How long will it take to become mediocre: a training log

Week of 7/7-7/13

Sun: rest

Mon: 7.5 miles easy (8:00) +4x100 strides

Tue: 1 mile warm/cool + 14x600m

Wed: 3 miles easy (8:00)

Thu: AM: 4 miles warm/cool + 3k Tempo effort on XC course(11:23)

PM: 5 miles easy (7:45)

Fri: 5 miles easy (8:00)

Sat: 8 miles long (7:45)

Total: 40 miles

Okay week. I was hoping to hit a few more miles but it's still early on in the season and I have time to get more. I am on pace for close to 50 this week so we'll see how that goes.

Wes C.- dang that's an impressive progression. Obviously you do have a ways to go but you sure seem to have the talent needed to run a fast marathon, it's just a matter of consistency in training (i guess i'm not one to talk ha-ha). are you going to be doing a half shortly after the 5k and the 1600 to gauge where you are at in terms of marathon fitness? Those just for fun times post college are crazy to me. Good Luck!

Week of 7/14-7/20

Sun: rest

Mon: 8.5 miles easy + 4x100m

tue: 1 mile warm/cool + 7x1200m w/ 2 mins rest (4:42 Avg)

PM: 3 miles easy

Wed: 3.5 miles easy (8:15)

Thu: 1 mile warm/cool +m 7.5 miles fartlek (3x(5on/off-3on/off-1on/off))

Fri: 5 miles easy (8:00)

Sat: AM: 5.5 miles + 8x100m strides

PM: 3 miles (8:30)

Total: 44 miles

Good week. I wish I would have run more on wednesday but oh well. there's always this week to hit 50. I want to be around 50-55 from here until 8/24 (first XC meet of the year.)

Running a big local road 5000 on 8/10. Might get to see some fast guys from a local college in the elite race so that's going to be really cool to watch.

This season of summer training has been interesting to me. As some of you who have been following this thread know, my team isn't great and last year we qualified for XC state as a team for the first time in several years. This year we have a LOT of depth especially in the 3-10 runners where anyone could step up at any time. It's senior year for me so team state podium or bust, and I believe we have an excellent shot just based on all of the talent the team has going into the start of the season.

Pretty solid week!

What are you aiming for in the 5k?

Wec C.- thanks, I felt good this week and really am feeling strong again. My goal for the road 5k is just sub-18 and I have no idea what I want out of this XC season.

I have never set a season goal that I have actually hit to this point, but maybe this season I will hit sub-17:30 (which has been the goal for several years now). Mostly I am just running to do what I can for my team.

Week of 7/21-7/27

Sun: 1 mile warm/cool + 250-200-150-100-100 in (40, 29, 18, 14.5, 14.1) with 4 mins rest between reps.

Mon: .75 miles warm, 10 miles progression (8:10-6:55) avg. 7:25

Tue: 2.5 miles warm/cool + 7x1200 w/3 mins rest (4:30 Avg) + 8x100m strides

Wed: 7 miles (7:40)

Thu: 8 miles easy (7:45)

Fri: 5.5 miles easy + 8x100m

Sat: 7 miles warm/cool + 2 miles at tempo effort (6:36)

Total: 50.5 miles

Good week. I'm going to start doing speed work on sundays alternating weeks between hill sprints and track work all with long rest just to build strength. the workout tuesday felt really good and I think I am adapting to it pretty well, especially considering how hilly the course is that we use. Next week I will be working quite a bit more than this week so hopefully my mileage won't suffer too badly but I wouldn't bet on more than 45.

I finally got my ACT score back and applied at the DIII school which I intend to walk-on at which I am particularly excited about at the moment! Don't know what it is I need to do otherwise but it's a good start. 2 weeks until big road race. WHat should I go for? I was thinking sub-18 but maybe yall think that might be too fast/slow for me at the moment.

I think you should go for a DNS. There is literally no reason why you should do it. You have a long season ahead of you. This is why you haven't progressed well: you aren't patient. Stop racing and train for a few weeks man!!!

Signed, a fellow high schooler

Week of 7/28-8/3

Sun: rest

Mon: AM: 4 miles (8:20)

PM: 8 miles (7:20) + 4x100m strides

Tue: 1 mile warm/cool + 4x100m strides, 8x1k on hilly course w/3 mins rest avg (3:55)

Wed: 6 miles moderate (7:30)

Thu: AM: .5 mile warm + 4.5 miles fartlek

PM: 4 miles easy + 8x100

Fri: rest

Sat: 4 miles warm/cool + 4x100m strides, 5k race @ good effort but not a race effort in (18:18)

Total: 41.4 miles

Couldv'e been better this week. I felt pretty sick monday through wednesday and my work schedule has not been doing me any favors. Couldve been better, couldve been worse.

