D2 low mileage incoming freshman

Does this program not have a coach you can ask for advice. I would suggest asking your coach before coming to a let’s run thread for advice. And I’m sure your coach would be happy to help you

I should have included the fact that I've been communicating with my coach and he gave me a pretty big range of where I could be coming in during the late summer. I was just hoping for other people with experience from making the move from high school to college training.

What does the division of the school have to do with what you should do? As other stated, talk to you coach.

It doesn't have anything to do with it in hindsight but i figured i'd include it

Lowmileageloser wrote:

I should have included the fact that I've been communicating with my coach and he gave me a pretty big range of where I could be coming in during the late summer. I was just hoping for other people with experience from making the move from high school to college training.

If you're smart enough and mature enough to keep all your easy miles easy, go ahead and plan to run near the top end of the coach's range. If you're an idiot that's going to hammer every training run (don't take offense, I was an idiot when I was your age) shoot for the low end of his mileage recommendation.

I was really close in mileage to you coming out of high school. Not quite as fast, but I jumped from mid 40's to upper 55s late summer and was hitting 70s the first couple weeks of the season. I ended up getting hurt and was out for 6 weeks.

Normally 50 to 60 is pretty solid coming in. That way you will be able to progress to 80 and up by your senior year. It also depends on what type of training he has you doing. if it is mostly thresholds, a little speed, and mileage you can handle more mileage. If you are hammering mileage, and workouts, etc be careful. Just listen to your body. If you feel like you're barely hanging on back off a little. You don't want to come in to your freshmen year over-trained.

Also ask the coach what is the in-season mileage going to. If he has everyone at 70 and you come in at 50 that jump could be touch. Just my advice/ experience good luck!

How good is the school? How big is the team? Are you on scholarship? If not I hope you have a great coach or you might be thrown to the wolves. That is the worse case scenario of course

The coach that's getting you should tell you. He/she should know what you have done previously and best to know expectations instead of guessing.

I did 60 during summers but ~40 in season in high school. I was intimidated about college and thought I should crank out a hard summer. Did 70 mpw and got hurt first thing in September.

College brings a lot of new stresses, intensities, etc. Starting freshmen year sidelined was the absolute worst. I recommend keeping it moderate so you feel fresh when you show up to the first day.

Eagle Scout wrote:

I did 60 during summers but ~40 in season in high school. I was intimidated about college and thought I should crank out a hard summer. Did 70 mpw and got hurt first thing in September.

College brings a lot of new stresses, intensities, etc. Starting freshmen year sidelined was the absolute worst. I recommend keeping it moderate so you feel fresh when you show up to the first day.

I totally disagree. If you want to run seriously in college and can control the intensity of your summer running and keep most of it easy, then the more mileage you can do, the better prepared you will be for the transition to college running. Having said that, I was one of those people who ran about 50-60mpw during the summer before freshman year and ran it at too high an intensity. I got off to a very good start in XC and then really wore down and got an ITB injury late in the season. In hindsight I would have been much better off coming in at about 80 mpw of easy running. I learned the lesson that year and did manage to make DII XC all-American by my senior year.

I would build to 60mpw over the summer and run that for a year before progressing to 70mpw next summer and so on. If you build slowly you’ll be fine especially if your not doing hard workouts in the summer.