Track: development from Middle school to H. School

O

orangecat

1,000+ Posts
my son started cross-country in the fall- 7th grade, first athletic endeavor for him since one year playing basketball and a couple of years playing soccer. always enjoyed being part of a team, very little athletic success.

does pretty well at cross-country, his times were in the middle of the pack for his school, in 7th grade. Now in the spring we're watching him in track, running the 800 and 1600. He has progressed to #2 in the 1600.

My wife went to the first couple of meets without me, and told me he was kind of just enjoying the runs, taking it easy, etc. He was.

the meet a week ago, I watched him run a 6:39,(the kids just tell us the time); then the other day I could tell the pace was quicker, he tells us he ran a 5:41!

So I look in the local paper - district results for HS meet. 3rd place-which goes to region - 4:31.

So, he's only 70 seconds away from being considered all-district in HS? Is this possible? Did they fudge the times? Surely not. btw, girls all-district times are in the 5:30 area. He's got a pretty good frame for the event I think, tall, long legs, skinny. He has very little muscle development.

I really enjoyed the 8th grade 1600. I wish my son could have seen that. Boy about my son's heighth, 5'8" or 5'9", muscular, kid runs in first for the first 3 + laps, nice long stride, looks tired, sure enough he gets passed on back stretch, stays reasonably close,
and turns on the jets for the final 150 or so yards, looks like he was shot out of a cannon. 1st place.
 
5:40 is excellent for an 8th grader. If he keeps working, a sub 4:30 is certainly achievable. Understand though, that those 70 seconds are exponentially harder than the 60 seconds from 6:40 to 5:40. I really think there's a genetic barrier at the 4:45 mark. If your son can get into the low 5:00 his freshman year he would seem to have the genetics.

Being tall, 5'8" and higher, is a big advantage in a middle distance race. Usain Bolt aside, the marginal benefits of height for sprinters and long distance athletes are decreasing. You can even compare it to horse racing, the Quarter Horse sprint racers are a bit more muscular and shorter, the Arabian endurance race horses are smaller tougher horses. The thoroughbreds are big, tall, lean, athletic animals...their races take on the same characteristics as a 800m foot race.

If he has a more muscular build, the 800 might be his long term race...IMO, the most exciting race with the best conditioned athletes.
 
thanks, I still think there is something fishy. He ran a minute faster than a week previous? I saw both races. I don't think he ran a minute faster.

The previous week there was a strong wind that could have been a mental factor.

Maybe the timekeeper forgot to start the watch until 20 seconds into the race or something.

Or maybe it really happened, he was definitely motivated, because if he didn't place 3rd in his school or better he wouldn't get to run in front of his grandma the next week. I did yell some encouragement to him on the closing stretch. I told him someone was right behind him.(other boy was a yard behind him) He doesn't like it when someone tries to pass.

The final verdict will happen next week when they have the district meet.
 
I agree on the 4:45 barrier comment. If a boy has some natural talent and a good work ethic, he should be able to break that barrier by the time he's 16 (give or take a year). But, if he doesn't have that natural ability, he's lucky if he ever runs much lower than that no matter how hard he works.

Regarding your question, I have a better feel for the progression in the 800 than the 1600. A 2:25 is competitive for 7th grade, while 2:15 is real good for 8th grade. Like texas_ex2000 said, the next 10 seconds is much more difficult. I'd say there's a genetic barrier somwhere at or just below 2:05 in the 800 that's similar to the 4:45 barrier in the 1600. I'm basing that on the guys I've seen who are able to separate themselves from the rest in both events.

If you are putting together a 4x800 relay in high school, you won't get far with a bunch of 2:05ish guys because everyone has 4 of those. The exception, of course, is if you are competing on the small school level.
 
I just asked him his 800 time. Obviously I'm way more into this time thing than he is. He said it's 2:42 or something. Actually that's pretty much mathematically the same as a 5:41 1600. That's a 5:24 pace and of course add a little extra time for the slowing down for the longer distance.

He's running the 7th grade district meet this Friday, so it will be something special to watch. I was kind of hoping he would only run the 1600 for a change just to see what he could do totally fresh, but he qualified for the 800 as well. 800 is at the beginning, 1600 at the end.

Those guys are gonna set a torrid pace Friday no doubt. The excitement of everybody's first district race is gonna be something else.

His birthday is September 4th, which explalins why he is among the tallest. He's also one of the greenest.

What will really be interesting is to see if Highland Park dominates the meet like I expect them to. This is a really weird district, all four McKinney middle schools, Sherman, Denison, and Highland Park. HP dominated the cross-country season.
 
Don't read my post as saying that he needs to be running 2:25 to be competitive. He's doing fine where he is. He'll learn so much about pace, running through pain, drafting, passing, etc. by the time he's out of middle school that he'll be taking big chunks off that time.

Let us know how he does on Friday. One thing I always remember about middle school is when there's a big race, there are always a few kids who get too excited and take off too fast. Those kids always hit the wall, so have your son listen to the coaches when they call out his times. He needs to keep his pace. If he has something extra, it'll still be there in the last 200 meters when he needs it most.
 
thanks, Wally. Well, it was a good lesson for him, I think. He had a cough some through the week, he finished in the middle of the pack for the 800, time 2:42, same as last week.(my wife said he didn't take care of the cough)

1600 came in last, disappointing to some degree, but his time was a very good 6:09.

