College training paces, coach wants me at 6:00-15

College Running

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8 years ago 09/25/2015 2:24pm EDT

re: FormerAllAmerican

I am a former DII XC All American and as a senior in college I ran almost all of my training runs from 5:50-6:15 pace. It was not a conscience effort to run that pace, it is just what came out of my legs. I actually made a conscience effort to slow myself down to about 6:30-6:45 pace when I did my 4-5 mile morning run because that made all the other training runs feel nice and relaxed at that pace.

That pace seems reasonable, but don't make it the end all be all of your training runs. It is very easy to over do it if you are trying to hit a pace that is to fast for you on a daily basis. Listen to your body

8 years ago 09/25/2015 3:04pm EDT

re: 925runner

Listen to body is best advice.

Harder efforts during base before getting into workouts is generally a good thing.

Those who are more slow twitch people will thrive more on grinding it out, the fast twitchers will generally do better with comparatively slower easy days (both getting to same racing results).

One other thing not mentioned, and why pace as a broad sweeping guideline is imo a bad thing, terrain matters. I've lived in the central valley of CA, over on west coastal range (big hills - like 1000-2000ft climbs in as little as a mile or two), CO, and east coast. The central valley of CA (Fresno, Sactown, etc) is track-flat for hundreds of miles. 6:20 pace can be really darn easy there for a 15-flat to 15:30 guy (especially a slow twitcher), where as if you're on the east coast where you get nice little rolling hills, the same effort for 6:20 in Fresno is going to be 7:15-7:30 in those east coast hills - even if they don't seem like much. So, OP, while you'll get plenty of x pace is fine/too fast, consider the terrain too, people are probably thinking of different environments. That's not even considering footing and weather...

8 years ago 09/25/2015 3:20pm EDT

re: bby

My d2 team goes to nationals year in and year out and we run 6:20-7:15 depending on the day

8 years ago 09/25/2015 3:47pm EDT

re: 925runner

My son run's for a D1 team that qualifies for nats about 50% of the time.

Typical recovery days for top 7 runners are 16 miles (in doubles--6 am; 10 pm) at 6:40 pace.

On hard days, the pace is obviously faster--typical would be 3 mile w/u at 6:30, 5 mile tempo at 5:00 to 5:15, 3 mile c/d at 6:30 pace. Surface is grass with some hills, not a track.

So, I agree that running 6:00 pace on recovery days is fast. Maybe if you're only running 5 miles and running them on a track, but most D1 programs are going to be running 10+ miles on recovery days and running on slower surfaces.

Take your easy days easy...

8 years ago 09/25/2015 6:47pm EDT

re: 925runner

I ran low mileage in college (70-80 per week), did my easy days at 6:50-7:30 depending on day to day fatigue and ran 15:00 5k and 25:30 8k. Pump up the miles to 90-100 and work hard on hard days. Recover every other day.

8 years ago 09/25/2015 7:28pm EDT

re: Listen to your coach

Listen to your coach wrote:
HSCoach wrote:
I hope you are a troll. But sadly, you may be an actual college coach, probably one who is coaching one of my former high schoolers. Lazy coaching in my opinion. Why would every athlete on your team need to run the exact same pace as every other one unless they are all clones with the same times, same mileage background, and same injury history?
Not a troll and you're athletes would be lucky as hell if they ever got a chance to run in my program. I am certainly not requiring each male athlete on my team to run 6min pace with zero regard to who they are, what they are capable of, or where they are in that continuum. Without giving a novel, I was generalizing, as the OP did, on what I would expect a decent recruit to run at the D1 level. Is that cut and dried? Of course not! Lol, do you honestly think they hand out D1 head coaching jobs to completely unqualified morons? If you truly believe that then you are just plain ignorant.
Now for the science lecture- please tell me the most important element of a distance runner? Answer- VO2 max and the mental ability to endure pain. Vo2 max is a derivative of ones aerobic capacity, aerobic training is linear and correlates directly with fitness and adaptation to training.
If you think your D1 athlete is getting their most important training sessions done on Monday/Wednesday/Saturday then you are completely blind to the fact that the most important training system is built on all the other days of the week. Yes, recovery is vital, but finding the balance between running too fast and wasting a valuable aerobic training session is the key.
My comment above was merely inferring that a decent D1 athlete, who has put in a good base of summer training, should have no problem running 6-6:15 pace on their runs. In fact it is essential if you want to achieve at the highest level. If you aren't there yet, have that discussion with your coach because that should be the target of your goals.

You sound a lot like the head coach at ohio, no wonder why your teams sucks.....

