Cross Country Training for Adults

I'd love to do something like that, but the cost of travelling to Bend from the east coast is prohibitive for me. Here's the problem you're going to run into: there will be no open meets you can run in from mid october until club nats. You have living history farms xc race somewhere in the midwest and thats the only fast cross country meet in the entire nation that isn't college only.

For anyone on the East Coast Paul Short at Lehigh has an open race that usually has a fair amount of quality at the front end.

As for training, basic training for the right distance (5k/10k) with workouts done on grass/rolling terrain, maybe even trail, ought to do the trick. And don't neglect your supplemental strength work - squats, drills, core work, hill sprints etc.

I'd say just do a lot of natural surface running and hills if you aren't already incorporating those aspects into your training.

Pretty sure we all read the thread title and expected a tale of running, lust and promiscuity

runrawr wrote:

I'd love to do something like that, but the cost of travelling to Bend from the east coast is prohibitive for me. Here's the problem you're going to run into: there will be no open meets you can run in from mid october until club nats. You have living history farms xc race somewhere in the midwest and thats the only fast cross country meet in the entire nation that isn't college only.

What? Lots of college meets allow unattached or club runners to compete. Basically most meets that are called "invitationals" are open. Just look at the XC websites for nearby schools and see what they're racing. Also check your USATF association's page.

As for training, tempo runs on hilly loops are great. Even if you don't know exactly how long it is, you'll get a feel for your pacing and you can track your progress by taking splits. Start them off as cruise intervals (tempo pace with a very short break between each one), and then make them an unbroken run. Don't extend the distance too much, or you'll either be running below threshold or burning yourself out. For example, if you have an 8 minute loop, you might only go from 2 to 3 loops over the course of your season. In an unbroken tempo, try to always make it a slight progression. Your times should get faster with the same effort as the season progresses. As you get fitter, you might have to hold yourself back a bit from time to time, not because it's too easy (it should be the same perceived exertion), but because as you start to realize that you're getting faster, you naturally get excited and want to push yourself more. It's sort of like how you can never really kill yourself in a race when you're out of shape--it's just not exciting enough--but when you're running at PR pace, you always dig deeper at the end.

If you're doing faster repeats, I'd also try to do them off of the track. Ideally you could find a large field that hasn't been landscaped flat for soccer fields. You want something with good footing where you can really get going fast, but you also want to have at least slight variations in slope. Wheel off an 800 meter loop if you want to be fancy, or else just use a GPS for your intervals. It's helpful to not know exactly where you are in an interval, and to be unable to zone out and just cruise. This is mental training as much as anything.

800 dude wrote:

What? Lots of college meets allow unattached or club runners to compete. Basically most meets that are called "invitationals" are open. Just look at the XC websites for nearby schools and see what they're racing. Also check your USATF association's page.

This is a much easier place to find invitational events.

It's the end all be all, but faster than looking at each XC website of nearby schools. In that case, too, it's faster to go to the conference website of the respective D2 or D3 schools and look up the master schedule.

What? Lots of college meets allow unattached or club runners to compete. Basically most meets that are called "invitationals" are open. Just look at the XC websites for nearby schools and see what they're racing. Also check your USATF association's page.

Is this true? Can an old man (like me) line up along side a local college XC team and run the race with them???

As far as late races go, you might be able to run at the Canadian XC Championships in Vancouver the last weekend of November. I could be wrong, but I thought there was a precedent for Americans running it. And there are likely some open races in B.C. before that.

As far as training, normal 5-10k training should be okay, but do what you can on cross country terrain similar to what you'll be racing on. Fartleks, cruise intervals, and long intervals are fairly standard. Hill repeats and hill circuits are also fairly standard.

"Running With Lydiard" also has a section on cross country training. It has what people might consider "workouts" on most days, but it'll be things like a long hill circuit one day, an "easy fartlek" another day, maybe a short time trial the next day, long strides the day after that, etc. So it's all about effort levels there, and obviously there's lots of mileage on top of it.

Runcogrun wrote:

This is a much easier place to find invitational events.

http://www.directathletics.com/upcoming_meets.html

It's the end all be all, but faster than looking at each XC website of nearby schools. In that case, too, it's faster to go to the conference website of the respective D2 or D3 schools and look up the master schedule.

Woah, good call.

I never really had to do much digging myself, because I always found out about more meets than I'd ever want to run just through word of mouth.

topeka wrote:

Is this true? Can an old man (like me) line up along side a local college XC team and run the race with them???

It's basically the same as invitational track meets. It's probably bad form to race if you're going to be so far back that you could get a meet behind schedule or force the XC course to stay open longer, but if you can realistically be within spitting range of the slowest college guys, then you're not really getting in anyone's way.

I looked at Direct Athletics for meets as well, but think I would be in the back somewhere. Right now I'm only running around 21 minutes for road 5K, so I have some work to do. Luckily we are spoiled here in Portland, so there is the Stumptown XC series for post-collegiates. There are definitely fast runners in them, but it's nothing like college meets.

http://redlizardrunning.com/cross-country-series/

I just do an XC season with my club. I focus on XC and only XC for that season, but I find that it really helps my overall fitness when I go back into road racing the next season. It is also extremely fun to race with a club. You should do it, especially if you have a club to run with. Club nationals will be fun this year and in Bend which means Deschutes. You can't go wrong.

xenonscreams wrote:

I just do an XC season with my club. I focus on XC and only XC for that season, but I find that it really helps my overall fitness when I go back into road racing the next season. It is also extremely fun to race with a club. You should do it, especially if you have a club to run with. Club nationals will be fun this year and in Bend which means Deschutes. You can't go wrong.

That's the plan. I am going to join the Red Lizards. I've already been running with them and am friends with most of the members, but never "officially" joined. I want to run on the team for cross country because it's more fun that way and easier to stay motivated.

I agree. The first thing what helps me lot about my fitness. I have never experienced race with this club but could be a great fun to race with this club.

Probably not in your area, but Chile Pepper has an open 10k on the Arkansas course before the college and high school races on 10/5/13. Christin Wurth Thomas won the women's open last year.

http://www.chilepepperfestival.org/

submissive male secretary wrote:

Pretty sure we all read the thread title and expected a tale of running, lust and promiscuity

You were hoping we would put the X into XC?

Last year I had the same idea after watching my daughter compete in XC in her freshman year and was reminded how much fun XC was.

I ran one of the Red Lizard races and ended up in the bottom 10%, but ran the fastest 5k I'd run since college so was pretty happy.

Most training plans assume a long time between races, so what should a 40-something runner do when trying to race a full XC season that lasts a few months and has races every week or two and consists of maybe 7 races through September and October? How best to avoid injury?

I am just using the cross country training plan from Daniels' Running Formula, but I started before the "season." It's hard to tell if I'm really doing any better since I have nothing recent for comparison. I've upped my mileage during this time and am currently doing 3 hard workouts (or 2 workouts + race) and am still running around what I ran for road 5ks earlier this year, just a bit slower due to terrain. I'd hope to be faster with the increase in mileage and intensity, but know that will (hopefully) come later. So really my main goal isn't to be fast for cross country, it's to be faster once I hit the roads again en route to a spring marathon and so on.

In other words and to answer your question, don't cram for the test. Set some long-term goals and incorporate the races into your training.