I'm really enjoying track and ran my first indoor meet last weekend. Was wondering if there are any up or down sides to continuing to run track during the summer, along with cross country training in the summer?
I'm really enjoying track and ran my first indoor meet last weekend. Was wondering if there are any up or down sides to continuing to run track during the summer, along with cross country training in the summer?
It's not a great idea to run summer track in any serious capacity. To be successful in cross country you need to run a lot of miles, to be successful in track you need to maintain a lot of anaerobic power. Trying to do both of these at the same time is a recipe for injury, burnout, and stagnation. You can only hold your peak track shape for a few weeks before you start to de-train due to lack of mileage. It's also mentally exhausting to try and hold your track shape post season. The best course of action is to try and run your fastest race in May/early June at the end of outdoor, then take a few weeks of break and work on building up for cross country. Running in 2-3 track meets during the course of the summer is possible as long as your treat it more like a workout and have fun with it rather than having the focus be a PR (that being said if you are a beginner you might PR just from consistent training because you are so new). But these summer races should be integrated in your training and you definitely should not peak for them or do specific track workouts leading up to them in hopes of running a better time.
There should be more opportunities for people to "play track" during the summer as they say in Once a Runner. Low stakes meets where you're not in tip-top shape, but everyone realizes that putting on a meet in a lot of fun!
I used to be a part of a summer track league for about five years and it was a blast. Ran some quirky relays, I would quintuple something like (100, 400, mile, 3000, 4x400), and every now and then surprise myself with a fast time.
If you have a chance to run a race, do it.
So maybe good, maybe not good...
As was said earlier. Peak for track in May/June. That's when your biggest meets are. Summer track at the US high school and college level don't have big meets except the NCAA meet. Focus on putting in the miles over the summer in preparing for XC season. However, if there is a summer track meet you want to run go ahead and run it just to see where you are at off of base mileage. Just don't focus on summer track.