Jim Gerweck, one of the editors at RunningTimes, emailed me the following question.
I’m writing a piece for the HS section on training for non-running athletes during the winter – i.e. Athletes who do XC & spring/outdoor track, but might play basketball, hockey, wrestle or swim during the winter. Maybe you could post something about what coaches have kids like that do during the winter. Nothing beyond their sport practice? Or weekend mileage – how much & how hard. Feel free to put in your own .02 as well.
Ironic the Jim emailed me the same day that I read his article on Anna Willard in the current issue (Nov. 09). Obviously Jim’s hoping to have you, the readership, help him with his article, which if you’ll pardon a slight puffing of the chest on my part, makes my day to think that one of RT’s editors wants help via this site. Very cool.
So, please comment below and no doubt you’ll have some great contributions. Here are my .02
I was fortunate to play on a very good basketball team in high school, making running training secondary to basketball dreams. Not until my senior year did I fully accept that I could run at a higher level in college than I could play basketball. I bring this up because my senior year of track was short as we made it to the state tournament at the old McNicoles arena and that meant I was two to three weeks behind everyone else. Not only does this explain why Tom Reese, who would not only beat me at the state meet in the 3,200m (I was third) but who, when I had guarded him earlier in the season, patted me on the butt after hitting a three pointer over me (in my defense, Tommy was good – my wife nearly wrecked her Jeep when, in the second summer she lived in Boulder, was listening to Irv Brown on the radio and he listed Tommy as one of the top 5 clutch shooters in Colorado HS basketball history).
That winter I ran 6-8 miles every Sunday during the basketball season as we couldn’t practice on Sundays per CHSAA rules.
Fast forward to track and at the end of my senior year of HS the fastest 3,200m times of the year were roughly:
Chris Severy – 9:32ish
Tom Reese – 9:39ish
Chris Borton – 9:40ish
Jay Johnson – 9:45
Adam Goucher* – Was hurt and would have obviously killed everyone else as he was between his Footlocker win and NCAA cross debut (free DVD to anyone who can identify the logo/athletic manufacturer of the CU uniform from that year).
My point with that list is:
Chris Severy – Skied 50-60 days a year and road his bike to school EVERY DAY his senior year in Aspen
Tom Reese – Averaged close to 30 points a game in basketball; never ran during basketball season
Chris Borton – Trained for running and likely ran volumes that would be considered sound/normal today
Jay Johnson – Poorly defended Reese; ran once a week, SLOWLY, during the basketball season
Adam Goucher – Ran in the Junior World cross meet in Japan and hurt his ankle, but was training from Footlocker to that meet.
Adam Batliner, who would go on to finish 3rd in the steeple at the NCAA meet twice, no doubt ran in the winter, but never ran more than 40-50 miles a week. If you throw in Clint Wells and Zeke Tiernan, who were 1993 HS graduates, yet I always count them in “my era,” then you have another basketball player (Clint) and another skier (Zeker). So that’s seven boys from the state of Colorado who would go onto run at CU and only one, Batliner, didn’t ski a ton or play basketball…though now that I think about it Batliner was probably a 20 days a year skier. Not the same as Chris and Zeke living just a mile from the lift, but it means my 40-50 mileage guess for Bat is probably more like 25-40. (Note: Six of the seven went on to become All-Americans; 5 did in both cross and track; no DVDs if you correctly guess who did not belong 
)
Times have changed. I ran 8 miles three times in HS; I ran 10 miles once. I ran 9:45 and 4:25 my senior year off of 30-35 miles a week. Tommy ran 4:15 in Denver off of 5-6 days a week – never running Sunday and often taking Saturday off too – which is why I have little doubt that no Colorado HS kid in the last 15 years has run as fast off of as little. Few boys run 4:15 in our state and when they do, they either made Footlocker in the fall or were close and in this day and age you don’t make Footlocker as a male off of 35 miles a week.
But…
we all were running 80-85 miles a week within one year of arriving at the foot of the pony-tailed guru (do that math if you’re curious – it’s not easy to get 85 with only one number each day). We didn’t get hurt any more than the other good, serious programs, though having a book chronicling every day of a cross season makes it look that way, and no one ever had a femoral stress fracture. We were all injured later in our careers (who isn’t in college?) and my simpleton explanation goes like this: when were still athletes we didn’t get hurt, but as time went on we lost the athleticism inherent in our HS “training” and become sagital plane only athletes, who were more susceptible to injury.
Now, I know there are holes in that logic, but consider the following:
- In mid-may of 1994 I had run 8 miles three times in my life. By September first I was running 8 miles every day, running 14 on Sunday, running 12 on Wednesday and running 10 on Tuesday and Friday.
- I got hurt in March, but only after running 8:22 for 3,000m, which is under 9:00 for 3,200m, which was WAY faster than I had run just 9 months earlier. I got a hot spot in the next couple of weeks, red-shirted the spring, then came back in the fall.
- In September of my sophomore year we ran in Pasco, WA on a Saturday. On Sunday I ran 20 miles in 2:04, with roughly 12 teammates ahead of me, the same number who had finished ahead of me in the race the day prior. Do the math. In just 16 months I went from the 35 miles a week guy to the sub 6:15 a mile for 20 miles guy.
Final thought. Every time the pony-tailed guru gets a good athlete, you hear about that person. When I spoke to Dathan last week on the track – after reminding him that Kalin’s saintly nature is the reason for his success, specifically his new American Record – I told him that every year at camp I tell kids that Dathan is a very good athlete. Skinny males who live and breath running love Dathan because he looks like them, yet if these kids can’t skip (see this video) after our easy Saturday run during camp I make sure to tell them about Dathan. Dan Pfaff said it best: “Dathan’s very motor-educable.” Jorge’s a great athlete. Dathan’s a good athlete. Alan Culpepper can ski and skateboard and play a killer guitar lick. Adam Goucher was convinced he could have played corner at CU. Brent Vaughn is a much better athlete then people think. Jenny and Renee and Sara Slattery and Kara and Shayne are all good athletes.
So, that’s my .02 Jim. Hope it’s useful.