Is my XC summer training plan good?

Maybe I'm an old head, but I did make a NCAA D1 team so my advice is probably okay.

I think you should keep it simple with a tempo, fartlek, long run type of week while building a base. Weekly mileage and cross training goals seem attainable. Also your tempo progression seems reasonable.

Start your tempo buildup with broken tempos for a couple weeks though. Like 3x7 minute tempo with 2-3 minutes rest. After like 2 broken tempos I would try 20 minutes continuous then build up to 30 gradually.

In my opinion, fartleks are easier for a high schooler to complete accurately. When I was in high school I ran my "on" slightly faster than tempo pace, and my "off" slightly faster than my recovery run pace. Turns it into more of a long tempo with pace changes. I'd start with 10-12 by 1 min on/off and build from there.

I recommend a 9 mile long run for a 40 mile week, which is 22.5% of weekly milage. In my opinion 20%-22.5% of weekly mileage is optimal for long runs because it's a little easier on the body. Push it to 10 miles if you are having trouble getting mileage around your cycling.

I'm a high school coach now and this is how I would structure summer training. You don't have to listen to me, but a lot of my high school teammates and I trained like this and 5 of our top 7 runners ended up making NCAA teams.

Keep it simple, don't overthink things, and run a lot. You'll be a lot better than you were last year.

I like the general layout and progression. Consider adding some 10" hill sprints with 2'+3' standing recovery after Monday's run. Maybe open with just 2 sub-maximal sprints and 4 max sprints. Build up to 8-10 over the duration of the summer.

It looks okay, sure. 40mpw is fine and you should be able to get into the 17's or low 18's.

But don't make the mistake of progressing lactic threshold runs like that. If you go from 3x5 mins to 6x5 mins then you are probably going to be lowering the pace, right? Otherwise you would just be increasing load and likely going over threshold..

I would just recommend keeping a consistent 6 x 5 mins weekly threshold, and progress the pace gradually as weeks go on based on heartrate data. You can even do it on the treadmill to keep more variables fixed.

thanks for the advice, I saw somewhere else however, that you should start with just 15 minutes of workload and then increase to 30. Keeping the same pace, just adding distance and then start dropping the pace later. Any thoughts?

Thanks very much for the advice, would you reccomend instead of time I do miles? For the first week 3x1 then progress to 2x1.5 then 2x2 then 3 & 1 then 4 etc...

Why biking? Biking is low-impact until it isn't; then it can be devastatingly high-impact. I suppose it makes more sense if you are, for example, replacing travel in a motor vehicle with biking, but biking definitely adds risk to your training.

don't ramp up a bunch at a time. do any increases slowly. occasionally do some sort of timed work over a set distance where you can gauge over time whether you are getting faster or slower. also be attentive to your health. when i got anemic my intervals had been going the wrong way for 2 weeks. similarly, the best way to blow up the actual season is run through pain in the preseason. anyhow, i can't offer a plan but since i get the idea from complaint posts some folks dutifully churn out some paper idea and even run on a bum leg, then either have to stop the season or wonder why i am now slower.......you were probably on autopilot doing the plan. my personal experience good training, at least as a sprinter, made you feel better and faster. which would show up on times. if your times are going the wrong way and you feel like hell or have a knock, whatever you are doing is making things worse.

I would stay safe and away from intervals. You can do those when you're close to racing.

A lot of guys recommend strides. Just don't do it when tired.

A 25% weekly volume long run is too long, keep it 20%.

Add some strides and short hill sprints.

Could probably get rid of the continuous tempo, especially as you're bumping up the volume.

Look up Summer of Malmo -don't need to follow everything in it but the general mental approach to summer training it describes is really valuable.

40 miles a week?

One step at at a time. When you are running 40mpw that seem like a lot. At 60 mpw, that seems like a lot. It continues until one day you'll look back at 40mpw and that will feel like a breakfast snack.

When I was in high school, our coach only had us do one hardish workout per week, like on a Wednesday, either a tempo or a fartlek or both combined into one workout and then a long run progression on the weekend. He didn’t want us doing any more than that, because he knew high schoolers have a tendency to run workouts too hard, and there’s no point in doing that in the summer.

Every other run was an eight mile run, however we felt, but most of these runs ended up becoming “progression” runs, either in the back half or for the last couple miles. Long run was always 90 minutes, which was eventually 14+ miles. Hill sprints on Mondays, like 10-12 sec sprints with maximum rest (3-5 min). Striders on Fridays. I got ridiculously fit on this program.

But, if you want to be great and not merely good, I would do summer of Malmo, and there’s no reason to arbitrarily cap yourself at 40 mpw. You may get there quite easily, hold it there, and then want to progress even more. You may get to 50-60 mpw and handle it just fine. Running doubles will allow you to progress faster and recover from the training load better. I also agree that the long run is not nearly as important as getting the rest of the training structure down first. Just continuous, consistent running, day in and day out.

The main reason I didn’t run doubles is because I worked a really hard construction job in the summers from 8am to 5pm, and it was exhausting with the training and there’s no way I was getting up at f ing 5:30 am to get a run in. However, if I had a normal job or a part time job, I think I would’ve been an even better runner getting a 4/8 double in 6-7 days per week. For you that might be 3/6.

Miles also work. The buildup that you are thinking of is not bad. If you can keep from pushing a lot at the end of your mileage then it is pretty much the same. Tempos for time can be helpful because they remove the urge to kick it in and finish really fast. That being said, negative splits are ideal for tempos.