Like the song for Monday Night Football….Are You Ready for some Cross Country

School’s out for summer. No more pencils, no more books. No more teacher’s….well you know the words. But the singer with the weird make up forgot to add lyrics for getting ready for Fall XC. Summer has begun, time to start your training to prepare for XC in the Fall.

If you just graduated from 8th grade, you may not have a summer training plan from your high school coach. If you are in high school, maybe your coach did not give you a specific plan. Maybe the coach just said “Run a lot”. And waiting until “Captain’s Practice” in August is too late if you want to avoid injury and be a top 5 finisher for your team. If you think you can do it on your own without a plan by just going out for some long runs, just doing long slow running will just make you a long slow racer.

If you do have a plan from your coach, does it include interval training? That’s short distances at faster paces with a short recovery between each fast rep. Running 200m or 400m repeats with 60 to 90 seconds of recovery jog between is not just for the milers. Doing multiple reps or multiple sets of multiple reps will develop your ability to get out of the team box at the starting line and across the field quickly so you can leave the pack behind you as you enter the course where passing another runner is often harder to do.
Also include portions of your longer runs at a faster pace. The run that are done at an easy pace are intended to develop your body’s ability to generate energy from burning fat vs carbs. But, you need to train your body for the final quarter to half mile kick to the finish so include some portions of the long runs at a pace faster than your goal race pace.

Don’t forget about those rest days, either. Running every day is not good for you. Your body actually gets stronger and you get faster because of the rest days. Without them, you just continue to break down muscle fiber without giving it time to repair and heal the damage from the running. Rest days are good days for flexibility workouts and upper body and core strength training.

For the workout days, not every workout need be a running workout. You can’t become a faster runner if you just ride you bike but some cross training in the form of swimming or cycling is one way to get some aerobic conditioning while lessening the potential for an over-use injury or to just give you something to break up the routine.

If you would like some help with your summer training, contact me at info@RunningCoachCT.com or visit my website www.RunningCoachCT.com and fill in the “Contact” page.

By RunningCoachCT

Helping athletes of all ages and abilities from across the state and around the world since 2004.