How do you structure your training during HS XC season?

At my school, we just treat the races as tempo runs. The 16-17 minute guys will usually finish the dual meets in around the 18:30 range. This is followed by 4x400 at rep with full recovery. Strides are done on Mondays at rep pace.

Thursday we do a long interval workout. Something like 5x1200 or 7x1000.

We usually run 4 invites on Saturdays, one of which is only an 8 mile relay, where each person runs 2500 meters.

Long runs are done early in the base phase and early in the season, but are cut out in the middle of October, in favor of a five or six miler. I think this helps us stay fresh for the championship season. All running on the days we don't have a race or workout is done very easily.

We usually enter the championship season feeling pretty fresh, since we have usually only race 5 times before then. I think it works well.

Bump

1 mile @ 5k race pace seems like a lot before a 5k race. I can see a mile at tempo but race pace and then a race seems like it would be a lot of stress on they body.

Running the race as tempo seems logical. I just don’t like the idea of having kids run a race as tempo. A race is a race and it should be something special. But when you race 10+ times a season its not as meaningfully. I guess as long as they know what races are important it could work.

Mentally I can also see running tempo during a race as a negative. If a kid runs 18:30 as a tempo and loses by a min. it can really play with their head. They might be thinking, “I ran 18:30, it still hurt, not sure if I could have won even if I was running hard.” What do you think? .

Our coach tries to cut as many dual meets as he can. What he does do is split squads. He has a rule that no one is allowed to race twice in a week, and no more than 6 to 8 in a season. He usually lets the rookies run in the dual meets, and the upper level runners run in the invites. Here is a typical week for us.

M: mile repeats slightly slower than race pace with small recovery

T: 50 to 60 mins rec.

W: Some type of turnover

R: 50 to 60 mins

F: 35 to 40 mins

S: Race or 90 mins

exhsrunnur wrote:

Our coach tries to cut as many dual meets as he can. What he does do is split squads. He has a rule that no one is allowed to race twice in a week, and no more than 6 to 8 in a season. He usually lets the rookies run in the dual meets, and the upper level runners run in the invites. Here is a typical week for us.

M: mile repeats slightly slower than race pace with small recovery

T: 50 to 60 mins rec.

W: Some type of turnover

R: 50 to 60 mins

F: 35 to 40 mins

S: Race or 90 mins

A schedule after my own heart!

I like the way he/she looks at Saturdays. Often we add on extra mileage after the race so that we get our big mileage day that day and then take the Sunday off.

Pre Race (3 weeks)

1. 10x60 sec hill reps with 3 minute jog rest

2. 7x1200 @ T pace w/ 1 minute rest

Early Racing (3 weeks)

1. 6x800@ I pace w/ 2 minute jog

2. 7x1200@ T pace w/ 1 minute rest

3. saturday race

Late Racing (3 weeks)

1. 5x1000@ I pace w/ 3 minute jog

2. 5x1200 @ T pace + 6x200 @ mile pace w/ 200 jog

3. saturday race

Peak Racing (3 weeks)

1. 4-6x200 @ mile pace w/ 200 jog

2. 4-6x1200 @ T pace w/ 2 minute rest

3. the big ones

Keep mileage steady at about 45 per week the whole season and only taper the week of sectionals and state. Just a slight taper maybe down to 35 and 30 for the last two weeks. What do you guys think of my daniels inspired plan?

I was going to add that their long run will be kept at ten miles easy. And that days between workouts will only be a 30 minute run. Plenty of barefoot striders on easy days to keep the feet strong!

Two things:

1) During your second and third phases you have 6 I-pace workouts and 6 races scheduled. That's a crapload of VO2 max running, IMHO, especially all in on block. I'd prefer to do I-pace on weeks when you don't race, and do T-pace on weeks when you do.

2) You're planning on doing 1200m cruise intervals for every T-pace session? We start short (1000s) and move to longer (miles, 2000s, 2 miles, 3 miles) as the season progresses.

Think less run more. You don't get good at racing unless you race. I don't see a problem racing every week. This thread is turning into a calculus test.

Malmo help us!

Good lord, please no.

There's nothing complicated about saying that running too hard too often can cause stale legs and minds in high school runnners.

johnny so how do you periodize your rep day. I get the tempo day starting 12 weeks out to peak. But how do you manage that 12x200 day. Like 12 weeks out, 6 weeks out, 2 weeks out from the big one how do you change it.

Im no coach, in fact, just a lowly high school senior, but this is what our coach did last season and it worked for me and my team, we peaked perfectly and had a gread season. We followed this general schedule:

M: hard

T: hard

W: easy

T: hard

F: off

S: race

S: easy or long run

Early season

M: 6 mile tempo

T: 3x2mile

W: 45 min recovery

T: 50 hills (sets of 10 and 5) + 2 miles hard

F: off

S: race

S: long run

Mid season

M: 2mile, mile, mile

T: 2xmile, 4x800

w: 45 min recovery

T: similar to early season or 8x800

F: off or jog the course for S race

S: race

S: easy run or long run

Late season

M: 6x800

T: 3x800, 3x400

W: 30-45 min easy

T: 6-8x400

F: jog the course

S: race

S: easy run

aj;ldkfjasd;lj wrote:

johnny so how do you periodize your rep day. I get the tempo day starting 12 weeks out to peak. But how do you manage that 12x200 day. Like 12 weeks out, 6 weeks out, 2 weeks out from the big one how do you change it.

