Han Solo wrote:
It’s actually very easy to find what they do. Just look up some of their guys on Strava. I have an excel document with all their XC training from last year, indoor and outdoor track, and this years XC so far. Make sure you find the book Matt Baxter wrote about the 2017 championship season. Lots of info there. But basically it goes a lot like this:
Core Principles
High mileage - basically as much as you can handle. It seems to be I individualized though to what you can manage. Based on podcasts and interviews, it sounds like Day and Baxter were up around 110-120 last year, while others were 80-90.
They lift on Mon/Wed. Not sure what but I believe heavy weight low rep. They also do a ton of supplemental flexibility and strength and mobility. They do a five isolated stretching before every run.
High end aerobic focus
Lots of mileage and sub threshold running, and their speed work is in short chunks of 200-400m. I believe this to be because of the altitude they’re at. It’s more manageable this way. A traditional XC workout for them is 4x6x300 at around 3-5k pace, with #4,6 faster. Short rest between and a few minutes between sets.
I know all summer they basically alternate each week with a 4-8 mile sub threshold run / 10-15x1:00 on/off. And Fridays are 8x20sec Hill sprints as part of their run. And they run long on Saturdays right after Friday workouts. Doubles Mon, tue, Thur, fri. Medium long on Wednesday and single on Sunday.
A lot of their mileage is done very slow actually due to altitude. But they pick and choose when to hammer certain runs. I think their workout the week of Nuttycombe this week was simple 10x1:00 on/off and 4x200.
A typical week in season would be like this:
Mon: Mileage run in the morning / Easy double in the afternoon with lifting, strides, mobility, etc.
TUE: Workout...threshold or SUB T, maybe short reps. Double up as well.
WED: medium long run - 16 for the top guys
THUR: double easy runs again...in the afternoon they do 10-15 sec hill sprints on the treadmill, set at 15 percent, 10-11mph.
FRI: Second workout of the week...opposite of Tuesday, or sometimes they do harder V02 work later in the season.
SAT: long run...18-20 miles or so easy. Sometimes they’ll run this with sub threshold like 3x3 miles if they don’t have a hard workout the day before.
SUN: easy single run
He uses Daniels as the guide for paces, clearly, but doesn’t follow the training plans. Saw some crazy stuff in the track season like 40x400 and 16x1000 for the 5k/10k Guys.
Pretty cool to follow actually. Again, I have every day of their training for the last 2 years basically if you’d like more details.
Really interesting stuff. I think what stands out is the second long run of 16 miles they do mid week. Which is on top of a weekend 20 miler.
I wonder if other top programs are doing that? I know Colorado does a 20 miler on Sundays but do they do 16 miler mid week?