I’m a junior in high school going into my last year of cross country. I just finished track season and my prs were 4:40 16, 2:09 8, and 10:34 32. I have decent speed, but I’m not a great long distance runner, as my xc pr is 17:39. I have been training on 25 miles a week my entire high school career, with an occasional 30 mile week. I run quality miles, but not a lot of volume plus little threshold training. How should I train this summer to improve my aerobic system?
Run More.
I had very similar pb's to you when I was an soph in high school. I bumped up from 20-30 mpw in the spring to the 40 mpw range in the summer (50 at my peak if I remember correctly. It was very gradual. Seems like you could use more aerobic development which is usually the case for most high school runners if they don't have a background from sports that are aerobic, happened to be my case as well (ex. soccer). I dropped my 5k XC from the previous fall by a little over a minute as a result.Not saying this will happen to you, I could be an outlier, but it looks like you do have some talent being able to run 4:40 on somewhat high quality, low mileage.
It appears to me (I'm sure someone from LRC would love to correct me on this) that your best times from best to worst is 4:40, 2:09, 10:34, 17:39. Get some good, long threshold reps (K's, mile, 800s) with short standing or longer jogging rest and get a good long run in each week. If you look at the Summer of Malmo (legendary training plan you can find on here if you look for it), Malmo doesn't advocate for a long run (just going off the top of my head, I could be wrong on this), just running as much as you can. I am a firm believer that the long run is just as beneficial as any workout that you do, but then again that is just my opinion. A few strides after easy runs and your long run to maintain that speed since you said that is more of your strength.
Take this with a grain of salt. I don't have nearly as much experience as some of the people on here so getting another opinion from a different poster who can either second this, rebut, or give their own opinion would be good. Like I said before, this is what worked for me and what works for one runner may not work at all for another runner. Also talk to your coach, sometimes all it takes is a conversation with them to really get the ball rolling. They know you better than anyone on here. Hope this helps, best of luck to you.
Simple approach for OP -
Mon/Tue/Thu/Fri AM & PM easy run. May 20 min. June 25 Min. July 30 min. Aug 35 min.
Wed 5 x 1000m at tempo/threshold/cruise pace with 200m jog. Alternate this with a 20 min tempo run. Use your mile & 2 mi times from this spring to look up your paces for these sessions.
Sat Long Run, starting at 60 min and gradually increasing to 90 min over the summer. Alternate this every other week with a somewhat speedy hill session, like 8 x 200m faster than 800m pace plus drills/lifting/plyos.
This is not complicated. 25mpw is nothing. Training principles (tempo, long run, speed, etc.) are important, but at 25mpw, completely secondary.
My recommendation is build up to 10 miles easy, 6 days per week. Then you'll be ready for real training when the season starts.
Take a week off. Run 5 miles per day, 6 days a week the following week. Do 6 per day then next week, and so forth.
Good luck!