The 5k today was fun, really just a fitness check on a hilly course to determine what I will be going for next saturday, and I am thinking 17:40-17:50 is a reasonable goal. I am pretty excited about this because I have wanted to get under 18 since my sophomore year and it is finally looking like it could happen

smh my head- i'm not taking thee races too seriously atm. Just having fun with my training and this will be my first serious effort since early July. Not too worried about burnout.

Are you planning to get to 60ish mpw by the end of the summer, maybe even 65-70 if you feel really good, and trying some tempos? Also running some long singles rather than doubles. College runner here, that helped me improve a lot. I think you could see some big gains with that, but of course you know your own situation best and have a current coach too.

m o a r m i l e s wrote:

Are you planning to get to 60ish mpw by the end of the summer, maybe even 65-70 if you feel really good, and trying some tempos? Also running some long singles rather than doubles. College runner here, that helped me improve a lot. I think you could see some big gains with that, but of course you know your own situation best and have a current coach too.

I think this will be a key for improvement. There has to be a progression of some sort from year to year. If you ran 40 mpw for the last 2 years and there's no appreciable change in volume or intensity, I wouldn't expect any change in performance.

Fast intervals and 100s will only get you so far. Without incremental changes in mileage and threshold training, there won't be any improvement to fitness.

The dilemma here I think is that there is a coach who is dictating workouts for the OP. In their case, I would recommend trying to add easy mileage somehow - maybe increasing warm up and cool down by a mile or two. This could be adding an easy 30 minute double to a couple days per week. Just something to increase the aerobic stimulus.

Week of 8/4-8/10

Sun: rest

Mon: 11.5 miles long (7:28)

Tue: 1 mile w/c + 9x1k on hilly course (Avg 3:37) w/3 mins rest + 6x100m

Wed: 1 mile w/c + Milk mile in (6:01)

Thu: 1.5 mile warm/cool+ 4x200, 6.5 mile fartlek.

Fri: 4 miles easy (8:10)

Sat: 6 miles easy (8:05)

Total: 38.5

Low week due to work and getting started getting ready for school. I am really annoying myself with the inconsistency and had meant toget into the mid-50's this week. oh well, still have a long season to get the miles up.

Week of 8/11-8/17

Sun: rest

Mon: 8 miles easy (7:45)

Tue: 1 mile warm/cool + 10x800 w/2 mins rest (Avg. 3:08)

Wed: 10 miles moderate (7:15)

Thu: 1 mile warm/cool + 5 mile TT onsuper hilly state park (32:25)

Fri: 7 miles easy (7:55)

Sat: 8 miles easy (8:00)

Total: 45 miles

Ok so I've been quite busy for the last two weeks and have just been forgetting to post with what little time I have to do so. lotta hours at work and applying for colleges etc. I'll try not to miss another post lol.

Either way I was ok with how this week went. Ideally I wanted some more miles but oh well.

This next week I'm trying to hit 50 again and we also have our first meet of the season at a pretty fast course in our state (some speculate that it may be short). I am going to go out around 5:50 and try to move hard after the first mile just to see how that works.

Decent training!

Good luck at the first race - do you use a good watch or any way to get your own measurement?

A lot of time xc courses are indeed off, so I always used to like to know how much so I could gauge my performance.

Week of 8/18-8/24

Sun: 8 miles easy (8:15)

Mon: 5 mile warm/cool, 2 miles at a hard effort-will get to that in a moment- in 12:05

Tue: 4 miles easy

Wed: rest

Thu: 2 mile warm/cool + 8x1k w/3 mins rest (Avg. 3:48)

Fri: 5 miles easy (8:10)

Sat: 3 miles warm/cool + 5k in (18:15) with splits of (5:33, 6:02, 6:03, 0:37) and watch had me at 3.12 miles.

Total: 37 miles

Significantly lower week than expected due to a couple practice cancellations from weather and I had work after so running was quite difficult.

The hard effort on monday was a team time trial to decide who got to go to the meet on Saturday. I knew I could easily get a spot so it wasn't all-out, but I kept it hard.

NOW to the race. I am pretty happy with how it went and learned quite a bit about how I should execute my future races. I took the first 800 out comfortably and then just started to pick people off and moved quite a bit. That was likely my first mistake as at mile 2 I was struggling pretty hard to keep my legs moving at a good pace. I had intended to make a pretty hard move at 4k but was honestly just more worried about keeping my legs moving at the pace I was going to finish with. I competed hard and think a good goal for my teams next meet (supposedly 4k) is going to be 13:55. I say supposedly because last year I ran 14:31 (5:50 pace) and still wasn't able to run that as a 5k pace by the end of the season which doesn't make much sense to me.