I asked my wife if she felt like this 6:09 verifies the 5:41 of the previous week and she said yes. It was very obvious to her he wasn't running nearly as hard as last week.

I told him his 6:09 was his 2nd best of the spring, told him his average of two best times was 5:55, which is a good starting point for next spring.

As a pure fan, it was very exciting watching some of the events, mostly the 8th grade boys 200. We have a future track star in 8th grade now, Smith. His form appeared to be flawless, and his time was 23.55.

So my son will run cross country in the fall, then be an 8th grader with a starting point of 5:55 for the 1600, if he works hard that time could/should go down hopefully around 10% to something like 5:20ish.

It will be really interesting to see if he puts on about 10 pounds muscle what he could do. imo, he has barely scratched the surface. I'm thinking potential scholarship, or maxing the Army Physical Fitness Test.

He's already on pace to max the run portion of the test.
 
so am I correct that 23.55 is a smokin' time for an 8th grader?(200 meter)

Or is there a chance he's peaking right now?
 
My son was running in a h.s. track meet this weekend. They had special middle school races, the 800m being one of them. The better runners in the 800 ran in the low 2:20s range, and they all looked pretty good so I may have been a bit off when I said 2:15 for 8th graders. I know of several guys who ended up in the mid-1:50s by the time they graduated from high school, and they were closer to that 2:20 mark in 8th grade.
 
When I first started running (freshmen year of high school) I ran probably in the 23-24 minute range and had to play catch up with all the guys who ran in middle school, so that already is a huge advantage for him. I will say that by my senior year though, I was down to a 15:51 5k in cross and had passed most of the guys who had the middle school advantage. District and regional results are completely dependent on where you live though, if you are from houston or dallas you have a much much harder chance of advancing on to the next level, but 4:31 is about right for a 3rd place finish is district (wasn't for me my junior year though). girls are a funny thing in track, their times just plain suck compared to guys, as in my high school times would have made me a collegiate champion if i were a female.

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thanks. I'm hoping he stays with it. That is really impressive going from a 23:00 to a 15:51.

I think I'm gonna lay low on this one, at least for now. Assuming he stays with it, he'll need some real coaching at some point, not just a middle school coach who is just telling him to run.

I don't know about other schools, but I don't see a whole lot of real coaching going on. (for example my son does some stuff that doesn't help him like fighting with the shirt, looking around to see who is there to see him, etc.)

Of course some people would say it's just a bunch of left turns, keep breathing. One PE teacher told me to look for a track club in the summer if he asks. I really like this idea of swimming and running in the water.
 
speaking of funny stuff, the HP runner doing the 800 really made it entertaining the other day. he was running the 8th grade 800, he's a tall guy, a shorter guy from another school tried to pass him, he wouldn't let him, the HP kid jumped out to the 2nd lane to avoid being passed! I was kind of hacked off, until I heard the kid talking to his parents behind me. I was glad to hear the kid say his coach gave him a real hard time about that stunt.

At first I was hacked at the coach, then I realized it was all the kids fault. Man, just think about being a coach in HP! putting up with that kind of kid!
 
Haha, yah, Texas high schools for the most part don't give a rats *** about cross or track. All track is to most schools is what football players do in the offseason. My school actually had the only PE coach who wasn't doing anything become the cross coach, and she had only played basketball and tennis in high school and had never run before in her life. I had to learn everything I know about running from my friends, the internet, and other coaches. I highly recommend reading Jack Daniels books, he's one of the greatest running coaches of all time (aside from making liquor). He was a coach at a camp I went to that was run by Jim Ryun, Ryan Hall was actually my group leader.

If he doesn't seem interested in doing it, I mean, I will say that I had no intention of running in high school, my parents literally forced me into it because my brother was a runner. My summer training before my freshmen year was, once in June and once in July, my dad came home at his lunch break, drove me to McDonalds, then drove out 3 miles away from it, kicked me out, and told me lunch was waiting for me at the end. That eventually became 70 mile weeks, pool workouts, 3 a days (almost 4 at one point), and the best friends I've ever had. So def worth it, I just wish my coach hadn't made me run in the practice meet my senior track season after having a pain in my hip that eventually blossomed into a season/career ending injury
 
Texas doesn't even have the 4x800 as an event in the district/reg/state meets do they? I know they didn't 4-5 years ago, maybe they changed.
 
Ha, the guy (our anchor) probably had a PR of 1:53-54 and had been running the 800 for 4 years at that point, and he had never been above 2. For TX Relays, the 4x800 was our main event because at the time we had the fastest time in the nation (a bunch of schools hand't run it yet, but 7:52 still made us huge favorites in TX Relays). So, we're running the race and the first three legs all PR and put us in first place while on pace to break 7:52, and I believe the high school record or tx relays high school record were within our grasp if our anchor PR'ed. He choked, ending up running something like a 2:10-15 and just barely hung on to 3rd, dropped out of all remaining races (which included some relays), and that night told everybody he was anemic so he was going to eat a big steak.
 
That is a big time choke. My son ran a 2:09 early this season and won the race, believe it or not. But, there was a sustained 40 mph wind (literally) so the conditions were awful for running.

Maybe your anchor had an extra heavy period that month.
 
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