Maximum Mileage in High School???

I coached a top high school team in my state for years. My goal was to build the top athletes up to between 60-70 miles a week by their senior year. Most kids who were there to have fun and just improve ran around 40 miles a week. For the top kids, it was around 8-10 miles a day and one 12-14 mile run in the summer. Everyone else was around 6-8 with one 10 mile run. Knock off about 10 miles for each group for a girl.

We'd do strides and fartleks most of the summer for some speed but nothing crazy. I always considered the long run the most important run of the week in the summer.

Coburn ran 15. Hocker ran 30. Knight ran 35. Schweizer ran 35. Fisher ran 40. Brazier ran 30. Houlihan ran 30. Purrier ran 30. Do you want to maximize potential or peak in high school? All top American 800-5k runners were low mileage in HS. And throw Knight in as Canadian.

do the dew wrote:

Coburn ran 15. Hocker ran 30. Knight ran 35. Schweizer ran 35. Fisher ran 40. Brazier ran 30. Houlihan ran 30. Purrier ran 30. Do you want to maximize potential or peak in high school? All top American 800-5k runners were low mileage in HS. And throw Knight in as Canadian.

All those runners you listed were also supremely talented. What about Ritz running 100 mpw his senior year? If you have a talented enough kid they'll turn out good no matter what, but when in doubt stay a little more on conservative side.

Facts always baffle people. How do you know who has more talent? I challenge you to list the current top American 800-5000 runners. You will find that nearly all of them did low mileage in HS? How do you explain that? Logically, most would have been high mileage if that is what makes runners good because most low mileage runners wouldn't have made it to a top D1 school due to lower levels of performances. Yet here we are with the top runners being low mileage. Somehow doing low mileage during developmental years has a way of increasing the length and the limit of performance.

STRONK wrote:

ddidididid wrote:

at 35 mpw you run a 18min 5k. at 50 you will run a 1630. Up to you if that type of performance difference matters. And we are talking like 1 hour/day. Leaves plenty of time for other things.

35 mpw for 18:00? ??

My very first week of organized XC practice I ran 40 miles. Had sporadically run 1-2 miles in the month prior.

Got up to 70 a week during offseason soph year....80 a week jr year offseason...80+ sr year.

Looking back I should have pushed it even more and gotten into 90-100 territory but I got complacent.

4:37/18:13

4:28/10:29/17:35

4:32/9:38/16:16

4:28/9:32/15:53

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

STRONK wrote:

35 mpw for 18:00? ??

My very first week of organized XC practice I ran 40 miles. Had sporadically run 1-2 miles in the month prior.

Got up to 70 a week during offseason soph year....80 a week jr year offseason...80+ sr year.

Looking back I should have pushed it even more and gotten into 90-100 territory but I got complacent.

4:37/18:13

4:28/10:29/17:35

4:32/9:38/16:16

4:28/9:32/15:53

Alan

Surprised you ran a 4:37 mile while only running mid-17s for the 5k. Did you just have incredible turnover?

Runningisfun075 wrote:

I'm going into my junior year of high school and this summer my coach has been putting a big emphasis on bringing up my mileage a lot. He also is focused a lot more on endurance training and not speed training. My questions are...

Is their a maximum amount of mileage that high schoolers should do?

And in high school what kind of workouts should I be doing?

The more I coach the more I believe that volume isn't as important for high school athletes as good quality training. Over the past 2-3 years I have had 3 different high school athletes run 3:51 for 1500m and 800m 1:52 for 800 and 15:21 for 5k. The average volume for these athletes would be from 30-40 miles per week with a steady dose of threshold, hill work and short efforts for speed development. The above athletes have progressed to 3:43 and 1:50 this season as with scope to run faster in the future.

A point to make about the above athletes they are extremely talented and gifted athletes and without that they would need more running to achieve similar success.

Good luck!

do the dew wrote:

Coburn ran 15. Hocker ran 30. Knight ran 35. Schweizer ran 35. Fisher ran 40. Brazier ran 30. Houlihan ran 30. Purrier ran 30. Do you want to maximize potential or peak in high school? All top American 800-5k runners were low mileage in HS. And throw Knight in as Canadian.

for 99 % of runners the answer is to peak in HS. Running a 1545 instead of a 1630 would have made me all state and won our team the title. peaking in college and running a 1430 might have let me walk on and maybe run a jv race or two...

ddidididid wrote:

do the dew wrote:

Coburn ran 15. Hocker ran 30. Knight ran 35. Schweizer ran 35. Fisher ran 40. Brazier ran 30. Houlihan ran 30. Purrier ran 30. Do you want to maximize potential or peak in high school? All top American 800-5k runners were low mileage in HS. And throw Knight in as Canadian.

for 99 % of runners the answer is to peak in HS. Running a 1545 instead of a 1630 would have made me all state and won our team the title. peaking in college and running a 1430 might have let me walk on and maybe run a jv race or two...

