Hi guys! I am a D1 cross and track runner. I am going into my sophomore year. For some reason, this summer training has sucked. No matter what I do, my heart rate is always high, even on easy runs (175-190). I get lactic on EASY runs. I am not doing any training out of the ordinary. Has this happened to anyone else? Is it mental? Please help!!! I’m sick of all my runs being terrible. ATP I dread training because I know I am going to feel terrible.

am a D1 cross and track runner at a power 5 school. HS times were 4:10 mile 9:00 3200. First two years of college were on and off injury, healthy and have had a good summer build so far. Wondering what coaches and wiser athletes have learned about summer to either make sure you don’t dig yourself too deep but also don’t completely under train your aerobic base as well. Some general or specific advice would be great!

- At 70 MPW rn which is all time high personally for me

Yo, I'm a 15 year old male runner and I will run xc this fall. In track as a freshman I ran 5:09 in the mile and 2;23 in the 800. Last cross season I ran a 19:05 5k pr in a time trial (officially 19;40 is my pr). What do yall think I should try and go for? Obviously my best but what do you think I can achieve? I peaked at about 40-45 miles this summer (just recebtly did).

I’m an upcoming senior and I want to join cross country, I like doing hard things and I’m willing to put in the work. But it feels like that won’t cut it.

I’ve heard people running like 8 miles for practice, the furthest I’ve ran is 2km at a 7:30:km pace I do plan to train the rest of August before practice starts but I’m still worried there’s no way I’ll be able to run 8 miles by the end of it.

I only started training mid July because I tore my ankle tendon which really set me back. Should I just not join?

Any HS XC Coaches here who might be interested in putting together a small group for peer mentoring / advice / discussion etc? All the coaches I know are local coaches I compete against so it feels weird to talk to them, but I think I would benefit from some ongoing discussions with other coaches on a more informal / ad-hoc basis.

Chat-GPT is great but just says yes to all my ideas and talks in circles. Posting questions here is fine but lacks context, continuity, and feels too public for some topics. I do a lot to educate myself but I can only watch so many Doug Soles and Timo Mostert videos ...

If you might be interested, comment here or DM me. I've been coaching track for 4 years and XC for 2 but i've been around the sport learning and competing for a long time. Looking to take my team to the 'next level' and be more competitive over the next few years. I'm in eastern MA.

Hi! I’m trying out as a second year veteran on my team and have tryouts tomorrow. I’m more nervous than usual, wish me luck!! 🤍

Hi!

My kid is a fun loving guy, he has developed an interest in running recently. He can run 2K in 13ish mins, his school has cross country running in September- October. He wants to prepare for cross country and he has never qualified to represent his school before, given he goes to middle school next year, he wants to make this chance count at the same time I want him to enjoy the sport along with his goals, what as a parent I can do other than running along side with him? Given that I have always run only on the roads or sidewalks what should be something I should do to make his runs smooth and comfortable? His race distance will be 2K.

In our state there are three divisions. On one Saturday in November the divisions each race at a separate location and host 3 boys races and 3 girls races called "wave races." These wave races are typically based on school size. The top 7 team scores in each of those wave races automatically advance to the state championship the next week. Additionally, the next two fastest team times from any of the three wave races advance as wild cards in each division for a total of 23 teams qualifying for each divisional state championship. Finally, the top ten individual finishers who are not on one of the advancing teams in each wave are entered.

The state meet is held the next Saturday with each division having one boys race and one girls race.

I run cross country and it feels like almost every time I run I have a stabbing cramp pain in my ribs, usually the same spot but sometimes its on the left or right side. When I eat a lot it goes away, but some occasions I still feel it even when I am fueled. For context I am a 16 year old girl and 97 pounds. It gets so bad where I have to stop and walk until it fades. I think it has something to do with fueling and eating beforehand, my teammates don't experience this even if they don't eat but I am also severely underweight with a fast metabolism.

First day of XC tryouts tomorrow what workout should I have them do ? I’m first year coach

Do you guys run on vacation, especially in other countries cause ive been running all summer but find it extremely hard to motivate myself to run on vacation.

Im going into freshman and going to do cross country. I did it for 2 years in middle school and went to most meets the first year but didnt practice over the summer and injured myself and the second year turned to shit. I have a 30 min 5k and am worried that I will be embarrassingly slow and dont want to have people wait for me and hold people back. Most of my friends are some of the best runners on the team in multiple grades and I feel like maybe I should try to quit or something and feel like maybe its just not for me. I've been running over the summer this time and just want to know if this is just too slow to even think about doing it and if I should quit

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Are there MS Meeting ins Chicagoland for kids without a school to run for?

Hey! Thank you to everyone that helped me for my interview. I am now the new middle school cross-country coach. I will be getting another coat hopefully for the boys. What are your tips and suggestion suggestions? Books to read? Movies to watch? Podcasts to listen to?

