Heading Into Summer

OK, Team.  It's time to get the blog up and running again.  The purpose of this blog is to help get information out to Hughson Cross Country athletes during the summer, no matter where in the world you are traveling.  The first post for the summer will cover the general theme of what we are trying to accomplish.

Fitness
We are trying to get fit.  Fitness for cross country is different than fitness for any other sport at the California high school level.  No other sport requires you to put out your highest effort level for a period of around 20 minutes without any breaks, so, our training will need to look different than any other sport's.

Training Types
There are a number of different workout types that we do throughout the summer and the season to prepare you to run the most important races in October and November.  I'm going to give you a oversimplified breakdown.

1. Endurance - the ability to work without getting tired.  We accomplish this mostly through longer, easy runs.  These runs can be up to 90 minutes or 14 miles in length for our most experienced athletes.
2. Lactate Threshold - the ability to work at a high rate without getting tired.  This might be the most important type of training we do.  It breaks down like this.  If you can run at 6:00 per mile without becoming fatigued and your opponent can run at only 6:15 per mile without becoming fatigued, when you both take off at 5:30 pace for the first 2 miles, who will have more gas left for the last mile? You will.  You increase lactate threshold by running at a pace that feels fast but is still comfortable. We call this pace "Steady State"
3. Biomechanical Efficiency - The ability to go fast while only using a little energy. We address this through various drills, strengthening exercises and short fast repetitions.
4. General Athleticism. The ability to have strength and move in multiple directions.  This is important on difficult courses or when you are getting bumped around at the start.  We will play different games and do a number of different types of strength training exercises to address this factor.

Training Intensity

During the summer, intensity should be fairly low.  You should never finish a workout feeling completely exhausted.  There will be plenty of time for that in the fall.  Most of your running should be done at a pace where you can carry on a conversation with a teammate or running partner.

Training Volume

Volume should be fairly high.  During the summer, you are trying to build a large base of low intensity fitness that you can later add more intensity to. 

1. New runners should aim to run at least 4 days per week
2. Veteran runners should run at least 6 days per week but can do up to 11 training sessions per week. This means that veteran runners can run doubles up to 4 times in a week.  DO NOT double on days we do long runs.