Are there any low mileage college teams these days???

Dirty Low Down wrote:

Are there any low mileage cross country teams out there? Are they any good? Lets say low is 50 miles per week or less. What's the training like? Any cross training?

That's a good question, although it might not be as simple as that. There are no doubt some good women's teams with runners that average only 50 mpw or so--with cross training. Really doubt that any men's programs could be competitive at 5K and above. Obviously if you're talking middle distance 50 mpw is low end, but runners can perform pretty well off of that.

Would also like to hear from some college coaches on what kind of mileage they'd like to see high school runners doing. The typical 30-45 miles a week for juniors and seniors prevails here. Then they go to college and are suddenly doing 70 and 80 mile weeks without much transition. Just seems like a recipie for disaster. Why not build them gradually through high school so that trainsition isn't such a big jump?

On my team any runner not doing at least 80 mpw by the end of their senior year of hs is going to have problems. My guys average 100 a week as freshman, and upwards of 150 as juniors and seniors. Just the way the cookie crumbles.

D1 coach.. wrote:

On my team any runner not doing at least 80 mpw by the end of their senior year of hs is going to have problems. My guys average 100 a week as freshman, and upwards of 150 as juniors and seniors. Just the way the cookie crumbles.

How do you convince a high school coach that 55 miles a week isn't high mileage!?

Dirty Low Down wrote:

Are there any low mileage cross country teams out there? Are they any good? Lets say low is 50 miles per week or less. What's the training like? Any cross training?

I'm sure there are, but the reason you don't hear about this is they most likely are bad.

You have to actually train to get fast. 7 miles/day for a 5-6 mile race isn't going to cut.

Confidence factor wrote:

D1 coach.. wrote:

On my team any runner not doing at least 80 mpw by the end of their senior year of hs is going to have problems. My guys average 100 a week as freshman, and upwards of 150 as juniors and seniors. Just the way the cookie crumbles.

How do you convince a high school coach that 55 miles a week isn't high mileage!?

I seem to recall reading a similar quote in Running with the Buffaloes

The best programs in my general area/state tend to have their best runners max out at about 70mpw for XC, and 50 for track. There was a kid a few years back who has since broken 14 for the 5k who ran 90-100mpw during his senior year of XC so I heard.

During XC my guys go 45-60 depending on age and skill, during the winter between XC track anywhere from 15-30 depending on event, during the track season anywhere from 20 (400/800 guys) to 35 (milers) to 45 (3200 guys)

University of Miami?

Our school basically no one does more than 60 miles a week other than maybe 2 people but the team only runs usually ranges from 25:00-26:50 for 8k. The girls run like 40 mpw or so (30 min off days, 60 min long runs) and run like 21:xx for cross country usually.

Iguesssooooo wrote:

Our school basically no one does more than 60 miles a week other than maybe 2 people but the team only runs usually ranges from 25:00-26:50 for 8k. The girls run like 40 mpw or so (30 min off days, 60 min long runs) and run like 21:xx for cross country usually.

What does a typical training week look like? What division is your team?

you should not do big mileage until you reach an obvious plateau.

i used to love the long runs but really an hour and a half is better for the legs, that is unless you are looking at 10k+.

alternating moderately harder with moderately easier days in the build up phase i suggest the following workouts for anyone looking at the mile to 5k/10k.

1 workout hard run 8 to 12 miles over hills

1 workout hill repeats - say 4-8 reps of 2-5 minute step hard climbs with 2 minute rest.

1 long run an hour and a half - the first 30 minutes relaxed, next 40 minutes hard last minutes easy.

easy days run 3-4 miles easy in the morning, afternoon, warm up and do 10x easy strides walk back with full recovery, never work hard but try for easy relaxed speed.

you can take a day off paying attention to not rush around stressing about anything.

you want to go to the gym but do it intelligently, copy alsal on utube or somesuch.

Dirty Low Down wrote:

Are there any low mileage cross country teams out there? Are they any good? Lets say low is 50 miles per week or less. What's the training like? Any cross training?

Check out below average D3 teams.

could be three wrote:

Dirty Low Down wrote:

Are there any low mileage cross country teams out there? Are they any good? Lets say low is 50 miles per week or less. What's the training like? Any cross training?

Check out below average D3 teams.

There are definitely some below average d3 schools that run right around/under 50 miles a week. Under for the guys who take 2 days off on the weekends and slightly above for those who get up for the long run. But, there certainly are bad d3 teams who run a lot more. If the talent ain't there, it ain't there.

I am sure there are low mileage teams. They are the one who finish last in every race.

I go to U of Oregon and one of thier walk on ladies said that they run pretty low mileage around 40-50 except for the senior up to 70

yeah there are low mileage teams. way too many.

I've seen a number of programs that redshirt freshmen as a rule to provide them with a year for that transiton.

Villanova.....and they're not finishing last in every race.

It depends on the year and the runner.

If you have a talented high school runner who has never run more than 35 miles a week, raising them much above 50 in XC as a frosh is just stupidity. Gradual progression leads to much better and more consistent results than simply hitting a mileage number for the sake of running high mileage.

We are division II. Better at track than cross country clearly because we don't do high mileage but girls will go to nationals guys will be close.

easy runs twice a week 30-40, sunday 50-70ish minutes. and then 3 workouts a week usually 1-3k intervals, tempo, and intervals on a hill.