Old man here now. That was 24 years ago. last time never track these things.
Coach say run, we just run. Training was at 3 times a week on weekdays and then a weekend long run at macritchie at least 5k up to 12k.
That was my most successful year, scrapped a medal position in x-country, won a gold and bronze and national tracks and fields c'ships.
Then I fell out of love with running pretty quickly after that and the decline followed
Huge respect to that, I went through the same. 1 interval session, 1 longer run outside of the school. Long run do on my own. I ran 2 other days as short easy runs.
It was a good experience, glad that you managed to get the experience.
Means you around 38-40? Doable la to regain your peak if you really want. You got the athletic ability already haha
It doesn't work like that, especially if he did it in secondary school.
I had a discussion with my former cross country team mate when I was coaching him. He told me he ran his 2.4km PB 8.20 at 14 y.o. He is nowhere close to that now. Why?
1. He is gym build, hybrid runner right now. Only runs 3 times a week and gyms the other days. Still manages to run sub-10 min 2.4km, close to 1.45 HM recently. So, BMI changes make it harder to achieve his PB times.
2. Most people switch to HM/M later on, doesn't matter their current speed. If you switch to longer distance races, then you would be doing longer intervals at slower pace. Run longer sustained long runs. Lose the explosive power.
3. PB pace difference is also another factor. If PB is sub-20 minutes, it's a lot more attainable than PB sub-18 minutes.
4. Injury risk from high intensity. I don't think this is talked about a lot. In the pursuit of sub-18 minutes 5k, my bro increased his mileage and did crazy workouts. E.g. 1k x 6 at 5k pace but with 90s rest, compared to the usual 2 min rest interval. 1.2k x 5 at 5k pace. Quite a number of his workouts ended up in failure midway throughout the session. Before his actual race, he got injured and raced through the 4.8k with a PB time. Afterwards, he barely ran for 2-3 months, since his season was over and eventually recovered from his injury.