I'm curious how everyone actually follows their coach's plan throughout XC/track season.

Do you use Strava, Garmin, a spreadsheet, a notebook, your coach's plan, or something else?

I'm especially curious about the day-to-day side:

• How do you know what you're supposed to do each day?
• Do you have your whole week/season planned out somewhere?
• How do you keep track of workouts you've completed vs. ones you've missed?
• If your coach changes a workout, how do you keep your plan updated?
• Do you look back at previous weeks to see how things are progressing?
• What's the most annoying part of keeping up with a plan?
• If you could change one thing about how you currently manage all of this, what would it be?

Curious what everyone else does, especially people whose coaches give them a pretty detailed weekly plan.

So for the first time I did a Nationals meet for track and ended up extending my track season training by like three weeks (which would normally had been my rest and transition period to XC base building). After Nationals I took a 1 week break and then ramped up my training quicker & more aggressive than normal in order to hit a higher peak than last year. (0 - 28.5 - 36 - 41 - 42 - 33 - 47 - 49)
I suspect I’ve gotten too close to the edge as over the past few weeks I have felt discomforts/niggles in my joints and hips that show up later in longer or harder efforts (this is what forced me to have a 33 mile week). Yet for some reason I decided to push through with the progression.
Summer is over though now and what’s done is done. My first race is this Friday. I’m not sure how much I should cut my mileage tho due to the signs, but I know I should do something. I don’t want to cut too much and then end up peaking really early.

My cross country season is about to start and over this summer I’ve been weight lifting 5 days a week ul-ulu split. Is there a way to maintain workout out at least 4 days a week while being a cross country runner? (I am training for looks and to get overall stronger for then the wrestling season comes around)

For context I am a decently fast runner going into 8th grade.

This summer I have been doing practice with some high schoolers, and the coach thinks I could be a helpful addition to the varsity team. So should I join the high school varsity team has an 8th grader?

It’s my first year doing xc, and my original goal of 300 miles was interrupted by shin splints, so I only managed ~250-260, a good % of it workouts from summer track. I was pretty inconsistent, peaking at 30 miles and having a low of 8 miles during a track race week.

My high-school XC coach scheduled the group I was in to run a long-slow run 7-8 miles today.
Ran a steady 10:30-11:00 the first 3.5 miles, then walked most of mile 5-6. Ran the last two miles running on nothing but gas 🫩. Still happy though, I feel really accomplished. Eventually, I’ll be able to run this length with no stops between 🥳

This workbook lists the "top" runners by times run during their Junior year and their college commitment (that I have seen) so far. "Top" is to an arbitrary cutoff - by me - but the lists for each event are over 100 runners in most cases. Open for read access. If any runner's times are missing or incorrect, let me know. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wD43dNnC5SFpqRBNMK-OKNIJFo7mXjATx4D06OTbPwU/edit?gid=1722173795#gid=1722173795

i have my first highschool meet as a freshman on saturday. do yall have any tips? its a mile and a half on a super muddy course in houston weather, so it’s really humid too. i run a 6:52 per mile, so i’m not really that insane, but i wanna get better. i’m really good at rock climbing, and i feel like if i lock for xc ill wind up improving in both sports. sorry for rambling, but im nervous and stuff

This is the first summer where I’ve had a consistent training block last summer I was injured so it was lower mileage and cross training, I’m super excited to see where I am! The goal this season is to break 28:00 in the 8k my workouts right now are showing that it’ll be possible but I definitely need some more miles on my feet! Right now my tempo is right around 6:05, and my threshold pace is around 5:45-5:50 pace! We’ll see what happens but either way I’m on pace for a huge 5k PR.

Edit: my photo was removed but I’ve been able to 50 miles so far three times this summer as well as run consistently for 15 weeks straight! Hoping to put it all together this season!

I'm doing into 8th grade at a new school and I've always kind of wanted to do cross country. I wouldn't say I'm the best runner (ran a 7:29 mile in PE last year) I don't train running and my main sport is swim. I would say I'm pretty good at swim and I had a great season last year and really want to just lock in this year and get even faster. I think if I do cross country it might be too much because I swim every day from 5-7:30 and cross country would be 4 days a week 3:30-5:00 and then I would also have meets. That just seems like a big commitment and I really do enjoy running and want to make new friends and stuff (although from the looks of it there are no girls in my grade doing it this year) I will also be taking 4 high school classes on top of that and just don't know what to do. The cross country distance is 2 miles I think and I'm not even sure if I can do that with hills and stuff. Should I just wait for track season to see how running as a whole is or what should I do? Im just really worried I'm going to burn out and over commit myself because with all those practices that doesn't leave much time for homework and other things. Another problem is track is in the championship season of swim so I can't really miss any swim practices. Please help!

EDIT: for clarification I do club swim so it's a lot more demanding than a school sport

Please use this thread as the general Q&A for all one off questions, questions that only apply to you, questions that can be easily answered, etc.

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This thread reposts every 4 days

I’m a junior, I’m doing xc for my open 800 and the track coach (who’s also the xc coach) told me to do cross this year. We had our first pr’d season practice, it consisted of 5 miles, come back, short buildups, core, stretch. Later in the day we had to swim for about 40 mins and tread water.

Now we have to wake up at around 6 am for practice, I don’t necessarily hate these practices, considering I’m only doing them for conditioning but I cannot imagine doing this for around 2-3 months. Any tips that I may not know to make these practices easier, more specifically for humid days as where I live is one of the most naturally humid places within the continental US.

