is this a good winter base build up plan for a 17 year old trying to run 9:20 3200m in the spring?

You're ramping the mileage up way too fast, especially considering your mileage history and your xc mileage. Asking for trouble. Build your mileage, but much more gradually. Proper and safe progression is the ticket. Not I have to be at a certain number by a certain date.

Listen to this while your training and you be motivated to improve. Good luck. You have the best username on letsrun.

Whoa wrote:

You're ramping the mileage up way too fast, especially considering your mileage history and your xc mileage. Asking for trouble. Build your mileage, but much more gradually. Proper and safe progression is the ticket. Not I have to be at a certain number by a certain date.

Agreed.

OP, if you want to get up to 80 MPW, plan to do that by the END of summer before your next cross country season. 65-70 MPW should be the max target for this winter based on your history.

Also, while you are obviously a better runner now than you were last spring based on your CC season, getting to 9:20 is a huge task. You should not feel it is a failure if you don't get there. It is a good goal though.

if i still build up to around 70 but more slowly will i still have a chance of runninig a 9:20 in the spring?

Give your total Hs progression

Flagpole is right. 9:20 is a pretty ambitious goal for this spring. However, that's not to say you can or cannot do it. Huge improvements like that certainly have happened before, especially with runners who have a limited background and/or are relatively new to serious training.

But, no offense intended, it sounds like you may be missing the point here. If you force yourself up to an arbitrary number like 80 mpw, that doesn't mean you will run 9:20. Far more likely, that would result in not running 9:20.

You need to learn, understand, and appreciate the process of building yourself up to the next level. There are no shortcuts.

Don't fixate on a specific time goal. At least not yet, and not this far out. Build gradually and properly. That will get you where you are capable of going. It will also leave you capable of continuing to build and progress farther into the future.

Mileage should never be a goal in your training plan. This is a fallacy that almost every distance runner makes.

You should always be keeping track of your weekly mileage, but it is only one dimension you can use to measure your training. How many minutes do you run per week? What pace are your runs? What percentage of your training volume is run at recovery pace, steady state pace, tempo pace, vVO2 Max, critical velocity, etc.?

Miles Per Week is a useful tool, because it tracks cumulative fatigue (to an extent) in a span of seven days. Why is seven days important? It's an arbitrary number imposed on us by Abrahamic Religions and Capitalism. It would probably be more useful to track how much you run in a 10 day interval.

Don't try to run some magic number in the hopes you'll see a miraculous drop 50 of seconds on your 3200. (And let's face it, you'll cheat and round up your runs anyway.) Just try to push yourself a little faster or a little farther, when you feel well-recovered enough to do so. If you're keeping track of how many miles you run each week while you do this, and manage to stay healthy, you will see those numbers increase over time.

If you've only run 50 per week do not do more than 55-60 per week. Long term consistency is how you improve and develop not trying to run 80 miles a week when your 17...

I would agree with pretty much everything thats been said here. You're fixating on arbitrary numbers thinking one will eventually lead into the other. Your mileage looks ambitious especially for a winter training program, but that might depend on where you live. Growing up in Michigan, I could never handle the same mileage in the winter that I could the summer. Snow and ice wrecked my IT bands every winter, and I wish I knew then that I should have just lowered my mileage expectations.

In addition, nobody here knows how you really handled the mileage you were doing. You said 50 mpw over the summer, which for some people, might not feel like anything. For others, that could feel like a lot. Look to get back to 50 and increase by 5 mpw and see how you feel. I wouldn't plan on getting up to 80 overall, maybe 60-70 mpw, but its a long time until track season so you have plenty of time to build.