8 years ago 09/25/2015 9:19pm EDT

re: runner dad with advice

runner dad with advice wrote:
My son run's for a D1 team that qualifies for nats about 50% of the time.
Typical recovery days for top 7 runners are 16 miles (in doubles--6 am; 10 pm) at 6:40 pace.
On hard days, the pace is obviously faster--typical would be 3 mile w/u at 6:30, 5 mile tempo at 5:00 to 5:15, 3 mile c/d at 6:30 pace. Surface is grass with some hills, not a track.
So, I agree that running 6:00 pace on recovery days is fast. Maybe if you're only running 5 miles and running them on a track, but most D1 programs are going to be running 10+ miles on recovery days and running on slower surfaces.
Take your easy days easy...

Your running 100 mpw. The OP is running 60. That makes a heck of a difference. Obviously we don't know all the details (6:00 in 85 degree weather is a heck of a lot harder than in 70, hills, surfaces, .....) that make a 30s difference in paces. I also bet that the coach is simplifing things a bit and that the pace some days is slower (i.e. the work out was extra hard). I think the general point is that if you are going to be part of the training group, be prepared to run 6:00 pace.

Frankly this is a nonissue. Running 5-10s faster than you used isn't going to change much. It isn't like your running 7:00 pace today. The much bigger question is if you should be running more (80+ mow) and if that would require you to run slower. I will not pretend to guess what the coaches system is.

And FWIW we used to run 6:15-6:30 almost every day in HS and we were just a bunch of 16-16:30 min 5k guys doing 50 mpw. Recovery was never much of an issue. And yes if we did a killer track workout the day before or were tapering for a race the pace slowed down to 7 min.

8 years ago 09/26/2015 6:55pm EDT

re: Runningart2004

Runningart2004 wrote:
trgsdfgdsfgdf wrote:
IF you're only doing 60-65 mpw 6:20 pace should be totally manageable for a 4:26 guy.
THIS.
60-65 is nothing. 60 at 6:20 is not a huge deal. 100 at 6:20 is a different animal.
Still....what is the purpose of your daily runs? During the winter/summer buildup I could see beneift for doing most of your runs at a faster clip, but during the season while recoverying from hard workouts? Not so much.
Alan

Are you crazy Alan? Thats 3.56/km for a guy with a mile time equivalent of a 4.10 1500m. Thats a guy with a threshold pace at best 3.35.

Running 3.56 pace for him on runs (not workouts) is way way too hard.

8 years ago 09/26/2015 8:10pm EDT

re: HSCoachagain

100 bucks says you're Drew Hunter's mom

8 years ago 09/26/2015 8:12pm EDT

re: HSCoachagain

HSCoachagain wrote:
Well, you'd be "lucky as hell" (which doesn't sound so lucky to me) to get my top boy this year :-) Since I don't know who you are, maybe you will be so lucky if your team is a top 10 team this year. Because he isn't looking at any other teams.
I have a degree in Ex. Phys so no need for the lecture. Let me ask you this: Since VO2 max, according to you, is the most important element of a distance runner (which not everyone would agree with, BTW, since there are significant differences in VO2 max among elite endurance athletes) and VO2 max is a derivative of an individual's aerobic capacity, which is developed by aerobic training over time (but clearly has a large genetic component), why would you want to train a kid so hard that he can't even absorb the training he is trying to do? It sounds like "run them so hard they either develop or quit" because they are burned out, injured, or just have had the love of running sucked out of them. It just seems to me that you want to train an athlete at a level where he can come back and do the next workout successfully, not die a slow death as the season goes on. How does that foster development? I would think we agree on this.
Wouldn't you agree that we can't say that "All DI distance runners should be able to do such and such as soon as they arrive on campus?" I mean, not all DI programs are even remotely equal, performance wise. I would think that a not so good program would be wise to take a less developed kid with less impressive times but good potential and be patient with developing this kid. That is all. From my limited perspective as a high school coach who has sent a few kids to DI schools to run over the years, it seems like not all coaches do that. It seems like many of the coaches of the best programs DO do that, but the mid-level ones DON'T. And I will readily admit that I don't think that just because a coach is a DI coach he or she is qualified and a good coach. They probably aren't "completely unqualified morons" but that doesn't mean they are all good coaches either.

100 bucks says you're Drew Hunter's mom

8 years ago 09/27/2015 11:52pm EDT

re: runner dad with advice

OP said his coach told him they average 6:00 to 6:15 on regular runs. Op didn't mention anything about these being recovery runs, easy runs etc etc. Not sure what regular runs actually mean. We got off on recovery days ..save it recover, easy runs...not what he said. Unless I missed another of his posts.

8 years ago 09/28/2015 7:46am EDT

re: mediocre runner

What makes you so sure? Drew Hunter isn't the only kid in the nation looking at top 10 schools.

8 years ago 09/28/2015 8:09am EDT

re: 925runner

I was a 27:30 8k runner and usually ran between 7:00-7:30 pace on my regular runs, depending on how I felt. My coaches never got on us about our pace on easy runs.

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