This article was provided by Complete Track and Field

By Scott Christensen

Winter and summer training periods are the ideal time in the annual plan to develop effective hill racing skills and to use various forms of hill training to develop strength in cross country runners.  Most geographical locations in the United States possess ideal physical changes in topography which are suitable for hill tactics and training.  The extreme mountainous regions and the very flat areas do provide challenges to planning effective workout strategies, but these can be overcome with creative thinking on the part of the coach.  It is just as important when you do hill training as it is what you do in this training domain.

The essence of the great Arthur Lydiard’s training program was the development of strength.  He tried to accomplish tremendous strength gains in his athletes by prescribing an abundance of training miles as well as bouts of interval running on sand dunes and hills.  Lydiard recognized that different hill characteristics have different training effects and adaptations, so he varied the prescribed work to fit the athlete and the period in the training cycle.  Arthur Lydiard was one of the first coaches to incorporate hill training into the annual plan.  He advocated for up to five weeks of 1-3 sessions per week of hill training in any given training phase.  He also advocated for hill training to cycle in these five week blocks of time throughout the general and specific preparation periods, but then be eliminated during the general and specific competition periods of training.  Lydiard determined that hill training helped delay the peaking period in an athlete and when that runner progressed

During the five week blocks of training time athletes should perform most of the hill work using their normal running technique, but some variety may be good from time to time.  For example, the Lydiard technique of hill-bounding and also modified skip bounding can sometimes be introduced to the more advanced cross country runners.  Hill bounding must be performed on a grass or earthen surface as asphalt is much too hard to hill-bound on.  Lydiard learned this technique from the great Australian coach Percy Cerutty who developed effective hill-bounding routines on the beach sand dunes of Australia working with the likes of Herb Elliot.  The technique worked because the surface was soft enough to accommodate the work.

Training Resource:  Peaking Workouts for Distance Runners

Once the workout surface has been selected, the parameters left to decide are the intensity of each bout of work and the total volume of the training session.  The rest interval between each bout of work should be active with generally just a jog recovery back down the hill viewed as adequate.  However, if the uphill is less than 50 meters in length, then an extended loop to the bottom should be prescribed.

Hill length varies in every town as does the pitch of the hill.  Use common sense in choosing the proper combination of pitch and length in prescribing work.  A general suggestion of the total volume of anaerobic work to done in a single session would be to limit it to no more than one mile.  For example, the anaerobic work prescribed could be divided into 8 x 200 meter hill, 3 x 500 meter hill or 15 x 60 meter hill.  The training theme should be, the shorter the hill, the greater the pitch.  The goal is try to achieve maximum heart rate near the top of any of the hill you work with.

Periodizing the hill workouts should be schemed so that the longer hills are done in the general preparation period such as winter or summer training.  As the athletes progress to the specific preparation period, the hills should get shorter in length and steeper in pitch for a different training effect.

A training model could resemble the following:  June 25-August 1, five weeks total, one day per week, a typical session would include a two mile general warm-up followed by 6 x 300 meter hill, jog recovery, followed by a three mile cool down.  Take three weeks off.  August 21-October 1, five weeks total, one day per week, a typical session would include a two mile general warm-up, followed by 10 x 150 meter hill, jog recovery, followed by a three mile cool down.  Physiologists consider the overall recovery of these workouts to be about 24 hours.  Repeat the summer block during the period January 1 – February 10 and then repeat again March 5 – April 15.

Want Every Single Cross Country Workout from June Through Nationals?

Check out:  Training Model for High School Cross Country

Many coaches also add hilly routes to their arsenal of continuous runs done during the season or in preparation for the season.  Great idea, as this adds variety and interest to base runs or long runs.  However, do not substitute these types of runs for dedicated hill training sessions.  Too many hills in a route would not be appropriate for timed VO_{2 max} workouts or tempo runs done at a fraction of VO_{2 max} pace.

This post was provided by Complete Track and Field

By Scott Christensen,

Most cross country coaches have been running since high school and college, or newly enjoy running now. There are some workouts that seem to always go very well for you, but others that result in an endless struggle. From these workouts emerge favorites, but they may not be the best type of work for your athletes. Just having your athletes run your workout each day as you get ready for a 10k race next month is not sensible training for your team. What your favorite workout is for you may not be your favorite workout for developing runners on your cross country team.

