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What is the proper off-season and in-season endurance work for a high school sprinter who runs 3-5 events per meet? Is it high mileage base, like the mid-distance runner, with a taper off as season nears or is it low mileage off season and gradually build for a good endurance storage?
Is it neither?

Should the high school sprinter omit miles and do cruise intervals or tempo and speed endurance and/or fartlek for sprinters to get his endurance quotas in?

Any comment or advice is appreciated.

its hard to say with out knowing what actual events your son is doing if your son is competing in 100 200 110H or really any thing under the 400 the workouts will be different than if he was a 400 man. I am a coolege 400 man and this is what i did this off season2 weeks off after last meet of the year then some very light base work consisting of sprint drills and a 10-15 min run that encorporated some mild hills then in mid-offseason i started a little sprint work about 2-3 days a week nothing terrible some 10 200m or 2 mile's of in and outs on a track as well as some lifting atleast 2 days a week (never back 2 back) and some work on block starts and currently i am in the last phase of my off season workout which consists of a light 15-20 min run 3 days a week followed by lifting and 3 days a week of sprint work with 1 day off usually sun (during all phases ) the lifting i stepped up at this point as you want to get to optimun physical shape before the season when you will do some sort of sprint work every day and only lift once a week just to keep yourself in the shape you were in the begining of the season hope this helps if your son is a 100 200 110 man let me know and i will give you workouts for those events

Cool Great White,
Joe did the 100,200,400, and some of the relays last season.
In our county he squeaked out every 100, and had no competition in the 200 and 400 (since the 100 men didnt go on to 200 or 400). Usualy he ran in 3 to 4 events per meet.
In the state meet he will likely again go for the triple (100,400,200) since the times are doable in relation to the rest of the states. His pb's are all within striking distance of the records (he got the 200 record last season -21.90).
He won the 200 and 400, and d'qed in the 100 (false start). In hawaii we have an off day between trials and finals. On trials day one can go for records since one has an hour or two between sprint events. This is the day to go for the records.
On finals day though, no such luxury, and it was a bear to recover between the 400 and the 200 - half hour. He gutted it out and won.

This year he will have to be in better shape since, barring injury, on finals it will be all three in one meet. We are counting on his being a year older and hopefully stronger.

My guess is that the 400 training and or a combination or 400 plus shorter sprints is best.

I have dismissed the idea of running mileage as an endurance factor, even though Clyde Hart has his 400 men do 10-15 miles a week in off season and then tapers off severely in season.

I can give you a run down of his work so far and see what you think. We are amateurs, and although Joe is game, he is not GUNG HO.

Yeah so great white, good to hear from you...
please let me know what you think and any advice from you will be appreciated.

as far as your comment on mileage for sprintes goes from what i know there are two schools of thought one is my own and one is from the canadian national 400 coach
the canadian coach was involved in a track clinic put on at my highschool about 2 or 3 years ago in it he said he rarely has his 400 guys do anything more than 2-5 miles/week during the offseason and during their season he never has them run over 150 meters at a time i don't really know of any great canadian 400 guys so take it for what its worth
as far as i go my senior year in highschool i came out of no where from an average 800 man to become a colege caliber 400 man so my coach was faced with a problem he had no one on the team i could train with i was 3-4 seconds ahead of all the other sprinters so he decided to have me train with my best friend who happened to be a 4:10 miler i would do all my speed work with him and sprint specific work by myself and then we would go out for a 2-3 mile run. it improved us physically for sure i was able to hold it together better through the last 60 meters of the 400 where you really just want to die and he was able to put in a much stronger kick to easily overtake his only competition in the state, but it also helped us mentally it made us both much more aggressive and want to win even more he allways wanted to beat me in speed work and i allways wanted to beat him on a distance run we both won state titles and broke school records so i mean you decide which one you like but mileage isn't necessarily terrible for sprinters

ok greatwhite, thanks,
on your previous message i see that even with your 15 -20 minute steady state runs, which is the extent that we do once a week (fartlek), and your speed and power/strength work - alternating between endurance and central nervous system work, you ommited any 500, 400, 300 or more speed endurance runs. is that because you dont do them?

we are currently alternating between endurance (recovery) and hills or elementary speed work. (season starts in late feb.)

our endurance work as was the subject, is mainly half hour fartlek, and tempo runs (75% of full speed) consisting of 100, 200, 300 and 400 meters (total a mile) with short recovery in between.

our strength work is short hill runs, and we also do some short speed runs (30 meters). we dont have a weight room access. and if there is anything that we are lax about so far it is core work - abs, pushups...

eventually (around jan/feb or sooner) I want to incorporate some speed endurance; starting with 100, and progressing up to 400. We havent even gotten to 100's (full speed) yet but will be there by end of the month.

what do you say about 400 speed endurance runs?

thanks

i omitted the 300 400 and 500s mostly b/c i just forgot and partly b/c i hate them but no if you would like some speed endurance mainly what i do is 400 repeats i usually like to run about 12 of them w/ 3-4 min of recovery time and they are usually run between 70%-80% depending on how my coach is feeling as for your weightlifting troubles in high school i rarely lifted weights during track season (i lifted a lot for football) but once i got into college it became a bigger part of our off season training than running so for right now your probably fine w/o much weight training as long as you keep up your basic streangth w/ a lot of abs and push-ups if possible some medicine ball work is a really good core streangthener as well you can find good medicine ball workouts any where but russian twists are probably the best i've found just sit on the floor holding your feet off the floor with your knees bent and holding a 8-10lb medicine ball in your outstreached arms and twist your waist touching the ball to the floor if done right it should be tough