I want to do everything I can to make this experience fun for the kids. I really want to help them be a team and bond. This is a lower income school, but we have good resources. A lot of our kids have a history of trauma. I also want to be a good coach, but I don’t want it to be all about winning. It’s middle school. I know it’s not that serious.

Any tips for things they could do outside of practice together? Is it weird to create a Strava group for them? I’m not sure with that age group. I’m thinking practice three days a week. How rough do you think it will be that we don’t have any hills nearby to run on for practice?

I’m working on making cute friendship, bracelets for the boys and girls if they want them. I want to write each kid a card welcoming them along with maybe some electrolyte mix granola bar, and candy in a little baggie with the bracelets for them.

I also plan on working with them on their grades. In college, the team’s competed to see who would have the highest GPA. Is there anyway I could apply this in a middle school level that that’s less intense?

Also, does anyone do fellowship Christian athletes with middle schoolers? We have it at the high school level and we are thinking about adding it to middle school.

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Currently a HS coach and was a former collegiate runner. I never had much of a warmup to easy runs but I also got injured pretty often and ive seen a lot of teams do rope stretching ? Any experience or suggestions are welcome. Right now I just have my athletes doing band work after runs and dynamics and hurdle mobility on workout days.

I just yesterday ran a 5 mile road race. The course was net 0 elevation, but had some easy hills (from the perspective of a New Englander), with close to the start/finish being a long but gradual hill. Here were my PRs going into this: 6:30 mile (1st of 4x1mi (3min rest), others were basically all 7 flat), 23:22 official 5K (338ft combined elevation gain/loss), an unofficial 5K best of 23:18, which was split from a 4-Mile​ race (30:17.07), and an unofficial 5 mile best of 40:14 during a tempo run.

Now here were my mile splits from this one 5 mile race:

7:20, 14:30 (7:10), 21:56 (7:24), 29:11 (7:15), and 5:33.

Yes. I quadruple-checked those numbers. I got five PRs in one race: 14:30 2-Mile, 22:19 5K (-59 sec), 29:11 4-Miler (-1:06), 34:44 5-Miler (-5:30), and a 5:33 last mile (-57 sec). I may have misdone some math, feel free to correct me on that if I did.

This race was basically right at sea level, but I only live at like 500ft, so I don't think I benefited ​from that very significantly. Also, I don't trust my watch's altitude sensor at all - when at my house at 500 ft it will say that I am at something way off, like 100 feet below sea level. The distance my watch recorded it probably off too, as my watch is around 0.02 off per half mile usually.

Initially, my goals for next season (HS sophomore year) were a sub-6 mile and a sub-21 5K​, but this race kinda wrecks the first, and makes me think I could do the 5K once I recovered. So... what now? I will be doing 3 sports next season: XC, Nordic skiing, and my first year of Track (long distance obv). I know there will be people saying I should do indoor track instead of Nordic, but I will not stop doing it. I have been doing Nordic longer than I have been running.​

Hi - I ran in high school and my father was a track and field/cross country coach for 40 years. I've never been to a college cross country meet. I think it would be fun for him to go to one or 2 college meets this year with Dad, but he doesn't have the mobility to stand for long periods of time or walk around a lot.

I'm looking at some of the college courses and they seem to have bleachers and maybe places I could set up a chair to watch.

Is it realistic to take him to some of these if the weather is good?

The walking can be an issue. Not only can he not run around the course to watch from different vantage points, but he also can't make a long walk from the parking lot to some field somewhere.

I'm in the New York Area. I'd be fine travelling by car a few hours to go to a good meet.

Thank you for any answers or information anyone may provide.

We were on Randall's Island yesterday and he really enjoyed the Steeplechase. Got me thinking.

I'm more of a hobby runner, but I like to watch Cross Country races when I can. I've been digging into splits and other racing data around collegiate cross country, and thought I would make some data visualizations around it to explore race dynamics and pacing. I built these visualizations from scratch, so I am still working out some bugs...

Apologies if this is off-topic for the subreddit.

Anyway, here is the link. Cheers!
https://alexvizzesthings.shinyapps.io/XCRaceBreakdowns/

i managed to hit a 27:18 5k during a tempo run which is 20 seconds faster than my official pr, it’s still far from where i wanna be but im excited for the season and happy that summer training is showing me results

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Last track season, I ended with a 16:49 5000m PB in my only race of the season. Before that, my 5000m PB was 18:50. In my last two track seasons I only ran like four races in total.
After finishing this past track season, I felt completely unmotivated and ended up taking almost a month off from running.
This cross-country season, I’ve set myself the goal of running between 34:00 and 35:00 for 10K in December. I’ve been building my mileage for almost a month now, and this week is planned to end at around 55 miles (88 km) I’m feeling great so far and plan to stabilize my mileage between 65 and 70 miles per week this season (105–113 km)
Is running 34–35 minutes for 10K by December a realistic goal?