Anonymous wrote:Parent of a track high school senior who will run D1 next year in college.
I would say, forget about his current times. Just encourage a love of running. Join a youth track program, play rec sports like soccer, lacrosse or basketball that involve running, or just have him play with friends outdoors. Or, train for a 5k together. Only if that interests him.
Get him some good shoes, fitted at a running store.
My DS just did rec league track (very minimal) fro 6-8th grade, and did some rec league soccer. But he always loved running, and he trained in middle school and before freshman cross country by going out out for runs 20-30 minutes at a time.
At his age, you want to build consistency and love of running. Focus less on his current overall times.
A sub 60 sec 400m would be a good high school beginning boys times. For a mile, try to get to 7-8 minute mark to start.
High schools have summer training programs too. Usually on their athletic websites or the coach will share.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:DS is a 12 year old who plays multiple field team sports. He is known for his speed on those teams (fastest or among the fastest).
I hand clocked his 100M and 400M times on the tracks with regular tennis shoes and they are 15 sec and 1m10s respectively. Are there any track athletes here and can put these times into perspectives? I assume these are just general fast times but not that impressive in the eyes of track athletes.
Ignore most of these answers, jeez. A few seem to have a clue.
15s is nothing special while 1:10 in a mom timed one-off time trial is not bad. But neither mean much. He may be able to go considerably faster in an actual race after some prep. You won't know until he runs some track. If he's regarded as fast, he probably is. Now he may be 400/800 or even 1600m fast rather than 100m fast. Good mid distance runners are pretty fast but not on the same planet as 100m runners.
Anonymous wrote:DS is a 12 year old who plays multiple field team sports. He is known for his speed on those teams (fastest or among the fastest).
I hand clocked his 100M and 400M times on the tracks with regular tennis shoes and they are 15 sec and 1m10s respectively. Are there any track athletes here and can put these times into perspectives? I assume these are just general fast times but not that impressive in the eyes of track athletes.
Anonymous wrote:That's not very fast. Last year at the junior olympics, first place for age 12 ran 100m in 12.02s. Even last place for that division (68th place) time was 14.79s. Ages 8 and under 100m dash finished with times between 12s and 13s. 5 of the best 100m dash runners in MD finished with times in the 12s range. 400m runners finished with times between 55s (1st place happens to be from VA), and 1:16 (77th last place) for ages 11. A time of 1:10 would have been close to last place around 72nd place.