XC in the Fall, a wasted effort for pure mid-d runners?

My teammate slacked at xc but I didn't realize it. About 1:47 and top 100 in XC.

Our coach said a middle distance Olympian (one of his goals) would get all American. He got all American in XC the next year.

I say this just to say a XC season isn't going to ruin your track season. Regionals is the middle of November. You should aren't wasting time to sharpen speed.

If she had fun running XC then it wasn't a waste of time.

Stick to something you know about its not running.

Steve Ovett Olympic Champion 800m. 4th national xc over 9 miles

Worked for Andrew Wheating.

Ask her if she feels like these 800s feel like she could keep going, but can't go any faster. If this is the case, she might be on her way to a very good outdoor season.

Dad, it worked out for Derrick Peterson. You need to relax. Reassure your kid she will be fine.

It just means she's going to be great in outdoor after building up her aerobic base. It takes a little while to pay off.

I was a 400/800 guy in my junior and senior years of highschool. I ran 53/1:59 my first year running distance with no XC. Did XC my senior year, dropped to 50/1:55.

Before you say it was just puberty and growth spurt, I had actually lost muscle mass that year from stopping all the lifting I was previously doing to focus on running more.

Here’s some recent history:

-Fall 2015, Clayton Murphy runs a full NCAA XC season. He finishes 20th at the Great Lakes regional.

-Winter 2016 he wins an NCAA indoor 800m title.

-Spring 2016 he wins an NCAA outdoor 1500m title.

-Summer 2016 he wins a U.S. national 800m title and an Olympic bronze medal at 800m.

So no, XC won’t ruin anybody’s track season. Some schools do focus more on one or the other, but there’s no reason why an 800m runner can’t do both.

Seb Coe focused on xc growing up, befroe focusing on the 800m/1500m. Steve Ovett and Steve Cram ran many xc races in their base phase to build up their strength.

4/8 runners should run XC "seriously." 800 runners who are more on the distance runner side definitely can get a benefit out of a fall xc season rather than just working out with the track team.

Point is, depends on the runner and their strengths.

if her goal is to race well at 800m in the summer, then running x-country can be a very good part of her winter preparation. my 400m runners do 3000m x-country runs in the winter, and a college age 800m runner should be more than capable of handling 6 miles or so of x-country running once a week.

however, there is a world of difference between running x-country as training, and racing x-country as part of a competitive team. the two are not the same and should not be confused, particularly if she has not done it before. racing isn't base building, and it will affect the timing of her preparations for summer. as long as the coach knows she has not raced x-country before this should not be a problem.

cheers.

Josh Kerr runs xc and look what he’s done

no, especially not for women, who have more aerobic demands in the 800 (~2:00 vs ~1:45 of running)

woman69 wrote:

no, especially not for women, who have more aerobic demands in the 800 (~2:00 vs ~1:45 of running)

Precisely!

And, as someone mentioned already, a good recent example is Clayton Murphy. He ran 1:42 9 months after a 20th place finish at XC Regionals. Of course, 20th place at the Great Lakes Region isn't super special in and of itself, but he also split high 45.xx on the 4x400 the February after he did that.

in general, I disagree - but it's likely your daughter is just running way too much mileage and is fatigued. i ran the 800m in D1 college and ran XC and my coach was trying to get me to run 60, 70, 80 mpw. I had done 30 mpw in high school, so i made it a point to keep it lower or i wasn't going to do it. sounds like your daughter is just tired and over-worked. I was exhausted after D1 XC and was worthless most of the indoor track season because of it. my first few meets went well but after that i got slower and more fatigued. that's because i doubled my mileage from high school/summer to the XC season and was running with much better athletes.

In high school, my track teammate and i credit XC as the reason why we had great track seasons. we were reluctant to do it but it helped us win a lot of medals at the state track meet.

We each went from about 1:58 to 1:54 after senior year of cross country. we both consistently split under 50 in the 4x400 too, so the speed was there.

our XC team was low mileage though, only about 30-35 mpw, and our coach was the track coach. He kept us in touch with speed (more than just strides) because he was a track-focused guy and really only cared about how the track team did

the focus was for track but i ended up getting pretty good at XC which it sounds like your daughter is.

see if she's tired. red-shirt outdoor (what i did) it made a difference

The idea that 5k or 6k is long distance is the problem. It's all in her head if she isn't as fast. You don't loose fast twitch muscles. She didn't marathon train in the fall. If she believes she is slower because of it, then she will be.

A few years ago I had a 60 sec 400m HS girl who wouldn't try too hard in XC because she was afraid it would make her slower in the 400 (her father convinced her of that). Her senior year when I finally sold her on trying harder (she ended up being 3rd runner) she also dipped under 59 sec. that track season.

How are the other people doing under the new coach's program? Are they also struggling or doing well? Anytime you get a new coach they will have a new training system so there will be an adjustment period. If your daughter took a good break after cross country to recover and went into indoor track on lower mileage, she should be ok. If she didn't take a break and went right into training for indoor track while keeping mileage up it's likely she's suffering from overtraining.

Emmual Loire ran xc for UTEP and ran well the next spring in the 400, 600 and 800. He didn t do that well in xc nationals but he ran.