6 with the expectation that those who care run themself on weekends. We do 5-7 miles in the morning. Strides and core after.

Will building up to another 25 min run at night burn me out at all tho or will i adapt and get stronger because of it? if there’s a high burnout risk I’d be scared to push it

You also kind of answered your own question when you said none of the 16 min guys ran much faster than you in eighth grade. You sound like you’ve got your act together already.

A great way to supplement what you’ve laid out is longer cooldowns after workouts and races. Up to 5 miles would not be a bad idea. Emphasis on meet days too, because if you just do , for example, 2 mile warmup, mile race, 800 race, 2 mile cool down, that’s only a 5.5 mile day. Tack on a few extra cool down miles and that adds up.

As a rule of thumb I might recommend topping out at 60 MPW in your HS career.

Hell. If you decide to commit to high mileage, I’d say double on meet days early season if you want. 30 mins easy in the AM on a meet day will teach you some grit in my opinion.

You’re going to get better by running more. If you build up in a relatively gradual manner you’re not going to burn out assuming you’re right about having nutrition and sleep down.

When you are a freshman it's possible to out work your competition, but once you get to a certain level, everyone runs the "extra mile" and your success will be dependent on your level of natural ability.

The biggest drops in my times (from 2:09 -> 2:01 800m and 55.01-> 50.49 400m in one season) really began when I started

A) Postural Work: (focusing on core, lower back, and posterior chain) in order to prevent form breakdown under fatigue. I mostly did a core circuit every other day and my lower body lifting focused mostly on the posterior chain through heavy deadlifting, good mornings, and overhead barbell lunges and box step ups (the overhead weight is really good for mimicking late race heaviness of the body

B) Hip Strength and Mobility: Most of your power during running comes from the hips. For this I frequently did a hip circuit (video of circuit below) every day that I didn't have core as well as the occasional hurdle mobility drills (typically done after the hardest session of the week). This doesn't seem like much strength work, but a lot of that strength comes from the lifts previously listed above

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq_sKLSHfhE

Hope this all helps and good luck with your season!

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