High School Cross-Country Season Starts NOW!

"The only way to have a good team this fall is to start now... but the rules are clear: no organized practices."

It’s the annual dilemma: The only way to have a good team next fall is to start now, so you and your teammates are finished with the early season preparatory training by the time school starts. But the rules are clear: no organized practices, not even contact with the coach during the summer.

How do you reconcile the physiological requirements of endurance sports (steady build-up over several months) with well-intended rules governing school sports when the competitive season for your sport begins at the start of the fall semester?

You need a running program for the summer – one that is designed for High School XC. How else are you going to be ready for the first meet of the year, which is often about three weeks after school starts? Avoid the embarrassment – start the school year lean and mean!

Here’s how to do it. Follow Coach Benson’s Running Plan, which includes a set of coaching especially designed for both boys’ and girls’ High School Cross Country. Ideally, you should start the plan about now – after a week off from your last organized track sessions. It will start slow and easy to let you recover from track and to rebuild your base. It will gradually increase the volume and then the intensity, getting you in great shape to start the hard workouts your coach has planned once school starts again.

Here’s what your summer running program looks like with Coach Benson’s plan. Notice how many EASY days there are. Those easy miles are the key to getting ready for fall, and they don’t even hurt.

I know that summer running is a challenge for a lot of high school kids. Summers are for kickin’ back and hangin’ out with friends. And the cool time of the day for running is early morning, which is pretty tough after a long night of PlayStation 2. But remember, you don’t have to be awake on these early season runs. They are EASY and SHORT (at least at first), and you can think of it as a way to clear your head for today’s video game challenge. It’s kind of a less-bitter alternative to morning coffee. Just throw on your shoes and get out there for 30 minutes before breakfast.

Your weekly mileage looks like this. Your mileage will peak at the end of Phase I and then taper back down in Phase II as you add some more intensity to some of the workouts.

 

Here’s all you need for a good summer XC training system:

It starts with PC Coach Elite, bundled with Coach Benson’s Running Plan. The standard retail for this bundle is $69.95 on CD or $64.95 if downloaded. If you (or your parents) already own PC Coach, just download Benson’s plug-in for $24.95.

Coach Benson’s plan gives you the workouts to do, with time or miles for each one, and intensity recommendations in either heart rate or pace. Workouts have a ‘planned’ and an ‘actual’ section – the Benson plan fills in the ‘planned’ section for you. It’s up to you to fill in the actuals.

It is a good idea to have a watch with at least a stopwatch and continuous heart rate (meaning, a chest strap). For runners, a lap function is also pretty important. Here are some options:

 

Timex 30-lap Ironman HRM

As a heart rate-based training tool for HS runners, we suggest the Timex Ironman HRM (model 5C401). Suggested retail is $90 and our price is $79.95. It has a stopwatch with laps, heart rate with settable zones and alerts that beep at you when your heart rate gets too high. This is all you really need to follow Coach Benson’s plan. It doesn’t download your workout data to the computer, but you can pull up a few important values on the watch and enter them by hand. If you are more about doing the workouts than proving that you did them, this is a great low-cost option.

 

One caveat: don’t use the five built-in training zones. The zones are based on your max heart rate and are set at 60% of max, 70%, 80% etc. These are not the values Benson calls for, and you can’t override them. Instead, use the manual heart rate limits (the watch has one set) and set the high and low value for each workout.

 

Polar RS200

If you want to add a little sizzle to the system, and bragging rights among the team, consider the RS200 from Polar. This has a very similar feature set to the Timex HRM, but it allows you to set the training zones according to Benson’s guidelines. Also, it adds the download feature. You can bring workout data into PC Coach and it will fill in the ‘actuals’ section of each of Coach Benson’s workouts as you complete it. Then, for kicks, since you’re downloading, use the Remote Coaching Service (RCS) feature to send it to your coach or team leader in an email every week. Later, you could add a footpod accessory and end up with the equivalent of the RS200sd with speed and distance reporting. The RS200 sells for $139.

Polar RS200sd

If you kick it up to a watch that reports pace and distance, the least expensive is the Polar RS200sd with a standard retail of $219.95 but which we sell for $199.95. You can download your workouts into PC Coach and compare your actuals vs. planned for that workout. Best of all, you can train with both heart rate and pace instead of just heart rate. Coach Benson’s plan will give you a pace range for every workout if you have some recent race data for it to work from.

Make sure you start next fall’s cross-country season off on the right foot. Start preparing your running base this summer with Coach Benson’s Heart Rate Running Plan and a heart rate monitor!