The worst thing you can do is think that you *have* to get to 80, that its the only way. I've seen guys do this in high school and college, picking a mileage and doing whatever they can to build to that number and stay there. They start splitting up mileage into a bunch of two-a-days because they can't handle 10 or 12 miles some days, so they'll do 5 miles twice. They start to get injured. It all falls apart. Build slowly, find what you feel you can handle. Times will follow.

if i keep my mileage around 60-70 this winter then what type of strength workouts should i do for my base and how long should my long runs be. also what are some indicators that i am close to 9:20 shape?

i felt like i handled running 50 miles per week pretty easily. i didn't get injured or anything and was doing all my runs almost at an easy pace except my long runs where i will go 5:40-50 for the last 3 to 4 miles of a 13 mile long run averaging 6;20 for the whole run. i feel like my body can handle the mileage since i live in southern California the weather is staying around 75 all winter but the air quality has been bad. i just know i have a lot of room to grow and don't want to regret doing too little.

kenenisa bekele=goat wrote:

if i keep my mileage around 60-70 this winter then what type of strength workouts should i do for my base and how long should my long runs be. also what are some indicators that i am close to 9:20 shape?

If you really want a magic "indicator" do 5x800 w/ 2 minutes rest, all under 2:20. You're not in shape to do that now. If you're lucky, you'll be in shape to do that workout in May. Your goal for your long run should be 90 minutes. Try to get a secondary long run in mid-week at 70 minutes.

As for strength workouts, not sure if you mean muscular strength or aerobic strength. For traditional "strength" trainig: focus on pullups, squats, and deadlifts. Some exercises for shoulder/upper back are also useful, but the rest is fluff if you're doing those first three exercises. Also hill sprints, 2-3x a week if you can handle it.

For Aerobic "strength" start by pushing the second half of that mid-week long run. Do as many of your runs as possible on hilly terrain.

Also, chilllllll. High school mid-packers are so high strung. More so than the elites. Read up on cortisol, and how damaging it can be to athletes, especially male athletes.

Let’s shot for 9:40 first . With 45 -50 miles over the winter . No junk !

Parroting literally what everyone has said so far. Offering to throw my 2 cents in there in regards to buildup of mileage.

Run no faster than 6:40 on an easy day, long runs are OK if you crank them down. I've never been onboard the whole hammer long run business but if they're progressive but still controlled, that's fine.

Stick to 60-65 at the most, there's no need for you to jump up extremely large.

45 all easy

50 all easy

55 all easy

60 all easy

Then you start your workouts. If you're going to go up, there's no reason to introduce anything specific until this point. Strides, the occasional unstructured surge / fartlek run, is all fine. Don't progressively run everything, maybe keep the routine for your long runs if you're used to it. If you've been inconsistent, work on consistency at low mileage. Consistency alone brings huge rewards rather than jumping up in mileage. Me personally, here's an ideal training week for ya:

30' easy | 75' fartlek / easy tempo | 50' easy / moderate

30' / 30' recovery | 75' fartlek / easy tempo | 30' easy | 90' long run

This should get you to roughly 55-60 miles at your current fitness. Keep it consistent and that alone will get you really far in terms of strength. You always will have time to sharpen.

For specific workouts, here's base ones:

fartlek progression:

12 x 30s / 2'

8 x 60s/60s

10 x 90s/90s

10 x 2' / 90s

8 x 3' / 2'

tempo progression:

15' LT tempo

30' easy tempo (roughly MP)

35' easy tempo

20' LT tempo

35' easy tempo

In-shape target workouts:

*some mentioned it earlier, 5 x 800 w/ 2' @ 2:20*

6 x 1000m @ 3:10 w/ 200m jog

5 x 1600m @ 5:20 w/ 200m jog

12 x 400 @ ~66 w/ 60s rest

4 x 1000m @ 2:55 w/ 600m jog

3 x 1600 @ 4:45-50 w/ 800m jog

Thanks for the info I think I'll progress to easy 60 like u said and start doing the base workout week. I 've never done such a long tempo before all my tempos have been under 4 miles at around 5:30 pace. How long should I keep the base workout phase for?

kenenisa bekele=goat wrote:

How long should I keep the base workout phase for?

That really depends on when you are trying to run your goal time.