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Over the course of a few weeks of doing these, the times on the uphill sections improve steadily, as expected, but most people see a dramatic improvement on the downhill sections. The idea is not to run the downhill as fast as possible-instead it is to run fast, but controlled. Do 3 to 6 repeats, depending on your weekly mileage. Once at the top, take a three- to five-minute recovery jog before heading back downhill, focusing on being fast and efficient. Run the uphill portion at race effort to build strength. Workout 1: Find a mile-length course (roughly) that is gradually uphill, preferably on a softer surface off the asphalt. The San Luis Obispo chapter of the Asics Aggies Running Club uses several workouts to adapt to the ups and downs of cross-country. Spending time becoming proficient at going up and down is the surest way to faster race times.
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Part of the appeal of cross country is that most races take place in parks or on golf courses, places of peace and tranquility, most of which feature some slight to severe elevation gains and losses. Some cross-country courses are pancake-flat, but these are the exceptions. Here are the key elements to take into account when designing cross country-specific workouts.
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Join Runner’s World+ for more training tips! 🏃♂️🏃🏿♀️ How to train for a cross-country race Make it tough, as hard as you can make it, then run a weekly workout on it hard.” “If possible,” he says, “survey the courses you’re racing and duplicate the challenges of the course as much as possible within your surrounding geography. Joe Vigil, who coached Deena Kastor and many other national cross-country champions, agrees with this approach. The kids can then imagine themselves running over the terrain they’ll be racing on.” “We’ll run our fartlek or repeats over different ‘parts’ of the course. “The thing I’ll do is scope out the course we want to run our best on and try to mimic that course with some of our workouts,” says Armando Siqueiros, who coached Jordan Hasay to a Foot Locker national title at Mission Prep High School in San Luis Obispo, California. The more course-specific your preparation, the better. By regularly tackling the sorts of rhythm breakers cross country throws at you, you’ll adapt and learn how to dole out the appropriate effort for the length of the race you’re running. Long runs, tempo work, and long and short intervals interspersed with maintenance and recovery runs are the basic building blocks of training.įor cross country, however, you’ll need to incorporate terrain, elevation, and course changes that mimic what you’ll encounter on race day. Successfully training for cross country follows the same basic training guidelines used when preparing for road races or long track events. Trying to maintain pace through constant changes of footing, elevation, and direction can cause a midrace tie-up that’s painful to experience and can result in a placing far lower than your fitness merits. Even on the rare occasions that they’re available, mile splits are mostly meaningless in cross-country. Whereas, for most runners, track and road races are largely dictated by pace, cross-country racing is largely dictated by effort. This all combines to constantly disrupt your rhythm much more so than a race run on an even, flat surface. Running over a variety of surfaces-from dirt and grass to mud and asphalt to gravel and everything in-between-you’ll find sharp turns, short steep hills, long cambered sections, logs to jump, creeks to cross, and bridges to negotiate. Which means you need specific cross-country training to be successful.
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One of the most beautiful aspects of cross-country running is that it’s not just you against the competition and yourself it’s also you versus Mother Nature.
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