last season was the first time i did some serious running. i did xc for the first time as a freshmen adn the only running i did before that was in middle school in track. my fastest 400m time was 1:14 and i think fastest 100m was 14 or 15. in xc i went from 26min 2-miles on a treadmill in way early season to these times:
19:46, 19:05, (got spikes)18:23, 19:19(hills), 18:01, 18:42 (hilly route again)
this season i've only gotten about half the mileage i got last season and we haven't been stretching together, if i want to stretch i have to do it by myself but we still do a few calf stretches and form drill.
i did track this spring but hardly made it to any practices, it seemed i was still in good running shape throughout the spring and winter though my 400m PR time turned into 1:09, 400m hurdle (first year) went from 1:21 at my worst to 1:15 PR.
i took a few weeks off of running completely and when i started back up again i was very very slow. people were passing me who never passed me before but now i'm gradually getting back to where i was as the season just started.
i'm getting in more mileage and really pushing myself to keep up with some of the faster people now. i had an ankle injury that took me out for a week coming up to time trials where i got 17:57 2-mile. last year i got 15:27. but this year only a little more than a week after that @ my first race i got 19:30 (these xc times are 4ks by the way) which is 16 seconds faster than last year's time.
question one: do you think i only got faster on the first course because i had spikes this year?
question 2: how do i get faster!?!? even the girl who broke our state record in the 4k last year is gettin better and she destoyred that record in 13:27!!! how do i get faster?! i've been swimming and biking and a little bit of bench pressing on the side. not much biking besides very early season (late june/early july) but swimming workouts tend to be between 500-800m with the longest i've gone without stopping being a 200m freestyle. should i work abs too?