A cross country athlete needs a coach for three important reasons: 1) time management, 2.) motivation, and 3) to implement workouts that strengthen the weaker physiological attributes of the athlete. This third point is where the struggle lies. It is human nature to repeat and want to do things we are already good at. If a runner is fast then they want to do sprint training today. If a runner has the capacity to run far, then left to them, they would do a long run today. Hard work lies in doing what the athlete is not good at.

scott christensen cross country workoutsWith all of this in mind, how do you come up with favorite workouts for your team? The favorites cannot come from what is best for you, or doing work at what they are already good at. Additionally, these favorite workouts must stand the test of time and be quantitative so that results can be compared over various training periods and among different athletes that you have coached.

As a cross country coach over the last three decades I have two favorite workouts. One is on the aerobic side and the other on the anaerobic side of energy system metabolism. We do neither workout often, only about four to five times each macrocycle. However, when we do them the athletes prepare for the day as if it was the most important race of the year. What makes them my favorite? In my opinion, if done properly, they give the athletes the most bang for their training buck.

On the aerobic side, my favorite workout is 4 x 1600 meter repeats at the athlete’s individual VO2 max pace. Work time is always equal to or close to rest time. For example if I have an athlete that achieves a 10:00 mark for an exhaustive two mile effort, then I know this is their individual VO2 max pace. For this athlete I will prescribe the workout to be four times one mile efforts at 5:00 per repeat, with about 5 minutes rest between. The real value in this workout lies over the second half of the session as they are trying to maintain two mile pace effort over four miles of work with proper and exacting recovery between efforts allowing them to complete the session. In my opinion, there is no better workout to improve aerobic power and it requires a tight control by the coach to make it all happen.

On the anaerobic side of things my favorite workout is 8 x 400 meters on the track with a tight three minute recovery between each bout of work. The ability to tolerate lactate and lowering pH values in the anaerobic energy system has limitations based on the human genome, but it is somewhat trainable. It has been shown that in racing the mile, up to 21 mmol of lactate are produced and must be both tolerated and dissipated. Normal is about 2 mmol. In order to tolerate such a heavy load of lactate the body must be cranked up to a sufficient velocity to produce that load for a short time before it is allowed a recovery period, and then it is forced up that high again and so on.

Related: A Proper Cross Country Warm-Up

This type of training slowly builds a type of lactate tolerance into the anaerobic energy system that is not native to the body. In other words, this is really hard work. Again the coach is there to provide just enough recovery time to continue the building process, but not cause damage along the way due to acidosis. For example, take a 4:20 miler and examine the 400 effort of 65 seconds per lap to achieve that time. Now subtract five seconds from each 400 for the known effort of 4:20. The workout prescribed will be 8 x 400 meters at 60 seconds with three minutes recovery. The real lactate tolerance stimulus is being accomplished over the second half of the workout and it will provide a real struggle to complete.

This formula of subtracting five seconds off the 400’s of the known effort works for all abilities of athletes. If the runner cannot successfully complete all eight repeats, then you know the runner has a low lactate tolerance and this is exactly the type of hard work that they should be doing.

Your favorite workout should probably not be very fun at all. The type of work described here does not promote the enjoyable aspects of running. It is also the type of work that the coach will not be doing alongside their athletes. The coach is there to do the most important aspect of this kind of work: closely monitor the exact recovery time needed to be able to replicate the work efforts. These are not workouts that see a deterioration in performance as the workout wears on. We will leave that to the tempo run tomorrow.

This article was provided by Complete Track and Field

By Scott Christensen,

Coach Christensen is a highly regarded distance coach. His high school teams have been ranked in the national top 10 eight times.  He has coached 13 Minnesota State Championship-winning teams and 27 individual Minnesota State Champions.  Coach Christensen has also spent 14-years as a USATF Level II endurance lead instructor and currently serves as lead endurance instructor for the USTFCCCA Coaching Academy.

As the track season winds down in the spring, the distance runners enter a time that sport scientists call the transitional phase in the annual plan.  Track is an unusual sport in that there is no one time that all of the athletes are finished with their season.  An athlete that finishes up with a junior varsity meet or a sophomore championship meet may end their season more than a month earlier than the athlete competing at the state championships.  And of course the very best runners may go on to run at an all-star meet or USATF Junior Nationals.  It is just not a clean ending for everybody.  The transitional phase serves to re-align the training program of all of your distance runners while also providing a time for regeneration and relaxation before summer training for cross country runners starts.

