The Right Type of Workout for Fast XC Courses

Published September 11, 2024

It’s a big week in Colorado, with several nationally ranked teams racing at the Liberty Bell Invitational, one of the fastest courses in the state. I can’t wait to watch all the athletes on Saturday morning.

Before I dive into today's training topic, make sure to read through the entire email to learn about a special offer I'm excited to share with you as one of my subscribers.

Okay, let’s talk training!

Three Types of Courses 

You can break down the courses your team will run the rest of the season into three categories:

• Hilly
• Some hills, but lots of flat sections
• Flat

Let’s talk about what type of workout you can do to prepare to race on the flat, fast course.

You can do the workout I’m about to teach on Tuesday before a Saturday race, or on Monday before a Friday race.

Race Pace Workouts – Fast, Faster, Fastest 

The workout you’ll do on Tuesday this time of year is simple:

• We need a total of 4k-6k of work at race pace
• The last 10-15-20 percent of the workout should be faster than race pace

Do those two things, and you’ll set your kids up for success.

I take things a step further in the ​XC Training System​ and add two more elements...

First, we’ll have kids practice “getting out” intelligently in the first 200m-600m of the race.

We know that high school races go out too fast – that's just part of the sport. And for many courses, you don’t want runners who will finish in the top 40-50 places of a 300-person race to start the race in 275th.

Second, within the last couple of repetitions, you want your kids to “switch gears” and go from running race pace to running faster than race pace.

If you’re thinking, “This sounds like we’re teaching them to kick,” you’re on the right track. But there’s more to it than that as we’ll ask the kids in, say, a 1000m repetition to run race pace for 600m, faster for 300m, then a hard last 100m.

“But you talk about ‘Fast, Faster, Fastest’ in ​Consistency Is Key​. What you just described is only ‘Fast, Faster.’ Shouldn’t they switch gears one more time?” 

My experience is that it’s really challenging for an athlete who has run hard for 4000m to switch gears twice in the last 1000m. If you think about it for a moment, I’m confident you conclude that if you had an athlete run 600m at race pace, then speed up for 300m, then have a great last 100m that’s a great race.

In outdoor track, we’ll want our 1600m and 3200m runners to be able to run Fast, Faster, Fastest in the last 500m-800m of those races, but in XC changing gears three times is probably too big of an ask.

You can read the Fast, Faster, Fastest chapter from ​Consistency Is Key​ for free ​here​.

The Workout: 4-6 x 1k (aka “repeat 1000s” or “repeat K’s”) 

A simple workout could be 4-6 x 1k. The recoveries between the 1k repetitions can be as short as 1.5 minutes and as long as 2.5 minutes for young kids.

Some coaches like to say that the work-to-rest ratio is the same. Kids running 3:30 for 1k, which is 17:30 5k pace, would take 3:30 between the 1k. That’s not appropriate for XC and for 1k repetitions – they simply don’t need that much recovery.

Here’s the workout...

• 1st 1k: Practice “getting out” for 200m-600m, then settle into race pace for the rest of the repetition.
• 2nd 1k: Do the same thing as the first 1k.
• 3rd 1k: Groove race pace.
• 4th 1k: Groove race pace.
• 5th 1k: Groove race pace for 800m, then have them run faster the last 200m.
• 6th 1: Groove race pace for 600m, then faster for 300m, then hard for 100m.

Younger kids may only do 4 x 1k or 5 x 1k. But your upperclassman who trained in the summer can definitely run 6 x 1k for this workout.

One thing to be mindful of is if the 5th 1k went poorly, give them a big break and consider giving them just 400m and have them run that hard.

Or if the 5th 1k went so-so, give them quite a bit more recovery, which will allow them to execute the Fast, Faster finish that you want on the 6th 1k.

Remember...

The last few hundred meters of the day must be the fastest few hundred meters of the day. 

To Get Everything Out of This Workout... 

Your athletes need to be mentally engaged with each repetition and realize that they are not only rehearsing physically what they’ll need to do in the race, but they have an opportunity to rehearse mentally what they’ll be doing in the race.

Every coach in the ​Mental Skills Course​ talked about this – that athletes need to use practice as an opportunity to mentally prepare for the demands of the race.

Don’t let your kids go through the motions in this workout. Take 90 seconds before the workout and explain that they need to see themselves racing when they practice “getting out” and going Fast, Faster. 

That’s it for training for today - I’ll talk about workouts for hilly courses in the next email.

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I’m so blessed that both of my daughters have had, or currently have, Coach Doug as their middle school coach.

He’s exceptional. The kids have a blast, they fall in love with the sport, and they get faster and faster as the season goes on. Just yesterday they won their second meet of the year!

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That’s it for today. Best of luck this week if your team is racing and...

Let’s go!