This is a an unabashed imitation of the thread titled, "Marathon Experts - Rank What is Most Important."
While what marathon experts say is most important for a good marathon is helpful toward cross-country, there may be some differences.
What is most important, if you had to rank the following training elements, toward success for an 8k college x-c race?
I present these in no particular order.
Feel free to break up the order based on early season, mid-season and late season, as clearly training volume is more important in early season than late season:
1. Training volume;
2. Training specifically on a cross-country surface (vice roads);
3. Long intervals;
4. Shorter intervals;
5. Hill repeats;
6. Long runs;
7. Sleep;
8. Nutrition;
9. Course familiarity;
10. Racing tactics (practicing such in training);
11. Drills;
12. Supplemental exercises (core, light weights);
13. Time trials of 2 or 3 miles on a cross-country surface; and
14. Tempo runs.
If this thread elicits enough responses, we might be able to add up the number of votes for each element after a while and actually learn something.