I’m a D3 collegiate XC/T&F athlete. This is my first year. Our coach has us run no more than 20 miles per week, including our warmups & cool downs. To me, this is too little. Am I right? How many miles should a collegiate XC runner be running each week?
Yes. Run more.
can't be a serious program. Does anybody even break 30 for an 8k?
You are right.
That depends, but 20 miles or less per week just will not get the job done
I’m a girl, so it’s 5k’s mostly. Our team isn’t that bad surprisingly. Our slowest runner runs 22 mid, the fastest runs 18 high.
Our coach has us do hard mile repeats x3, 400s & 800s, 4 mile tempo runs. Lots of “speed”, never any long distance.
Ccc123 wrote:
I’m a D3 collegiate XC/T&F athlete. This is my first year. Our coach has us run no more than 20 miles per week, including our warmups & cool downs. To me, this is too little. Am I right? How many miles should a collegiate XC runner be running each week?
Almost every serious runner does additional training on their own.
Even when I was in college many decades ago, all the distance runners ran on their own to supplement the team training.
And that was at a community college.
I’m definitely going to have to start training on my own. How many miles per week would you recommend I get up to?
Ccc123 wrote:
I’m definitely going to have to start training on my own. How many miles per week would you recommend I get up to?
How much were you doing in high school?
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How much were you doing in high school?[/quote]
Honestly, you can achieve a lot on 30-40 miles per week
If your coach sucks, you're going to have to take it upon yourself to run more. 20 miles sounds like 3-4 practices a week, which means you should be doing 8-10 runs on your own. Get your teammates to run with you or if they are lazy losers just do it on your own and if they care about the sport they'll start running more when you crush them in every race.
TheBanaman wrote:
How much were you doing in high school?[/quote]
Honestly, you can achieve a lot on 30-40 miles per week[/quote]
If you are really hammering the speed, you can't go high mileage. But 35 to 40 can work. Above all else, i would get in a long run. At your mileage, 8 to 10 miles is good enough. That gets you up to 30 immediately. throw in another one or two 5 milers, and you're good.
Where do you have room to throw in more runs?
Ccc123 wrote:
I’m a D3 collegiate XC/T&F athlete. This is my first year. Our coach has us run no more than 20 miles per week, including our warmups & cool downs. To me, this is too little. Am I right? How many miles should a collegiate XC runner be running each week?
Definitely run more. My 12 and 13 year olds are running 50km (31 miles) a week. If they can, a college runner can do at least 40.
what An incompetent dope your coach is.
Definitely need to run more. If practices are in the evening Monday through Friday, I'd run in the mornings for 3-5 miles as a starting point. On Saturday or Sunday, assuming no scheduled practice, get in a long run. Start at 10 miles. Try to gradually build up the morning runs and long runs. Add 1 mile to the morning runs and 2 miles to the long run each season (summer/xc are one season, indoor/outdoor are one season). After a couple years you'll be at pretty good mileage and in great shape.
To answer your other question, most top-tier collegiate women run 75-90 mpw by junior/senior year. Their progression to that depends on what they ran in high school. Abbey D'Agostino won 7 NCAA D1 National Championships and did 70-75 mpw in college. Molly Seidel won 4 NCCA D1 National Championships and did 85-90 mpw by her junior/senior year. But both of those women were probably around 40 mpw in high school. Then gradually built up. So remember to be patient. Maybe you run 50 mpw one season, 60 the next, then 70, then 75, then 80, then 85, then 90. At 90 I'd say don't do more than that until you're ready to do marathon training.
Are you doing back to back hard days as well? The simplest way to increase your mileage is double 4-6 days a week of 3-4 miles. Star with two days the first week and add a day each week. Give your body time to adjust etc. what does a typical week look like right now?
Ccc123 wrote:
I’m definitely going to have to start training on my own. How many miles per week would you recommend I get up to?
I would start with what you feel that you're missing, and make adjustments from there.
Make sure you're doing enough, and that you're always able to recover well for your workouts.
Perhaps he has his own reason's. Ask him
I am guessing your XC team has one or more female sub-60 400m athletes. Sub-60 female D-3 400m athletes must be treated with care. The coach I bet is concerned about the welfare of 400m/800m athletes on the team. I am guessing your XC coach is smarter than you realize.
O.P., what is stopping you from going on 90m Sunday runs? Most likely, your XC team does not train officially more than once per day. Go one three extra runs a week during the week.
Yeah that's low. A good HS senior will come off her last year of HS having run around 45-50 miles a week, so their freshman year they should be around 55-60 or at least close to that. 65-70 would be a good level to hit in their sophomore year.
But like others said, it depends on your background and what your consistent average mileage was before that. You don't want to go more than 5-15 miles beyond where you were last year, generally speaking.