Kids, track and speed. Lucy offers her opinion on goal setting and improvement

Q: My daughter is 13 years old and has been running track meets for the past six years. She started slow with running 400 and 800 meters only and gradually moved up to the 800 and 1500 and is attempting the 3000 meters this season. All of her workouts are on the track (Intervals). On Mondays she normally does 2-4 x 800's followed by on 4-6 x 600 and this day varies, maybe 1200's. On Wednesday she normally does 10-12 x 400's followed by 4-6 x 300's. On Thursdays she normally does 8-10 x 200's followed by 4-5 x 150's. She has no problem with the workouts but really hasn't seen much improvement in this type of workout. She is kind of tall for her age and is still growing. She runs the 800 in 2:30 and the 1500 in 5:11 these are her personal best. What is your opinion? Thanks


A: Your daughter obviously shows talent and ability based on her Personal Best times for 800 and 1500, and the fact that she can easily handle the track workouts indicates that she has stamina and strength. It is great that she is having fun and sticking with the track after 6 seasons already. It is important to remember that your daughter is still quite young from a development perspective, and that if she continues to enjoy track, she has many years ahead of her, with full maturity yet to come, as you have already observed. Whether your daughter goes on to high performance in running, or a life long appreciation for running and fitness you want to keep it fun and avoid burn out by avoiding setting too many time oriented goals at a young age. Runners generally go through periods of plateaus and periods of improvement as they mature as well.

Keeping all that in mind, here are some aspects to training and development that, in my opinion, will create improvement over time.

1. Is your daughter getting a rest period each season, where she has time completely off from workouts and a coached practice. During the off season from track, I encourage kids to play different sports that they also love, especially soccer and swimming, gymnastics or skating. Sports with an element of coordination, balance and strength are excellent ways for kids to stay fit and build overall sports skills.

2. During the track season, most kids are running 3x per week at track workouts and are not doing running mileage outside of the track session. Outside of track practices kids can still be playing other sports (and just being active children), but do not need to run any more mileage than that. If kids are tired when they get to track practice, this will limit their ability to run to their potential.

3. Don't be in too much of a hurry to increase the distance your daughter runs. I would suggest sticking with the 800 and 1500 as her main events and seeing how fast she can run before stepping up the distance. She can do 3000's now and then for fun, but working on speed now will serve her best for her future on the track, even if she wants to be a distance runner.

4. Her track sessions are good in structure. Seeing as she is dong the workouts with no problem, I would challenge her to run faster and then to set some goals with the coach. Pick her favourite event, and a goal time to shoot for and work out a goal pace (per 400, per 200) to reach that time. During the week, during the shorter intervals she can challenge herself to run some of the workout at that goal pace. If it's the 800 she wants to improve, then use the Thursday 200's to run the goal pace.

5. Nutrition and hydration are two important aspects to fitness and overall health. Kids need to
eat well and be hydrated to perform optimally, and paying attention to post workout nutrition for recovery is important.

6. Finally, doing drills and especially barefoot running drills for ankle,calf and foot are vital components to track and field, as is stretching.

As you can see, there are many factors that impact improvement. Taking stock of what you are doing is a good place to start then have some fun setting some goals!

Lucy