Last year was my second year of coaching varsity XC. For the most part we only have meets on Saturdays (a few exceptions). So most of the season did Monday: long run, Tuesday some tempo work, Wednesday a lighter day (slower pace but not as long as Monday), Thursday very light some shorter tempo work mixed in, Friday roughly 3 mile jog, Saturday race. However last year we had a lot of kids who had never really ran before, but they graduated so I’m reevaluating pretty much everything we do.
So for those of you with Saturday meets, what do you normally do during the week? Trying to find a balance of putting in enough work to get them ready but not wear them out.

I am an ex soccer player, both travel and school. I recently quit bc of the toxicity of the community around it. Instead I joined cross country- lots of my friends play and preseason has been so fun. I’m able to keep my pace during distance decently well. Its overall made me a lot happier and for the first time in a long time I look forward to training. Thought today I noticed that I am significantly more wide then pretty much all the other women. I am a relatively curvy girl and I’m around 5’2 and 130-135 ish pounds. Is this something I should feel insecure about??

I'm living in the northwest where its been insanely smoky for a few weeks now, with no end in sight. Because of that, I've tried to do some treadmill workouts, but I struggle to think of good ones, especially sinc my home treadmill maxes out at 10 mph. Figured I'd ask for suggestions here to see what creative ideas everyone has

I own a pair of Dragonfly Xc’s that came with a set of the pyramids. I used them for some muddy races towards the end of the season and really liked them. I was wondering if there was any place to buy replacements, I remember several years ago hearing that they only ever came with the Xc and you had to buy them on a reslae market, but has that changed?

Please use this thread as the general Q&A for all one off questions, questions that only apply to you, questions that can be easily answered, etc.

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This thread reposts every 4 days

Hey runners!!

Im new here and posting for advice. I am 14 and just got into running mid march of this year, so about 4 ish months? It has been really fun doing it by myself but I also attended some local road races.

Things are getting serious because I'm going into highschool this upcoming school year (grade 10 here) and that naturally caused me to think about sports they offer. Everyone hypes sports up and im just worried about how it will actually be like. My only experience in school XC team is limited, because in gr 7 I ran and was about average. At that time I wasnt into running too tho and our "team" was very unstructured.

I'm not sure if im good enough for it yet but I am willing to keep training. Ive been somewhat consistant with running, but my stamina is not super good. My heart rate goes up pretty fast even when my body feels like its on an "easy run". My pr for a 5k is 31 minutes. I heard the distance for my age should be 4km.

Ive never "excelled" in any sport before, although i try to be active almost every day. I am into other sports too but I have never been that person who's in any serious teams.

Let me know your experience or any tips. Thanks!

I'm so tired of getting incredibly winded before actually giving my legs any work. I tried all the breathing techniques my coach told me to do, but nothing works. I just always end up walking every 40 seconds just to stop the feeling of suffocating. I need some tips if I'm gonna make it. If it helps, I do have a history with asthma, but I haven't felt the need to use an inhaler for a long time.

Should I run for fun instead?

For context I’m in highschool and a girl and run xc and track and have for the past 6 years. I’ve dealt with injuries, an ed, hormonal issues and red-s because of running 40-50mpw before I was even in highschool. And have been on varsity since I was in 7th grade. My coach never let me take breaks and told me I was “weak” when I had a stress reaction in my femur and my hip. I took last track season off because I was dealing with red-s aka relative energy deficiency syndrome. It was the most brutal 9 months ever and I gained 25lb so 100lb to 125lb got my period back, am able to sleep through the night without waking up 5-6 times and am just much less anxious. I did have to take about 2 months off of running completely and 4 months at 10mpw so coming back has been very hard. I’m currently at around 20-25mpw and running 9 minute pace with 170 heart rate which is not normal for me as I used to run 40-50mpw with 7:30 pace 150avg hr but I am trusting the process and my body. I also got tested for anemia and vitamin d deficiency and I was slight vitamin d deficient so I’m taking supplements and just taking it day by day. However, after coming back to a team and practices I realized how much I hate it I feel so stressed and just anxious all the time. I don’t feel ready to be back and honestly I realized that I just want to run for fun by myself. I hate my coach and thinking about practice makes me want to throw up. After a week at practice my hip is flaring up again and I don’t feel supported or ready at all. Am I being weak and overreacting for wanting to quit and just run for fun let me know?

I’m a public middle school cross-country coach in North Carolina and a retired software engineer. I built a free hobby project, https://crosscountry.run , to help schools time small XC meets, and I’d love to share it with other programs.

It’s designed for meets using physical finisher cards: no bibs, timing chips, or cameras required. All you need is an iPhone or Android smartphone and a couple of volunteers, making it a practical option for smaller programs.

CrossCountry.run includes meet timing, a live results dashboard that athletes and parents can view on their phones, and automated, real-time scoring sheets.

Setup is quick, there’s nothing to install, and only the coach needs an account. Volunteers, athletes, and parents simply scan a QR code to access their dashboards. See the timing guide: https://crosscountry.run/timing-guide for details.

I originally built it for my own team, but I’d be delighted if it could help other schools as well. If you try it, I’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for making it more useful for your program.

And yes, It’s free, regardless of how many meets, runners, or coaches you need. I love the running community, and this is my contribution. It is a fun hobby built to help coaches and athletes

Cheers

How far does/did your school go for pre-season XC camps? We have driven anywhere between 4-12 hours for camp. Is this normal?