can running all 3 seasons be bad/harmful?

Lots of people don't even have an indoor season. I grew up in California, ran high school in the '80s, and even now have never set foot on an indoor track in my life, even though I've lived in Alaska for more almost a quarter century now.

runner69 wrote:

Lots of people don't even have an indoor season. I grew up in California, ran high school in the '80s, and even now have never set foot on an indoor track in my life, even though I've lived in Alaska for more almost a quarter century now.

interesting, yeah I grew up in Cali but moved to New England before middle school. I just find indoor tracks so freaking hard to breathe in and too many turns, no thanks...

OP must be at a crap school if he can choose not to run indoor.

I also swam in high school but in the fall instead of doing XC running. I XC skied during the winter and ran outdoor track during the spring. In my experience, swimming keeps you in amazing aerobic shape as well as develops a lot of mental toughness. I have to admit that the swim workouts I did were way more difficult both in terms of volume and intensity than the workouts I did in track and XC skiing. Most days we would be doing sets that had us grasping for air.

The one thing I must warn you about is increased risk of injury coming of swim season into track. Because your body is not accustomed to the impact of running, you are much more likely to get injured when starting running again. To address this issue, I would run a couple of miles on days when I did not have practice. Doing some easy running(there is no need to go hard because swim practice is so intense) would definitely make the transition from running to swimming a lot smoother. On a similar note, make sure you are gradually upping your mileage, when you begin doing track.

versy tile wrote:

OP must be at a crap school if he can choose not to run indoor.

I think you misread my post... I'm actually at a rather strong D3 school, so yeah you're right, probably skipping indoor is definitely not an option...

yeah swim workouts are really tough, but definitely I've had a few tough repeat workouts on the track.. that's a good point - coming back to running from swimming or another sport can be tough and must be done with ease.. I definitely wasn't good at coming back slow in the past.

As a HS coach in a northeastern state I wish I could have skipped indoor track. I couldn't so I just tried to minimize the stress on the distance runners.

I sympathize with you, perhaps you should talk to your coach about this.

This^

I will add that part of the reason why athletes are injury prone is because their cardio is at such a high level and able to push the body harder than someone that did nothing during the winter when both need to acclimate to the pounding.

Talk to your coach about how you feel. He might have some other ideas that could help you.

Unfortunately 3 seasons is not the best method… at least for distance runners. Not may sprinters are peaking 3 times a year and many are not even peaking 2 times a year. But distance runners in college need to peak 3 times a year while sprinters twice. When out of college, the goal is peak 1 or maybe 2 times when it really matters…in college and high school it’s important the overall results for the coach, not necessarily the individual athlete. Which I find crazy as track and field, cross country, you name it cante be more individual if you wanted it to be