HS Training: What Is A Fair Expectation?

Coming from a high 4:teen miler this year compared to a 4:45 last year, and after going on 60+ last summer, but adjusting to 45-50 during the winter, I noticed that when I was trying to achieve these higher mileages and focus on quantity not quality I did not get quicker. You just need to get your guys doing quality workouts and runs instead of adding <4 mile doubles to reach a mileage goal.
Hope this helps---best of luck this summer.

We are all "behind the times" and we should be learning all the time as coaches.

The mileage for your team depends on where you have been and where you are going. Just continue to build them up slowly and see where you can get this Summer. Progress is the goal not some magic mileage number.

yeah, that's why I am asking.. I am always wanting to learn. I'm not one of these "This MY way of running blah blah blah" kind of coaches, far from it.

And, yes it's not a number, but you know.. sometimes it is. I only ask about adding volume because well, one it's the easiest thing to do, two if I just ask for MUCH faster reps I'm taking on all those risks.

We are going to hit it more this summer for sure, bigger base going into XC. But when you work this hard and just see so many others blowing past, you have to ask questions.

Oh don't I know it. I have my numbers too but it varies from athlete to athlete for me. If I told every one of my athletes (even the varsity ones) to all hit 60 we would have some problems. Just bumping up a little each offseason works for me. Some of mine maxed out at 55 last Summer.

50-60 miles per week is not too much to expect of experienced runners without a history of overuse injuries that want to be good.

I mean I would get my high schoolers to 55-60mpw on a six day schedule and some worked etc. If they couldn’t run Saturday do to work I would tell them to try and get it in Sunday. I think that day off was important. I didn’t ask them to do two a days as i felt sleep was more important for them.

Good question. Lots to consider when training your kids.

Socioeconomics is probably the biggest factor for me. How many have to work and how much training will they actually do on their own?

Desire for success or just there to have fun and run with friends?

I agree 100% about not being cookie cutter with your program. However, you have to have some foundation to your philosophy.

I am fully aware of the benefits of more mileage, even on young runners, but I don't have the numbers--particularly on the girls side--to warrant training much over 40 mpw with most of my kids. I have had years when my top 5-9 boys were pushing 50 mpw, but not much more than that.

I am finishing my 24th year as a coach. For the first 16 years, my approach stemmed from my college running and coaching background. I use a lot of Daniels principles and trained my athletes more aerobically. And it worked for awhile, particularly the college runners (duh), but when I moved to HS, it was only good for XC, and not great in track.

Why? I was training my HS kids like college 5K-10K guys, when their longest race was 10-11 minutes (in track). Why train so much? I needed more speed.

So, I begrudgingly adapted and flipped my training to speed, speed, and more speed. I experimented my new thought philosophy with my best 800m boy. He dropped from a 1:59 to a 1:53, soph to junior. Then, tried it out on all of them the following year. My previous 5 years at that school produced two sub-2:05 800m kids. That first year with a big speed focus, we had nine sub-2:05 (four sub-2:00), and it continued for a couple more years until I left.

Mileage is pretty moderate. It's not great for XC, but I have done my best to adapt for that, but my focus always will be track first.

As for your question. I want my kids to have as much success on the track as possible, while training at the most minimal level that it takes to achieve that success. That ultimately means training varies quite a bit for my group in order to keep them interested and successful. If they want to increase training, do it. It's their HS career, not yours.

As for the crazy times from kids these days, I coach one of them. He's a genetic freak with a great home life and family structure. He's not like anyone I've ever coached, even the college kids I coached two decades ago. Insanely gifted and we are keeping volume WAY down. He's super speed focused and XC is just means to an end. It will never be a focus until he wants it to be. He's good in XC, because he likes racing. But he doesn't like it nearly as much as track.

If you ever get an extremely talented kid, do your best to put your ego aside, and ask them what they want out of their HS career.

I agree that speed is important for track, but what kind of mileage are you having them do in June through August? It seems to me 60 miles a week during that time seems appropriate while doing 30 during March-April seems appropriate there too (maybe even less).

