Green Mountain High School Training Overview
Summer running is important for a successful cross country season. As they say, summer miles make fall smiles :) The base mileage you put in during the summer will help the workouts you do during the cross country season be successful. You also will see greater success with base mileage. There are five different plans to choose from. Each plan is based on how many years you have been running high school cross country. You can also move up and down based on your ability level. Please make use of the summer runs we will be doing as well to help you be successful as well. Below are some definitions of some of the workouts we will be doing.
Make sure you log your mileage here.
Recovery Runs: These runs should be at a conversation pace. These are not fast, but not slow either. You should be able to talk to the person next to you while you are running.
Long Runs: To build our aerobic capacity, we need to do over distance workouts. Try and get one long run in each week. Your plan should tell you how far you should go that day. These runs should also be at a conversation pace.
Tempo: The easiest way to describe these workouts is that they are medium paced runs. Ideally you should feel in control during these runs and you should have a heartrate between 160-172. If you are doing repeats that are tempo, the rest in between should be short (around 1-2 minutes).
Cross Training
Cross training is an option for a lot of these miles. You still need to run to get better, but you can take some of the miles and bike, swim, or hike instead. You can substitute the miles by another activity. However, running miles aren't equal to cross training miles. Here is a guide to help you transfer your cross training miles to running miles in your log:
Biking: Every 3 miles of biking equals 1 mile of running.
Swimming: 1 miles of swimming equals 4 mile of running.
Hiking: 1 mile of hiking can be 1 mile of running if the effort of the hike is quality.
Injury Prevention and Strength
In addition to running, there are many ancillary workouts that help become better runners. We will do more of these during the regular season and possibly during summer workouts, but try to add these in three times a week.
Click above for summer training plans.
Logging Miles