To be honest with you, we don't change it. In my view, it has the same purpose the whole season: to promote a fluid, comfortable stride at mile race pace, which is faster than 5K race pace. When we start out we do start slower: fast boys may start at 12x200@36 with 1:30 jog recovery and fast girls at 42. When they get to their actual mile race pace--or a bit slower since it's xc season--they stay there and don't get any faster the rest of the season. So my fast boys this year went 32-34 for the set and fast girls were going 39-40.

The point is to maintain good mechanics. It's interesting that they do look and feel more comfortable at that pace as the season goes on. The workout is not supposed to be that hard, and it isn't. We had a 4:13 1600m runner this year who did 33 for these in xc. We had a pair of 800 runners--a 1:52 and a 1:55--who always wanted to run faster but who I made run these in 33 anyway.

One thing I noticed: if I told them to get out hard, which I don't like to do--they could do it easily and then settle into race pace. I think that's from getting comfortable running fast. (I much prefer the Colorado approach of getting out a bit off the gas and then picking people off. But sometimes that's just not an option.)

Thanks for asking.

Johnny I like your idea of the rep day and tempo day but what do you think about having two tempo days each week such as.

Monday: 6 miles or 45 minutes

Tuesday: Tempo Meet or 5xmile w/ 1 minute rest

Wednesday: 5x1000@ tempo w/ 1 minute + 8x200R

Thursday: 6 miles or 45 minutes

Friday: 6 miles or 45 minutes

Saturday: Race + Fartlek for full v02 max session

Sunday: 10-15 mile long easy run

I think having the tempo day and the tempo/rep day would work well, and never run any intervals except for the meet day. When it gets closer to peak I would drop the 1000s @ tempo and just do reps that day. What do you think about that.

Well, personally, I think that's too much tempo. Too much of any kind of running is just too much, I think. I would rather get all the volume of tempo I'm going to do in one workout--one major stress of any kind per week.

Maybe you have them tempo another couple of miles after your "tempo" race? (Only the Big Boys should probably attempt that.)

We notice after a few weeks' worth of tempo--cruise intervals and the like) that we need a week or two away from it or we get stale. So I'll have them run a 5K pace workout that week instead, or they'll race, or something like that.

I don't want to give the impression that I don't like to assign I-pace running, because I do. In fact, I wrote out the plans for boys and girls the other day, and the boys actually have 4 I-pace workouts in the plan, while the girls have 4. (Girls are shooting for NXN this season and have different needs. Boys are young and just need to try to win State, which they can do.)

Here's our workout progression for a few weeks for last fall for our boys:

5x1000T with 1:00 rest

6x1000T with 1:00 rest

4x1miT with 1:30 rest

2x2miT with 3:00 rest

5x1000I with 2:30 rest

This 5-week set began the 2nd week of August and ended just before our first invitational. We followed with a couple more weeks' worth of tempo before we did another one of thse workouts, since we were racing.

My #1 training philosophy is that you know when it's time to change stresses--we can always see that in our athletes. Rather than keeping to the same workouts, we change them up and refresh their legs and their minds.

Wish we could edit these!

I meant to say that the boys have 4 I-pace workouts in the plan, while the girls have 5.

bump for johny. is there a reason you use the 90 seconds per mile for cruise intervals. you seem to follow daniels but differ in that regard. i thought maybe its because high schoolers T pace is a little too agressive for them and 90 seconds rest with the T pace works out right but can you explain that.

Interesting to see this thread bubble to the surface again. It's nice break from all the point-and-counterpoint about USATF.

It has occurred to me since my last posting that the pace at which you run recovery is pretty important to these discussions.

In Daniels' first edition, he said recovery should be two minutes per mile slower than 5K race pace. I tried that for a while and had way too many of my kids doing some serious plodding. In his second edition, he changed that to 1.5 to 2 minutes slower than race pace. I still think the newer recommendation is skewed toward the elite athlete. Admittedly, his book is skewed toward athletes who are better than your average high school runner, but the second edition does make a better effort at giving some useful information for training non-elite high school kids. Bottom line for me--If you're a girl splitting 7 minute miles in a 5K race, you're probably reinforcing lots of bad running habits by running recovery at 8.5 to 9 minutes per mile. Ditto for a boy splitting 6 minute miles in a 5K race.

I'm more inclined toward a recovery pace 1 to 1.75 minutes per mile slower than race pace. I believe this holds almost all high school athletes with a rule of thumb that the faster you are, the more gap you can have between race and recovery pace. Of course, we don't run as much "recovery" pace as some of the previous posters (we rarely go over 45 minutes on a recovery day).

You could argue that by running our recovery faster we're accomplishing much of what other programs do in tempo workouts. I think that's true to an extent, but isn't the whole picture.

Anyhow, just some thoughts to keep the best thread on the front page going...

In his discussion of cruise intervals Daniels suggests 1 minute of rest for every 5 minutes of running. For my good high school girls, a t-pace 1000 on our rolling course comes out to about 4:15, while a t-pace mile comes out to about 6:40. So we just do 1:00 rest on the 1000s and 1:30 on the miles as a way of keeping the rest period pretty proportional.

Now we do use workout groups, and on the Gold groups I'll often have to limit the rest even further or they'll go too fast. They tend to want to run th eworkout closer to 10K pace otherwise.

My slower kids really do need the extra rest time--they are just trying to figure out what's happening to their bodies with this kid of workout (plus we have a crapload of kids to herd around), so we give them the extra :30.

I looked at Daniels' xc plan the other day, and we really only differ in terms of interval workouts. My experience is that interval workouts are less important in cross country than in track and tend to make kids flat rather than fast.

Great thread--beats the Goucher bashing!