For the kids that could handle it, they would get up to the 50-60 range like you mentioned in an earlier post, but they were JR/SR boys.

I'm just conservative when it comes to mileage, because injury prevention is my #1 priority. The injury thing bit me in the ass big time one year, so I'm always a little gun shy about pushing their limits too far.

Also, I would rather leave the kids some space to improve when the go to college. As long as the college doesn't eff it up.

College coaches are far more guilty of cookie cutter training, without any thought as to how the recruit got so good in the first place. Bit frustrating.

I have them keep speed year round. Most people's legs go flat in XC if there's no speed. I don't mean a hard workout once per week, but daily strides combined with 200s after half of tempos and a very occasional session of 200s at mile pace keeps that present

Coachy stated the mileage depends on where you have been, and MtDew stated that you could expect 50+ miles a week from experienced runners. These are both true. The question is how to get them there, no doubt an issue when kids who have never run before entering HS vs kids who ran abuit in middle school.

We need to be patient as coaches and have a long term plan for the young athletes. It gets easier if you have an established tradition and culture. I still remember the first meeting I had when I took over a team. A returning student (no one ran under 20 minutes for a 5k) asked for a typical week we might do and was horrified when I brought up a 6 mile continuous run. He walked out and never returned. The others soon realized that 5 to 6 miles a day with an 8 or 9 miler on some weekends wasn't too bad.

I agree that we are planning for the future and for the long term.

I just don't agree with those that have this predetermined number of what mileage is going to be months or years away. I talk to each of my athletes or at the very minimum I am monitoring their training. I want to make sure everything is going OK with each mileage bump and take it down if needed. I have HS athletes that can only get to 30 mpw and some that are much more. It depends on the athlete, it depends on experience, injury history, training age, actual age, etc.

Yeah I was doing 60 mpw easily freshman year (started in 8th grade). As long as you have a methodical careful buildup you can do that, and I probably could have done more but I didn't cause I couldn't handle running on my own.

This was me exactly this year in track. I threw away my distance runner tendencies and went in on speed development, and a low volume day at race pace. speed speed speed. It worked out well too.

My #1 guy this year is more of a true "strength based" distance runner, so we will go into much heavier mileage, especially in the summer and first mo of the xc season.

There is no way I can ask the rest of the team to do what he will be doing, and that wouldn't even be valid. Like you I am very cautious about injury. These kids only have 8 semesters to compete (track+xc) and if they spend even one of them out it's significant. I want to push, I want to ask a lot, but we can't red line it too much.

I guess the reason I started this thread is that I want to be fair to the athletes. I want them to get the best performances they can, and it is my job to get them there. I also don't want to ask so much that they look back on HS and think "wow, all I did was run, race, and recover from running and racing."

As much as we need to consider increasing volume we need to consider increases in intensity and days of quality work. It would be interesting to know if more kids get hurt increasingly their speed or volume. I find it easier increasing mileage than adding pure speed and or hills to training. Avoiding groin, hip flexor issues and other pain from these types of work has always been more of a puzzle for me especially during the season.

Coaching is always a challenge. Sometimes you have a kid with no natural footspeed but a big aerobic motor and you try to work on speed and nothing takes, other times it does and they improve dramatically.

I found that it's easier to add speed mainly because the kids just like it better. They like to run fast, so doing flying 150s, and 80's, or 200s is a lot more fun than another 6-8 mile slog.

It's the training, not the runners. I coach at a school around 1800 kids, and there is a lot of competition for athletes, especially in the spring with soccer, lacrosse, and baseball.

Still, my guys do about 35-45 mpw, and my team has been running loads faster than me and my teammates ever did off of less mileage, but better workouts.

When I was in HS, I has one teammate who ever broke 9:40 for 3200. This year I have four guys under that mark, but they run a lot less than I did.

Be careful it's a trap. Don't just do what they like, do what they need. I have a team near me that does the "like" strategy because they let the kids get away with everything. They are going backwards.