Xc practice holding me back?

Talk with your coach about your training needs. Chances are some of your teammates are in the same boat.

I’m in the same boat myself. Just do the mileage at once, don’t worry about what your teammates think. If they wanna be lazy and do the bare minimum let them. But you’ll be the one running crazy fast times not them.

If you want to get better, 50 MPW in single runs is the way to go. I would talk to some teammates who might want to go further and then talk it over with your coach.

If that doesn't really work, you might have to do some long runs by yourself on the weekends and then pick a day during the week when you run by yourself until CC practice is mandatory.

Another half-assed day of running with the girls xc coach. We did a hill “workout” today which involved running up the hill and then walking down the hill and then doing push-ups/burpees/squats at the bottom. We did about 13 of these but 6 of then we did with a side shuffle. This is bullshit. We are not even running, the girls coach makes it more like basketball practice, and we only logged 3.6 miles today and I’m supposed to be running 50 mpw.

ForefootRunner177 wrote:

Another half-assed day of running with the girls xc coach. We did a hill “workout” today which involved running up the hill and then walking down the hill and then doing push-ups/burpees/squats at the bottom. We did about 13 of these but 6 of then we did with a side shuffle. This is bullshit. We are not even running, the girls coach makes it more like basketball practice, and we only logged 3.6 miles today and I’m supposed to be running 50 mpw.

This training is junk! If you aren't going to talk to your coach about what you actually need to be running, you need to be doubling. Do a main run on your own and use practice as a lighter, easy run.

Just curious...... why are you "supposed" to be running 50 a week. What does your coach want you running?

He didn’t specify, I assume he wants us to train to our ability, and I ran about 40 mpw for track and want to bump up to 50-60 mpw for xc but we don’t run enough at practice, and to make matters even worse, the girls coach is making us do these half-ass workouts when our coach isn’t here.

ForefootRunner177 wrote:

Another half-assed day of running with the girls xc coach. We did a hill “workout” today which involved running up the hill and then walking down the hill and then doing push-ups/burpees/squats at the bottom. We did about 13 of these but 6 of then we did with a side shuffle. This is bullshit. We are not even running, the girls coach makes it more like basketball practice, and we only logged 3.6 miles today and I’m supposed to be running 50 mpw.

"hey coach, you want me to side shuffle up a hill in a race? Is that why we are doing this?" THats what I would say.

As for daily mileage, I have kids that get 50+ in and others 30. I have my high mileage kids go out after or show up before regular times and get the miles in. Just go out and and run more or show up early.

Alright so I have one question about doubling, would it be better to add a 5-6 mile run later in the afternoon today, run about 4 miles tomorrow for recovery and then 8 miles on Saturday. Or would it be better to not run again today, but run about 6 miles in the morning for recovery and then another 3 Miles in the afternoon of tomorrow, and then run 9 miles on Saturday. Which would be better?

there's nothing wrong with doubles.

in those 2 cases you are splitting hairs. Listen to the body, it will tell you

since you're in high school I wouldn't worry about doubles vs singles, or how exactly you split your mileage up. Just get the volume in and it'll be good for you.

Have you thought of running to practice and run back home?

You are the 17,569,325,112th high school kid to post something like this on letsrun. You don't like your high school coach's program and are sure you could be better on your own.

I went to high school in the early-mid 90s and I thought the same thing. It was the low mileage era, and my coach thought anything over 15 miles a week would cripple me. I viewed my coach as an obstruction to my success. Here's what I did. Get ready, it's revolutionary.

I ran more on my own.

That's it. I'd do an extra 4-6 miles at home on my own after practice. My coach never knew about it, and I got in the miles I thought I needed.

Was I any better because of it? Probably not. I was never as good as I thought I was, and I've learned through the years is that I wasn't nearly as smart as I thought I was (and I'm still not).

So if you think you need more miles, go do it on your own. Your coach and teammates never even have to know about it.

Do you actually have to go to summer practices? In my state, coaches aren't allowed to have mandatory workouts over the summer. They can only host optional training.

If you can, just run on your own. This is the great thing about our sport. You can just step out your front door and go for a run. No need for a team or a coach or anything.

ForefootRunner177 wrote:

Another half-assed day of running with the girls xc coach. We did a hill “workout” today which involved running up the hill and then walking down the hill and then doing push-ups/burpees/squats at the bottom. We did about 13 of these but 6 of then we did with a side shuffle. This is bullshit. We are not even running, the girls coach makes it more like basketball practice, and we only logged 3.6 miles today and I’m supposed to be running 50 mpw.

When I was in high school, we had a guy in a similar situation at our rival school. His coach literally just said to go run for 30 minutes every day for practice. He ran a 15:49 that season, his 2nd best teammate didn't even break 20 minutes.

What he did was he would run in the mornings before school or run again after practice. During the summer he skipped optional summer practices and was running 80 mpw all at 6:40 pace or faster. Once school started he'd run 30-60 min before school and the 30 min at practice. He'd do a long run on Sunday and run easy on Saturday. He was still getting 80+ mpw during the cross country season, he improved so much (17:30 5k the previous year) that he decided to stop doing speed work and just run mileage. He never told his coach or his teammates what he was doing to avoid starting any drama. His plan worked well for him.

I would recommend doing something similar to what my friend did that season. Run on your own outside of practice, do a weekend long run and run doubles. Don't tell your teammates or coaches about it to avoid starting drama. Run easy at practice and do whatever your coach says at practice to look like a good teammate, but just know that your real training comes outside of practice due to the doubles and weekend long run. I hope this helped!

Park a couple miles from school, run to and from practice. Or just get there early and get some miles in before practice starts.

We have our summer captains practice twice a week in the A.M. i just do the low quality three milers we usually do as a team then just go for another serious run at night. You could run doubles if possible.

Quick update:

Today we did a 2 mile tempo in the pouring rain. Is 2 miles even long enough to be considered a tempo. My tempo pace for a 3 mile tempo is about 6:05/mi but I was only able to do 6:07/mi today due to the rain. Also, the fastest runner on our team says we were at about 27 miles this week, excluding all my doubles off course. I’m at about 43.6 miles and I have to double again today to get in my mileage. Planning on doing an easy run later in the afternoon.