High School XC in season training

First let me say unless it is her first year on the team or she extremely injury prone, she should already be doing more than 25 miles per week, even with races on the schedule.

No two days before a race is the worst possible time to try doubles for the first time. Also there is no reason to do double unless you are running at least 60 miles per week.

Unfortunately poorly timed races are hard to avoid. If my team had races that close together I would be doing everything I could to find a way NOT to do that. If it can't be avoided then I wouldn't have them race one of them and just do one of them as a workout (tempo).

strange. tuesday saturday meets are very common, but not two days before.

i agree with all that stuff coachy said about doubles and mileage.

Yes that's normal.

You don't run your best every meet, by training through these kids will preform even better in the end

cramister wrote:

Yes that's normal.

You don't run your best every meet, by training through these kids will preform even better in the end

Did you read the whole thing?

Yes

If you're talking about them doubling before they were running 60 miles a week, oh well.

Liquori used to say doubles after 70 miles a week, but when he trained for sub 4 in HS that's not how he trained

You get more stimulus and get used to time on your feet twice a day. If you're doubling at such a low volume, by the time you push those regular runs out longer you'll get even more mileage. You'll be used to doing doubles the whole time too. When I was running 15 mpw as a frosh I wish I was doing an extra 2-3 in the morning, who knows what everything would add up to if i was taught about discipline and doubling

cramister wrote:

Yes

If you're talking about them doubling before they were running 60 miles a week, oh well.

Liquori used to say doubles after 70 miles a week, but when he trained for sub 4 in HS that's not how he trained

You get more stimulus and get used to time on your feet twice a day. If you're doubling at such a low volume, by the time you push those regular runs out longer you'll get even more mileage. You'll be used to doing doubles the whole time too. When I was running 15 mpw as a frosh I wish I was doing an extra 2-3 in the morning, who knows what everything would add up to if i was taught about discipline and doubling

I was talking about a lot of things. 1. Doubling for the first time ever two days before a meet. Shouldn't that have been done in the Summer? 2. 25 mpw? That's enough for XC runners? 3. How do you even setup a week with 25 miles, a double and two meets?

You do NOT get more "time on your feet" if you are doubling at 15-25 miles per week then doing it in singles.

TH2024 wrote:

My daughter's team typically runs about 25 miles a week in season. Some easy runs, some mile repeats, some track intervals, and of course they race about once every 7-10 days.

They recently had an important league meet, 5k. Two days before the meet the coaches had them do 2 practices a day for the first time. 4 miles easy in the early morning. And then 800 repeats after school. It all came out to a total of almost 9 miles for that day.

Is this normal? The whole team seemed to underperform at the meet.

Also, the coaches have another 5k league meet scheduled in a few weeks, and 2 days after that meet they have a 5k scheduled at the state championship course at Woodward Park. Is this normal?

Its not something that I would have my athletes do. 2 days before a race that isn't important we may do short threshold 2-3k + 6-8x100m strides that are slightly uphill.

If a coach wants to increase volume they should increase warm up and warm down.

It is hard to know as this coach hopefully has some experience but that always varies with coaching in the US school system.

This is normal. And how does your daughter perceive it?