Who's already started their summer mileage for X-C or will start soon?

Yeah, me too! People are going to wonder where I came from when I kick ass this fall. I'm going to average 80 mpw starting in mid June to mid August, when official workouts start.

little rule of thumb: before your junior year CC, you should learn to run the summer mileage. before your senior year, you should learn to get your teammates to run the summer mileage.

This too, will be the summer that I actually prepare to have a good CC season, instead of just rounding into shape as the season ends. I'm doing a 10 miler 6 days a week, (easy to moderate pace), and on sunday 6am, 6pm, with the 6 in the pm at 70% effort. What do you think?

me too.... wrote:

This too, will be the summer that I actually prepare to have a good CC season, instead of just rounding into shape as the season ends. I'm doing a 10 miler 6 days a week, (easy to moderate pace), and on sunday 6am, 6pm, with the 6 in the pm at 70% effort. What do you think?

I think that you should break things up more, and also do a long run. And what do you mean by 70% effort?

70% of race effort; or, I could, as was suggested, just run a local 5 or 10k road race to use as a hard run.

these can all be good plans or bad ones, depending on what you've done in previous seasons, particularly what you've done injury-free. Hitting 80-mile weeks for this coming cross season would be, in my opinion, a pretty big gamble if all you've ever done before is peak at 50 mpw. What you did in previous years still matters now; a new season is not a completely fresh start in your running (and that is a good thing no matter how bad last season was). Use what you know and build on it. Go one step/season at a time, even if it's senior year. And most of all, BE PREPARED TO ADJUST YOUR PLAN.

1 - Do some of your 10 milers in doubles.

2 - Do 1 tempo run per week and 1 hill reps session of 20-40 seconds 6 to 15 times.

3 - Take a day off every 10 days.

pjb has good advice. I would suggest ramping up to 50 MPW, holding that for a couple of weeks, then going to 60 MPW and seeing how you feel.

Do some cycling for cross-training and variety, and I would also hit the track for some moderate speedwork with full recoveries in between. That will maintain your leg turnover without crushing your mileage. For example, today I did a 2 mile warm-up, 5x400m at mile race pace with 400m-800m recoveries, then a 1.25 mi cooldown for 6 miles total. My legs actually feel fresher now than before my workout, in spite of a tough 7 mile tempo run yesterday.

started this week, i'm starting at 40, hope to be just over 60 by the time august rolls around. quality over quantity

I started my summer training as soon as XC season ended last year and I am currently running 75 miles/week after building up from 35 miles/week. My words of advice are: BE CAREFUL. It seems easy at first to run 50-60 miles/week but you will eventually start to feel wear on your body. Around 70 I started to feel all kinds of aches and pains, turned out I needed some new shoes, and the aches are sorta still there. You are starting a little late for 80 miles/week and there probably aren't even 75 high school kids in the country running that many miles. Be prepared to back off if necessary and if you haven't done this before you are at a high risk of injury/burnout, like me.

I think it depends on whether we are talking high school X-C or College.....big difference. In high school you are talking 5k races, mostly. In college you are talking 4 mile (early season) to 10k races. So college guys should run more mileage, if they can handle it.

you need to be very careful of burning out/ becoming injured...i tried the same thing you are about to try and it was disastorous for my cross season. worked my butt off all summer and came into cross running tempo runs and coming through 8k splits in a 10k tempo faster than my prs. two weeks later i hit the wall completely and never got within three minutes of the time i was running in early workouts. track season i was a beast but cross country was misserable. just a word of caution.

OP is clearly in high school.

I'm going for 3 hour runs like Rono is doing....not really....I will try to average 70 per week.

I should be hitting 90 this week, but then again i am in college so this is no big deal

be wary wrote:

You are starting a little late for 80 miles/week and there probably aren't even 75 high school kids in the country running that many miles. Be prepared to back off if necessary and if you haven't done this before you are at a high risk of injury/burnout, like me.

that is false. York has 110 kids in the program. A lot of them run 100+. I bet if you look at illinois, ohio, new york, california, any of those states have over than 75 guys doing over 80 a week.

You're going to get hurt kid. Most runners take 2 weeks off and come back low.

the430BeerMiler wrote:

You're going to get hurt kid. Most runners take 2 weeks off and come back low.

Exactly what I did here after my first season of college track. Started off at 42 for two weeks, then 50 the next two. I'm just now finally starting to get my legs back under me and am starting to have some good runs. We're not planning to hit 100 MPWs until September, until then it's just a gradual base building.

saursoor wrote:

little rule of thumb: before your junior year CC, you should learn to run the summer mileage. before your senior year, you should learn to get your teammates to run the summer mileage.

Word. I was a little too late on that and learned to run the summer mileage before my senior year. I had a very good season while ~50% of my team choked ass at State.