discouraged hs girl

Haha thank you for clarifying! That's what I had figured

I feel tired a lot. I could take Sundays off. I do a 1 mile warm up and 2 mile cool down on the workout days. I do all those morning cross training things instead of doing a run in the morning to avoid having too much mileage that would get me injured but cross training still does help you get better as long as your working your aerobic system. Or at least that's what I thought

do you think cross training contributes to building an aerobic base?

For cross training..I would say it all depends on how you think about it. You should think:

"Running is what will make me better at running."

Do whatever it takes to stay healthy and maximize your time and energy running!

Remember that the point of "base" training is to better prepare your body for high end / tempo / more intense runs.

If you can't build your aerobic base properly then you will have to supplement your running with cross training. If you're injured then obviously cross train.

But it's still all about operating by feel! There are many examples of successful runners who cross trained with their running.

If you feel the cross training is leading to better high end / tempo runs then it's ok. If you feel like the high end / tempo runs are getting harder with the cross training then stop doing it.

Easy days should be easy. Don't have an easy day of running and then make the day hard by adding to much cross training.

But if you have an easy day and you are injury prone, then it's ok to not run and use this day to cross train. Do whatever it takes to stay healthy for the intense running workouts if you're injury prone.

you can run more.

AM: 45'

PM: 25'

or vice-versa, done Mon-Thur

with (1) set of (1) weightlifting exercise done in the middle of the 25' PM workout each of these days.

AM: 45'

Friday

AM: 70'

Saturday

Sunday Off

run the first 15-20' of each run at about 8:40/mi to as fast as 7:40/mi as you warm up. then the rest at 6:50-7:20 primarily. a few days per week when you feel good run 10-20' at 6:20-6:50 pace.

do strides during your runs, not after, making most runs fartleks essentially.

that's about 55 miles on 4 doubles a week. your ready.

According to milesplit XC rankings this chick doesn't even exist

Thanks. I guess the only way I can get better is if I add some more running mileage.

0/10

There are only two girls who post on this forum and you're not one of them

Why would someone pretend they are a girl? I do not understand.

I've coached 2 girls with similar PRs to you. It looks like your biggest issue is lack of recovery. My suggestions:

1. Slow down your easy recovery days. 7:10 probably feels fairly comfortable for you but my girls raced much faster when we slowed easy days to 7:40ish and long runs/recovery days to 8:00.

2. Three hard efforts is probably a bit much at this point in the summer. We do 2 hard efforts a week during July and early August. When we bump up to 3 hard efforts a week we cut back on the cross training to allow extra recovery, and every 4th week we go back to only 2 hard efforts.

3. You may want to rethink the structure of your cross-training. If your goal is supplementing your aerobic base, you probably aren't getting a ton out of a 30 min. cross-train. During the summer my varsity girls cross-train anywhere from 3-6x a week, for 45-90 min. Once we get into the school year, they drop 1 cross-train workout per week. I've found aqua jogging to be most effective. You have to go at a really high intensity with high turnover (we do fartlek workouts) to see success. Your HR won't be as high as running, but that doesn't mean you won't see benefits. I used to just have injured kids aqua jog, but we've seen so much success with those kids improving their fitness that we're having more kids use it as a supplement to running even when they are healthy.

Good luck!!

A centipede was happy – quite!

Until a toad in fun

Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?"

This raised her doubts to such a pitch,

She fell exhausted in the ditch

Not knowing how to run.

A spider met a centipede while hurrying down the street,

"How do you move at such a speed, with all so many feet?"

"I do not have to contemplate to keep them all in line,

But if I start to concentrate they're tangled all the time!"

Thank you for some very helpful tips. I like your cross training suggestions. Do you think I should replace a day of running with a day of cross training rather than adding a short segment of cross training to my running days? Then from the day I replaced with cross training I could distribute the running miles I have replaced. I hope that made sense.

No - keep running 6 days/week. If you can do 6 runs + 3-4 cross training days, that'd give you a solid base to work with.

I would just increase your current cross-training days to sessions of 45-60 minutes. If that doesn't work with your schedule, then you'd probably get more out of 3 days of cross-training of 60 min. each than 4 days of 30 min. cross-training. Just make sure you're not sacrificing too much sleep to get the cross-training in. That's always a challenge for my girls once school starts back up.

Okay, that all makes sense. Is doing the longer sessions of cross training on my hard run days good? Or do you think they would fit better placed elsewhere.

Like can you suggest where to work in the cross training with a running schedule that has all the normal/necessary components?

I try to keep easy days focused on recovery, so we'll typically double up on hard days. Here's a schedule we've used in the past:

M - AM Light track workout, PM 60 min. aqua jog

T - Easy run

W - AM tempo, lift, PM 60 min. aqua jog

T - Easy run

F - AM Long run, lift

S - Easy run, PM 60 min. aqua jog

S - AM Easy run, PM 90 min. aqua jog

We do light strides and light body weight strength work after all easy runs. You could do your long run on Saturday if that works better for you, but due to contact rules, we do them on Fridays during the summer so we can do them as a team.

Youve been very helpful to me on here. Thanks so much.

hs girls coach wrote:

Here's a schedule we've used in the past

That's the dumbest thing that I've ever seen.

Don't expect to run well on that.