Hopefully this next week in training will turn out better than the last

WesC.- I use a Garmin 35 for running to ensure course accuracy. I need to work on stopping my watch when I cross the line to see my time instead of having to wait a few hours for the official result, but i look at the watch for distance and an estimation of time afterwards.

Another good week with a decent race result!

How has training been coming along since that point?

Wes C. wrote:

Another good week with a decent race result!

How has training been coming along since that point?

First of all, thanks for the comment! Nextly here is just a general overview of the last couple of weeks:

9/1-9/7

38 miles including on tuesday 8x1k @3:48 w/3 mins rest

Thursday we did our first "real" session with 4x600 w/3 mins rest (2:00), 200 all-out (downhill 27.1) then 5 min rest, 6x400 w/1 min rest avg. 82.

Then saturday ran a 5k on our home course in 18:30, close to if not over 90 degrees so I was really happy with that.

9/8-9/14

45 miles including:

10x1k w/3 mins rest avg. 3:44 (felt particularly strong, temps were lower than usual so that may have factored in.

Thursday did the newer session again but adding 2 400's for:

4x600 w/3 mins rest (2:00)

3 mins

200 all-out downhill(26.8)

5 mins rest

8x400 w/1 min rest (80)

and felt really good. no race that week though I had planned to race in an 8k.

This weekend I'll be racing MSSU and that weather is rojected to be absolutely perfect. course is fairly hilly but pretty dang fast. I'll go for 17:45 but I'm not expecting to hold onto that pace for more than 4k. We'll see what happens.

winnr1 wrote:

This weekend I'll be racing MSSU and that weather is projected to be absolutely perfect. course is fairly hilly but pretty dang fast. I'll go for 17:45 but I'm not expecting to hold onto that pace for more than 4k. We'll see what happens.

Time: 17:43

Splits:

1k- 3:24

2k- 6:53 (3:29)

3k- 10:27 (3:34)

4k- 13:59 (3:37)

5k- 17:43 (3:44)

1 Mile- 5:25

2 mile- 11:08 (5:43)

3 Mile: 17:05 (5:57)

.11- (0:38)

Race was quick! Just about everyone on my team set a PR to the point where we were all questioning course length lol.

I probably won't do weekly training stuff anymore because my mileage has been embarrassingly low and honestly, I haven't been keeping too much track of it so much as just running and lifting weights and watching the improvement.

Looks like a good progression for you. Congratulations on a new 5k xc pr! You are still going out way too fast in most races. For track, you ultimately dropped a lot of time at multiple distances. I was puzzled why you were running all these weeks with 8x800m, which is a 5k workout (but ultimately paid off a good deal in your 2M times), adding a lot of other interval/speed work, and then running on very tired legs in your races, when you never got to race after a full taper outdoors. You would have dropped easily into the 4:40s with the pace you were running for 4's and 6's, plus the 2:10.

There you raced a hard 800m time trial two days in a row, indicating that you did one on your own the day before the team. I didn't understand why. Really try to get more sleep every day, go hard day-easy day, get some easy miles before school sometimes, and do not do long workouts several times in the same week as important races. You should drop a .lot of time that way.

9/23-9/29

Not a great training week. Legs were still tired through Tuesday from the race and my workouts suffered. Raced at Rimn ROck and ran what is likely one of the worst races of my life so far, 5k in 19:11 with splits of:

3:15

6:48 (3:33)

10:39 (3:51)

14:48 (4:09)

19:11 (4:23)

Went out way too hard because I wanted to snag a spot in the pack early and didn't feel like I was going too hard, but payed for it big time at about the 3k. My legs just wouldn't turn up those last few hills and barely finished. Probably going to be running in our JV race at conference next thursday as a result, but who knows.

zxcvzcvx- - Thanks! And yes, I am still aware of the recurring theme of me going out way too hard and dying badly near the end of races. I'm going to try to go out slower in our conference meet, but I don't know if it will happen. I'm much too scared of going out too slowly and not being able to catch back up, which I know is stupid con sidering how long the race is.

In Track this year, I was really frustrated by the training which we did and wanted to change it up, but I just do what the coach assigns and run what I can. The 800 Time trial the day before the team time trial was due to me not knowing about the time trial the next day, but I was really happy with the times. It may be a bit early to think about track, but this spring I want to run:

5000- 16:55

3200- 10:10

2000sc- 6:50

1600- 4:39

800- 2:05

I will be training with our mid-distance group once a week to build speed and hopefully I can go faster than my 28-second 200m entails ha-ha.

Bro look at how all of your xc races are going in terms of splits

Every time, you go out hard, and slow way down

YOU SLOWED DOWN OVER 1 min/k in your last race!!!

Go out more conservative 3:30-3:35 per k next race, then trust that you have the fitness and experience and mental strength to pick people off and move up. You can do it I believe in you!

maybe not 3:35 ... but like 3:25-3:30 ish