How much time should I take off from training coach?  This is a frequently asked question once a runner competes in their last track meet.  The answer is not intuitive.  The fact is the runners with the lowest training age need the most time off to regenerate, while the runners with the highest training age usually need much less time.  A young runner should take three to four weeks off from training, while the older runner two to three weeks.  Note that there is a difference between summer training for cross country and just running.  Training is consistent everyday running.  If the athlete gets bored during this regeneration period and is anxious to run a little bit then they should feel free to step out and run a few “easy miles”.  Just no structured training or set mileage patterns.

MORE:  Hill Training workouts for Cross Country Runners

Around the third week in June is the time most good cross country programs get organized for their summer training.  For most teams in this country that means about eight weeks of summer training camp before the actual cross country season officially begins.

Because there are so many components to a middle distance training program during the competitive season, it is necessary to set up microcycles of 12 days.  Since not quite as much anaerobic work is need in spring long distance and fall cross country these microcycles are set up as complex nine day training periods.  During the summer when general preparation is the target training, it is easy to set up microcycles of seven days which fit the calendar nicely and allows both coach and athlete to easily monitor summer training mileage.

If you are setting up an eight week summer training program then a good number to choose for a total distance goal is 400 miles or 50 miles per week on the average.  This total would be appropriate for those athletes with a training age of two or greater.  If you are planning on giving a t-shirt or other reward this would be the magic number.

Coaching Resource: The Training Model for High School Cross Country

The first three weeks of the summer training for the cross country plan should be very basic with nothing more than workouts done at the aerobic threshold or what can be accurately described as “gossip pace”.  The first week should contain six runs of five miles each day.  Advance mileage over the next three weeks in accordance with the “20% rule”.  That is, never increase the weekly total by more than 20%.  After three weeks of general mileage, you should prescribe two workouts per week that go beyond the training effect of aerobic threshold runs.  These would be strength and power runs.  For the next five weeks do a hill session once per week.  Select a hill to repeat run that is far enough away from school to add a three-mile warm-up and end with a three-mile cool-down.  The hill itself should be about 200-250 meters in length and should be of a sufficient grade to tax the body’s strength component.  Run the hills as hard as one can and then jog to the base and repeat.  For power, aerobic power is the training component and this is the definition of VO_2 max.

On the fourth week set up a two-mile run for time on the track or accurately measured flat stretch of road or trail.  The value each athlete records are their VO_{2 max} velocities and will be used for the next four weeks in training.  On the fifth week break that two-mile time in half and have the athletes do three to four times one-mile repeats at their individual value with equal time rest.  On week six, using the same velocity have the athletes do seven or eight times 800 meters at VO_{2 max} pace with equal time rest.  Weeks seven and eight can be the same sorts of workouts.  Scientists say it takes 27 weeks to fully develop VO_{2 max} in a training period so do not wait until your fall season actually begins.  If you do, your athletes will be late for the party.

Also check out:  Peaking Workouts for Distance Runners

Beginning week four, a true long run constituting 20% of their weekly mileage total should be done, once per week in a single session.  For most of your runners that is a 10 mile run at their aerobic threshold.

If an athlete wants to run a couple of 5K races to test their fitness over the summer encourage them to that and call that their VO_{2 max} workout for the week.

Summer is also a time for the coach to regenerate and relax.  Make sure that occurs as well.  Fall is not that far way and the meat-grinder starts all over again.

Complete Track and Field: Summer Cross Country Training

This article is provided by Complete Track and Field

By Scott Christensen

More and more scientific studies on distance runners have shown that proper recovery facilitates faster physiological adaptation and enhances endurance-related performance. By ignoring recovery today, it all leads to tomorrow’s poor practice session and, eventually, poor recovery habits that are tough to break. It also reinforces attitudes that can lead to under-recovery injuries. However, by taking advantage of planned recovery and making it an integral part of a comprehensive training program, athletes can experience the gains that elude them when they work hard, but do not have the proper rest and recovery integrated into their plan. With this in mind, today’s focus is the athletic lifestyle of the distance athlete.

A coach can only pester and prescribe so much when it comes to rest and recovery. Much of the recovery process takes place away from the coach’s eye. Successful distance coaches have successful runners. These types of cross country runners make rest and recovery important to them because their coach has educated them in its importance and has guided them into a lifestyle that makes great performances possible.

This daily way of life is known as the athletic lifestyle and it is guided by the need for a distance runner to recover from workouts to be successful. The athletic lifestyle involves many things such as sleep, nutrition, hydration, supplementation, rest and an ability and desire to say no at times when an opportunity comes up that disrupts this way of life.