Good point. The market value of running is a college scholarship or admission. No point in saving yourself.

That still doesn't really answer why the top Americans all came from a low mileage background.

Norm Man wrote:

That still doesn't really answer why the top Americans all came from a low mileage background.

Among other things, people imitate success, so if you see top people running low mileage you likely decide that's the way to go and do that. If you don't amount to anything special no one notices you and thinks maybe they should run more than you did. If you manage to become a top American people look at you and say "That's what works best." Here, we don't know what specific Kenyans or Japanese high school age runners do, it's usually a lot more than US kids do, but they don't make much impression.

Norm Man wrote:

That still doesn't really answer why the top Americans all came from a low mileage background.

that statement is just false. Plenty of top americans have come from mid to high mileage backgrounds.

Rupp was doing 70

ritz was doing 80-90

Hall was doing 100

nico young 65

centro 60

webb 60mpw in 6 days

drew hunter 65

When you read footlocker bios, 50-70 is pretty normal with some on either side.

now to some extent the low mileage kids are just more talented. winning footlocker off 35 mpw is better than winning it off 70. And some people are happy just winning/ being competive. if you are winning your state meet at 30mpw, whybrun 60? some people do cause they want to set records. others do the minimum.

You listed people who are no longer top Americans or have never been a top Americans. List the current top Americans in the 800-5k and you will find that nearly every one of them came from a low mileage background. It is obvious that low mileage through high has a way of boosting max potential.

do the dew wrote:

You listed people who are no longer top Americans or have never been a top Americans. List the current top Americans in the 800-5k and you will find that nearly every one of them came from a low mileage background. It is obvious that low mileage through high has a way of boosting max potential.

By the same logic, zero of the top american male runners who ran low mileage in HS have set an american record from 1500-10000m despite the drastic improvement in tracks and footwear. heck none of them have even been cloae. Maybe they should have ran more in HS?

Runningart2004 wrote:

STRONK wrote:

35 mpw for 18:00? ??

My very first week of organized XC practice I ran 40 miles. Had sporadically run 1-2 miles in the month prior.

Got up to 70 a week during offseason soph year....80 a week jr year offseason...80+ sr year.

Looking back I should have pushed it even more and gotten into 90-100 territory but I got complacent.

4:37/18:13

4:28/10:29/17:35

4:32/9:38/16:16

4:28/9:32/15:53

Alan

you ran an awful lot to achieve those times. I would suggest you didn't have very good coaching. 90-100 miles wouldn't have made much difference.

I also did hard "tempo" runs in the summer and lots of intervals during the season.

Had I done less I would have raced slower. That's clear as day as the guys on the team who did less yearly volume I beat.

So are we back to clinging to this less is more approach? I thought we were over that? Train hard. Race hard. Win hard.

If you keep holding back for some far off ill-conceived notion if "waiting for college" there won't be a college to run for.

To each their own. All athletes are different.

I think the talented runner who bangs out state championships on 30mi a week is the exception not the rule when it comes to HS development. An average talent ain't gonna do squat on 30mi a week.

Alan

coahc wrote:

Runningart2004 wrote:

My very first week of organized XC practice I ran 40 miles. Had sporadically run 1-2 miles in the month prior.

Got up to 70 a week during offseason soph year....80 a week jr year offseason...80+ sr year.

Looking back I should have pushed it even more and gotten into 90-100 territory but I got complacent.

4:37/18:13

4:28/10:29/17:35

4:32/9:38/16:16

4:28/9:32/15:53

Alan

you ran an awful lot to achieve those times. I would suggest you didn't have very good coaching. 90-100 miles wouldn't have made much difference.

Yes I'm sure that was it *thumbs up*.

Same coaching style produced many state champions across many states. Is what it is. That was 25 years ago.

Alan

Most of the top guys in my state do 40-60 mpw according to Strava. One of those guys literally does 80%+ of his runs at under 6 minute pace.

Sham 69 wrote:

Most of the top guys in my state do 40-60 mpw according to Strava. One of those guys literally does 80%+ of his runs at under 6 minute pace.

So we back to the 90s again? I thought getting our butts handed to us by East Africans taught us a thing or two? Guess not.

Everything is so cyclic.

Alan