Cross Country season...

Yep, Best time of year is chasing my boy around the XC course.  I still think I get in more miles on race day than he does by just trying to catch him on the course as many times as I can. 

680 kids lined up in the Boys High School Varsity race today,  on a starting line about 100 yards wide.  I've never seen anything like it before.  Madness!!  

That's just excellent Bo!! 

Don't miss a minute of it......tomorrow he'll look like this:

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Go find a race and have a ball.  You will find these running events quite a bit more laid back than a triathlon.  The AG races in the festival we were just at went off before the college and high school races.  The kids stood on that course and cheered any time someone came by, no matter what place they were in.  From my experiences If you are a runner you will be treated well. 

I think that's good advice.  Where we are middle school XC was fairly light mileage.....maybe 5-8 miles per week or so, spread out over 3 days.  It was basically an introduction.  For my kid, swim practice was well after school ended, which was when XC practice was.  I still think the best thing you can do for your kid to build those big endurance body systems is get them on a competitive swim club.....especially if they already show some running talent...it's a great way to keep the mileage off their legs as they grow. It's not the only way, of course, but I doubt it's an accident that about a third of the top 10 kids in our state for XC have a swim background from a very young age....and of course, all of the top Jr. triathletes do.  The difference between them and the other kids as they get ready to move toward a college running career is that they have FAR fewer miles on their legs.  I know that doesn't seem to be important to some parents, but as a person who was absolutely run into the ground as a kid, it's a big deal to me.

I don't think it's a matter of 'grinding down your legs' for the HS schools that in any way limits them in terms of training.

The competitive swimming probably helps a lot, not just because of the aerobic overlap, but because of the discipline. It takes both the kid AND the parent to commit deeply to competitive swimming - most serious youth clubs here practice 5x/wk, and the HS competitive clubs will practice 2x/day. Do that for a few years, and running 40mpw is a piece of cake in terms of the hour commitment. (Most youth x-country teams don't exceed 40mpw of training.)

If anything, the top young runners today are running more than in the past - I've seen some interviews of some running 70+mpw but they were highly coached, and built up gradually of years of careful increments. And yes, they are the exception.

My kid is at 35 mpw for the first time ever.....15:42 XC PR for 5K....not sure what he can run on a track.  He still swims 30,000 per week and rides 75-100 per week during XC season.  So far the college coaches who are recruiting him are REALLY happy with the low miles and fast times.  The summer of 1977 I ran right at 800 miles in 3 months.......and was being pushed to run more when the season started.  I was 17.  By the time I was 18 I was so broke down physically and mentally that I hated running.  I left college and competitive running after 2 months and never ran again for time.

I don't take running advice for my kid from anyone who didn't run very competitively as a kid.....at least D1 level in college, minimum.  If not,  I don't care what kind of coaching credentials or "knowledge" they think they have.  He's now going to make his own decisions on who coaches him and where he runs in the future, and I'm happy to turn it over to him.....I'm pretty content with the choices I made for him when it was up to me to make them.  He LOVES to run.

And I think you're doing the right thing for finding him coaches with the experience to train someone at that speed or faster. Training that type of runner is very different than the typical AGer, and requires different things.

And in terms of the coaches being happy, that's almost certainly because it demonstrates that his potential in running has room to grow if he's doing 15:xx on 35mpw. It's a lot harder for a coach to improve someone if they're already doing 100mpw before they get their hands on them. (Chinese Olympic coaches complained about this a lot when they would get introduced to their future 'stars', and realized that they couldn't possibly add any more training volume without overtraining them.)

 800 miles in 3 months = 66 mpw on average. That's a lot for a HS kid, but probably not unusual for a freshman runner in college x-country team. 

HA!!  Funny you brought up the Chinese.  Last week we had lunch with a fellow who coached the Chinese Olympic distance runners 20 years ago. (college excersize science professor now)  His comment was almost verbatum what you just wrote.

My point is that if your kid shows running talent, there are other ways to get them fast and develope them without beating the hell out of them with miles.