Cross country coaches need a starting point in establishing professional relationships with their runners. They also need a means to check on them and asses their progress part way through the process. Just talking back and forth can work, but that makes it hard to move on at times.

Self-assessment inventories, questionnaires, scales, and comparative ratings can be used to mine new information from runners if they promise to respond in a truthful manner. Then, the coach can look over the results and be satisfied or figure new ways to solve problems.

So much of rest and recovery in distance runners, and thus improvement, is based on runners’ willingness to commit to the athletic lifestyle. What do the runners feel about this way of life? Can they sacrifice for new rewards? Do they even understand what it all means?

The Athletic Lifestyle Worksheet is a self-assessment tool that runners can take and the coach can then measure their responses and gain a final score. The responses measure a global thought process with each athlete as well as sub-categories that may need improvement.

Below is the Athletic Lifestyle Worksheet followed by an explanation of the responses that show the relation of the statement to rest and recovery issues. Note: Links to download the Athletic Lifestyle Worksheet and Explanation of Responses are below.

Name: __________________________________

Athletic Lifestyle Worksheet
Answer true (T) or false (F) as it pertains to you. There are no right or wrong answers, just answer truthfully.

_______ 1. I often skip breakfast.

_______ 2. I seldom think ahead to bring a sports drink or sports bar to practice that day.

_______ 3. I usually eat dinner (or breakfast) within 2 1/2 hours of the conclusion of practice.

_______ 4. I usually have my personal water bottle (full) with me at practice each day.

_______ 5. I usually eat red meat three to four times each week.

_______ 6. I believe the iron supplement in vitamin tablets, and that in red meat is the same.

_______ 7. I usually eat carbohydrates for breakfast & lunch, and protein for dinner.

_______ 8. I usually drink milk with dinner.

_______ 9. I usually go to bed at the same time each night (within 15 minutes).

_______ 10. I usually get up at the same time each morning (within 15 minutes).

_______ 11. I often take naps after 3 pm.

_______ 12. I often take naps that last > 90 minutes.

_______ 13. I usually take a 30mg zinc supplement each day during the season.

_______ 14. I usually take a 20mcg (800 IU) Vitamin D supplement each day during the season.

_______ 15. I usually sleep 8-9 hours each night during the season.

_______ 16. I often spend time before going to bed on my cell phone.

_______ 17. I usually use a foam roller as part of my after-practice routine.

_______ 18. I am short on time today. Recovery and cool-down is what I would cut short.

_______ 19. I always carry, use and refill my water bottle throughout the school day.

_______ 20. I own a self-massage stick and use it frequently after practice and at home.

_______ 21. I am overly stressed today. Running a workout may not be a good idea.

_______ 22. I am usually aware of my rest and recovery needs away from practice.

_______ 23. I usually believe “living in the moment” is important to me.

_______ 24. I usually adjust my lunch to the afternoon workout demand for that day.

_______ 25. I count on my family to prepare my dinner each evening.

_______ Total

Scoring: True Responses: 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Score 1 each.

False Responses: 1, 2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 19, 25. Score 1 each.

22-25 points: Exceptional Athletic Lifestyle

19-21 points: Very Good Athletic Lifestyle

16-18 points: Good Athletic Lifestyle. Could use improvement

13-15 points: Average Athletic Lifestyle. Needs improvement

10-12 points: Below Average Athletic Lifestyle. Come on!

9 points and below: Does not really understand the Athletic Lifestyle

Explanation of the Athletic Lifestyle Worksheet responses:

One has heard from day 1 that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It may or not be for the general public, but for distance runners it is crucial. All night long during deep sleep most of the blood glucose was processing in the liver as stored glycogen. We want to keep it there as fuel for the run later in the day. It is important to ingest carbohydrate into the body in the morning so blood glucose quickly returns to normal.

Following an endurance workout, it is important to ingest carbohydrate for the first 60 minutes to help progress recovery. Running is an appetite killer for many people but eating sports bars and drinking sports drinks is usually well received. The recommended ingestion rate is about 1.0-1.5 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight over the first 60 minutes of recovery. That is about 80 grams (average male body weight) or roughly 320 kilocalories.

The body is in need of nutrient following an endurance workout. Carbohydrate and fat for energy, and protein for bone and muscle re-modeling and repair. The time window for most effective recovery and absorption of nutrients is 2-4 hours following the workout. The meal should be a mix of all three nutrients and should total 3-4 grams per kilogram of body weight.

Hydration is a major factor in recovery following an endurance workout. External water sources are usually not easily found. Sharing a water bottle also means sharing viruses.

