Only 11 weeks until State XC Meet

Only 11 weeks until the state cross country meet. I hope your volume is up so that we can concentrate on transitioning from endurance/strength to speed. Transitioning is the key word here. Moving from one venue of training to another is one place that injury can happen. I remember reading a discussion on line and different coaches were talking about peaking athletes. One coach said that two weeks before state he just “slammed his athletes with speed”. We don’t slam you with speed because we like to allow the body to adapt to a change in work load or at least a change in the quality of the work load. Failure to do so will lead to soreness and perhaps injury at a very crucial time in the season. The point that I am attempting to make is that your body is amazing and is built to adapt if given the correct work load with proper transitioning and rest. A good example of this is how we do hills. We do not begin with 12 hills. Early in the summer we might do four hills and then add one or two a week. Until we get to ten or twelve hills we “allow the hill to create the work”. In other words, we are not charging up the hills like a flock of wild turkeys. Once we get the correct volume then each week we can add a couple of faster hills until by mid –season we are doing all of them fast. By the way, hills are not speed work unless you are running down them – hills are strength work – the type of strength you will need on the state course. Waiting to start hills when the season begins does not allow our bodies enough time to adapt before we begin racing. We have one and sometimes two meets a week and precious little time to rest let alone continue to build.
Look at early seasons hills as a type of controlled fartlek. After we get to ten hills think of it as a 30 minute run divided into 10 one minute runs at 5000 meter pace, with a two minute recovery jog.
Our hill course also allows us to do a run off pavement, of thirty minutes, with a little bit of work attached. On hot days, being back in the shade of the trees can be pretty sweet.
Slowly transitioning from longer intervals to shorter intervals is a common thread through out all of our training.

If you have questions about general conditioning e mail me: jlmiller@osd.wednet.edu or call 709-0572.

Our season schedule is listed at this site in mid June.