FAQ

Cross country is a simple sport. Students will run a 2 mile race on dirt trails.

Comfortable Running Shoes These do not need to be expensive. They will get very muddy.

Digital Stopwatch Students will be working on goal times. It's very helpful if they can track their own times. Again, please nothing expensive. Middle school students WILL lose their belongings.

Water Bottle with the student's name on it. By the end of the season I usually have a large collection of water bottles in my car. Please write a name on it. Remind students to drink lots and lots of water. 2 cups 2 hours before practice or a race.

Uniforms will be provided by the school.

Varsity Only Students running 2 miles faster than 15 minutes may want cross country spikes. These can be purchased at Running Central, Dick's Sporting Goods, or online. These are not required. They will only be worn during races.

Sleep For top performance, runners should be regularly sleeping 8-9 hours every night.

Here is a fabulous article about the benefits and drawbacks to different styles of running shoes.

To summarize:

Shoes with a thick heel and lots of cushion help runners with ankle and foot pain.

Shoes with a thin, flexible sole help runners with knee and hip pain.

The bottom line:

If you don't spend a lot of money on the shoes, you can try out different styles to find the shoe that works best for the individual runner.

Spikes

For middle school runners, I only recommend spikes if the athlete can run 2 miles in 15:00 minutes or less. If the athlete is running slower than that, the spikes will not make much of a difference.

Varsity races are for 7 people. All student race times are tracked. The average of the last 3 races will be used to determine the 7 fastest times for boys and girls. Students absences from races and practice may lose their spot on the varsity team. Varsity may change from race to race.

Varsity runners will be given a certain pace to run a certain distance repeatedly. These paces will push runners past what they have been  running. These practices are very specific and intended to be quite challenging. Any open runners who would like to join are welcome. They will also be given difficult paces to run, but tailored to their ability.

An invite is a race where lots of teams are invited. These races are professionally timed. The biggest invitationals we run will have more than 50 teams represented. We also run smaller meets with only one or two other teams. These are usually more casual and timed by hand.

Most races begin with girls varsity, usually followed by boys varsity half an hour later, then girls open, and finally boys open.

Varsity races are scored by adding up the top 5 places for each team. A perfect score is 15 = 1st place + 2nd place + 3rd place +4th +5th.

Absolutely! Every race is different. Some give medals to the top 20 in every race: varsity and open.

The top 10 runners for boys and girls will be invited to sectional team. Top 7 will run. The top 3 teams in each sectional advance to the State meet at Parkside in Normal.