Simply put, the element iron is necessary for a hemoglobin molecule to hold oxygen to the red blood cell. While the average person only has about four grams of iron in their entire body it is essential to keep the level as high as possible. Red meat is the best source of iron for the body. Iron found in red meat is called heme iron and since it has already been absorbed and processed by another animal it is most readily absorbed by humans as they eat the red meat of the animal containing the iron. Iron supplements found in vitamins, etc., is called earth iron and has not been processed by another animal and is not readily absorbed. Humans absorb about 85% of heme iron and 18% of earth iron that they ingest.

Carbohydrates are energy particles and proteins are structure particles. A person needs energy for the day’s activities including running. The body re-models, repairs, and grows tissue only in a deep sleep. Dinner is closest to bedtime so protein is best eaten later in the day.

Calcium and iron are two elements that are absorbed by the body in very similar ways. In the digestion process. The presence of both calcium and iron leads to competition between the two, and their total absorption both suffer. It is better to drink milk with carbohydrates (breakfast and lunch) and orange juice, which contains Vitamin C and helps transport iron, in the evening with dinner.

Humans, like all animals have deeply rooted body rhythms. There is no better example of this than sleep patterns. Sleep is the very best recovery tool so getting into a sleep routine is crucial.Adjusting to about the same length of sleep every night is important to recovery for distance runners. Binge sleep is not an effective recovery tool.Taking naps in the late morning or early afternoon my aid in recovery for a distance runner. Taking a nap after 3 pm merely disrupts the night-time deep sleep rhythms.

Naps are effective in recovery, but 90 minutes is much too long and is a sign of acute sleep deprivation. Naps should be 45 minutes or less.
Zinc has been shown to shorten the length of an upper respiratory tract infection (common cold) if taken on a regular basis. Roughly speaking, for most people, the symptoms of a cold are present for half the time if zinc is high in the immune system. If one waits until the symptoms of a cold to actually appear, and then start zinc supplementation, the symptom time has not been shown to shorten.

Stress fractures are a real concern for distance runners. Metatarsal fractures are the most common and tibia fractures are second. The body must repair stressed bones every night during deep sleep and sometimes it cannot keep up. The amount of calcium in the body is not usually the problem in not keeping up with re-modeling. Vitamin D shortage is usually the issue.

Not only are sleep rhythms important but total length of sleep is also important in recovery. Growth hormones are only released from the pituitary gland during deep sleep. These are the hormones that promote tissue repair, re-modeling and tissue growth. They need lots of time.

Cell phones emit blue light that stimulates the central nervous system. Talk, and the thought behind it, both stimulate the frontal cortex of the brain. One should relax before going to sleep, not be stimulated.

Foam rollers help muscles relax and blood to move back to the core. Both are involved in recovery following a distance run.
Warm-up and cool-down are essential to what happens tomorrow and the next day. Cut the work short if time is an absolute issue, not the other essentials.

Most distance runners are obsessed with water intake. There are certainly geographic areas where they should be. For others, it is estimated that about 20% of distance runners show up for practice each day in a hyponatremic condition. They have too much body water and their sweat is way too dilute. Dilute sweat is ineffective in cooling the body.

Self-massage sticks are handy to have at practice and at home to use in pushing blood through muscles and pushing metabolites out after hard practices.

There are days one should just not run a workout. A light jog maybe, but not a workout that adds more stress to the systems. Runners are encouraged to “listen to their body” and then do not follow through when it tells them something.

Rest and recovery is a small part of practice. Most of this happens away from the team at home. Recreation needs to be adjusted. Being an athlete is not about what you have been given, but what you are willing to give up.

There is nothing more in the moment that sports. The carryover of this thought process to other areas of life is important to becoming a successful athlete and person.

Some people digest food more quickly than others. Carbohydrates are digested more readily than fats and proteins because they are water soluble. The digestive system needs blood, the muscular system needs blood. There will be conflict if they are operating simultaneously.
It is nice to have food prepared for us but that is not always possible. There is a tight 2-4 hour window where food must be consumed for effective recovery. Learn how to cook a few simple dishes. It is fun!

Here is a great coaching resource from Coach Christensen: The Training Model for High School Cross Country

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For your convenience, you can download in printable format the Athletic Lifestyle Worksheet and Explanation of Responses using the links below:

Click here to open (then save to your computer): Athletic Lifestyle Worksheet

Click here to open (then save to your computer): Explanation of the Athletic Lifestyle Worksheet responses