I am 18. Am I too young to start focusing on marathons?

agc5k wrote:

Not true about the 17:30 comment. Galen Rupp ran a 16:40 5k in his first ever race freshmen year off of only soccer training and no running training outside of whatever they did at soccer practice.

Someone else has already pointed out the flaws in your other statements so I will only address this one. You are wrong. EVERY 5k guy was once a 17:30 guy. Yes, that includes Rupp.

What so you think Rupp capable of running 1-2 years before that 16:40 (assuming what you say is true)?

Soccer is perfectly adequate training for high school xc. In the story of how Alberto discovered him, they were doing 200m or 400m repeats. Then add in all of the conditioning they do. Most of the soccer programs that I knew of in high school were running 25-40 mpw for all or some part of the year. So don't try to use "no running outside of soccer practice" to try to mean "no training". He had been training for years.

Fwiw, I did a 2:46 at Boston as a 19 year old in 1979. At the time my best mile was 4:53 and 3 mile was 16:35. So I felt slow and indeed I was compared to what I wanted to accomplish.

I'll be 55 in a few days. And I regret I didn't focus on getting much faster at shorter distances up to the 10k while I was young. Fwiw, my advice would be to get as fast as possible at ALL shorter distances before moving up

Yes.

I don't mean this to be critical, but it sounds like you are not fast enough to end up being a professional or semi professional runner. Therefore you will be running because you like it and do it for fun. So I'd encourage you to do whatever you think you want to do.

Getting more speed would likely help you at all distances. As you increase mileage, be sure to do some strides at 1500m pace and some 10 sec hill sprints after your easy runs to keep in touch with fast running.

Progessing up from 50 mpw to 100 needs to be a slow process. The risk of injury or burnout is much higher going from 70 to 90 than it was from 30 to 50. The benefit is much smaller too.

There are a lot of great ideas in this post. I have just a couple thoughts:first, I'm not certain of this, but I suspect Sammy wenjaru and other African athletes not only ran a lot of miles at a young age, but did so on soft surfaces. As a practical matter, most Americans who do a lot of mileage, by necessity, do it on pavement. I'm not really sure if there is a high risk of injury when a guy in his late teens takes on fairly high mileage, particularly on a hard surface. Second most guys between 18-22 don't have much extra money to throw around. There are many sources of information available without hiring a coach. The primary one is simply talking to training partners.The OP might want to try a marathon or two before deciding whether a coach is really necessary. I wish the young man much success with his running, regardless of his specific plans.

go longer wrote:

And, do what motivates you...

Life is too short to wait on doing things that inspire you.

Good advice.

The one poster said I do not have the talent/times to be able to be semi-professional/pro. I get that. It is extremely rare for a runner to go pro. But to respond to you, I put all of my miles in on soft surfaces. Grass and soft dirt in the woods. I stay off of the pavement as much as I can. So I am sure I can handle "higher" mileage jumps putting those miles on soft grounds than some other American putting them all on pavement. Pros don't even put the majority of their miles on pavement

Very good advice. And with this advice I am moving to longer distances. Run what you LIKE to do, right? And FWIW, I am not running this spring for my HS

Read into this what you will, Deek ran 13:58 at 17 off 50 mpw and 13:34 at 22 off 150 mpw one month before his WR.

madmandoc wrote:

I don't mean this to be critical, but it sounds like you are not fast enough to end up being a professional or semi professional runner. Therefore you will be running because you like it and do it for fun. So I'd encourage you to do whatever you think you want to do.

You have no reason to say this. You don't know anything about how the OP trains. For all we know, the OP jogs around 12 miles a week and then goes and does some XC races for fun. If this were the case, his/her 17:30 is not bad.

My advice to the OP: if you like to run, do it. If you want to compete (or even try to be a pro), take a shot at it and put in some serious training. In either case, you should put in some good work! No one here knows enough to tell you that you don't have what it takes to run at the pro level or run this-or-that time. How you approach your running may change based on your goals, but just do what sounds exciting to you.

Like said above, you don't know what you're capable of until you try.

chiefwahoo_isahoax wrote:

Run what you LIKE to do, right?

