I heard Lydiard was often quoted as saying something along the lines of it taking ~3 years of proper base training before you could start getting anywhere near your potential. With the current US HS situation where most HS are more interested in squeezing out results off of limited mileage and an unhealthy amount of anaerobic/lactate tolerance work, would it be better for most people who wish to succeed in the future (hypothetically) to back off the HS training and focus on trying to obtain as large of a base as possible? Obviously you would have some trouble competing against fellow HSers across the shorter distances but for someone who has no chance of a college scholarship anyway, would this be the way to go? (Question is in terms of approaching your potential, not being considered successful in HS).