Welcome to the world of hobby joggers!

We do "training" we like, whether that makes us better runner or not.

Real runners do training that makes them the best runner they can be, whether they like it or not.

Now your days as competitive runners are behind, you can enjoy your running as much as you want to. Congratulations!

Just Anothert Hobby Jogger wrote:

chiefwahoo_isahoax wrote:

Run what you LIKE to do, right?

Welcome to the world of hobby joggers!

We do "training" we like, whether that makes us better runner or not.

Real runners do training that makes them the best runner they can be, whether they like it or not.

Now your days as competitive runners are behind, you can enjoy your running as much as you want to. Congratulations!

Don't take my words out of context. I said run what you LIKE to do as in the race distance. I doubt there are many top pro marathoners who absolutely hate running long.

"I never trained. I just went for a run each day." Jack Foster

What XC coach says long runs are bad for you. Long aerobic building runs on the wekeend are one of the best things you can do. There are almost zero good runners that dont do long runs. The ones that dont are insanely talented in highschool but wont make it very far after that

"So I am sure I can handle "higher" mileage jumps putting those miles on soft grounds than some other American putting them all on pavement. Pros don't even put the majority of their miles on pavement"

Don't be so sure.

I ran 1/2 or more of my mileage on pavement. I never got injured. I knew guys who ran on soft surface all the time and were always injured.

It depends more on your body, your mechanics, and sometime just pure luck (i.e. Solinsky was not injured running, but slipped going down some stairs)..

As a rule of thumb, I would not recommend increasing your mileage more than 10-15% from season to season. However, given that you are starting at 50 you can break that rule to start off with but only once. I think you could increase to 60-65 for your next base period. Then 70-75. Then 75-80. Then 80-85. 85-90. 90-95. Then you are at 100 after 3 years or so (even that is aggressive).

That does not mean you can't run 70 miles for a week here or there next season, but your average should be around 60-65.

Run a marathon if you must, but continue to concentrate of 5k,10k, and 1/2 marathon until you are older. Oh, and you should run track next spring. It's something you can't really do once you are out of school. Don't squander that opportunity. Plus it's good for you long term prospects in the marathon as well.

one interesting example is Eric Jenkins. He ran 418 for the mile in HS off of 25-30 mpw. The longest run he ever did in HS was 8 miles.

In college at Northeastern he got up to 85-90 mpw with a long run up to as high as 18 miles at times, and he ended up running 13:18 5k. He's Oregon now.

Jenkins shows that you can run fast off of terrible training if you're talented. But you can run a lot better off of better training. There are no secrets in good training. Some people think its lots of miles, long runs, speed work, tempo runs, form work, core work, etc. But in reality, its everything put together in an intelligent manner.

blortme wrote:

As a rule of thumb, I would not recommend increasing your mileage more than 10-15% from season to season. However, given that you are starting at 50 you can break that rule to start off with but only once. I think you could increase to 60-65 for your next base period. Then 70-75. Then 75-80. Then 80-85. 85-90. 90-95. Then you are at 100 after 3 years or so (even that is aggressive).

That does not mean you can't run 70 miles for a week here or there next season, but your average should be around 60-65.

Run a marathon if you must, but continue to concentrate of 5k,10k, and 1/2 marathon until you are older.

Never go full retard bro.

Then he was a hobby jogger, although a very good one. I also consider Yuki Kawauchi a hobby jogger. There is nothing wrong with it. I enjoy being a hobby jogger.

chiefwahoo_isahoax wrote:

Don't take my words out of context. I said run what you LIKE to do as in the race distance. I doubt there are many top pro marathoners who absolutely hate running long.

But I bet there are many top marathoners who absolutely hate track workouts. Do they exclusively run long and slow (or even long and moderate), because that's what they like?

It seems you are not interested in becoming the fastest marathon runner you could be, if that means having to do training sessions you do not like.

I respond to you wrote:

Show me someone who runs a sub 2:20 marathon and can't run sub 17 for the 5k.

That would be impossible, since a sub-2:20:00 marathon has to include at least 1 5k stretch under 00:17:00.