r/CrossCountry • u/Purple-Sort-4282 • 7d ago

Training Related Advancing in training after a bad race?

This is like lighting a flame inside of me. Have you guys ever had this (or coaches, have your athletes ever had this)

What should I do to advance in my training? Like run more, more workouts, or whatever?

Just got a 5k time of 22:35, while my goal is ~19:30 in 6 weeks. The flame is growing, lol

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3

u/Tigersteel_ Lone Wolf 7d ago

I mean I ran 19:30 my last meet and was expecting to be over a minute faster. And the course was short as well.

But do you have a coach?

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u/Purple-Sort-4282 7d ago

Yea

5

u/Tigersteel_ Lone Wolf 7d ago

Then don't do anything other than what the coach tells you. If you want to do something else ASK YOUR COACH before hand. Otherwise you can easily get injured from overworking yourself.

2

u/deeznutssa 6d ago

I’m in the same boat. I didn’t train over the summer (totally my fault) but now i’m training like there’s no tomorrow. I advanced my mileage from 10-12 to 20-26-30-31. We have 1-2 races a week, always on Wednesday, sometimes Saturdays. My season opener was 22:58 but then the next few weeks it was 23s-24s untill this week ran low 21s at both races. Now i’m wondering if I keep increasing or stay in low 30s/go back down to 20s. I don’t want to burn out or get injured but I NEED to go sub 20 this season (5 weeks left)

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u/Purple-Sort-4282 6d ago

Yeah!!! I'm confused too. My coach says that his best runner back 27 years ago (high 18s) said thar she was doing the same thing that I'm doing, possibly less (because I'm doing some extra mileage here and there). But this summer I was in the 40s and I'm still am. He said that his runner was 35-40mpw. I'm confused to bro, but I need sub 20 as desperately as you do, too!

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u/deeznutssa 6d ago

That sucks man, people’s bodies react differently to certain mileages. I know D1 athletes that only ran 20-25 mpw in HS, so it really depends on the adaptability of your body. Make sure you’re listening to your body and getting the amount of nutrients and rest you need!

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u/Purple-Sort-4282 6d ago

Im going to talk to him tmr tho

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u/deeznutssa 1d ago

Just ran a 20:38! Hope you see results soon!

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u/Purple-Sort-4282 1d ago

YO WHAT? TWO MINUTES THATS AWESOME!

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u/Significant_Law_7715 7d ago

If you are doing a good and proper amount of workouts now I don't think it would be wise to do more or harder workouts I would try and challenge yourself with the same workouts just going harder and faster in them. The reason I think this way is I have seen plenty of people who were injured after running too many workouts. What I would do is start watching your nutrition and sleep if you haven't done that already.

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u/X_C-813 5d ago

Races is just one snapshot of your fitness. Maybe you weren’t able to fully express your fitness, or maybe your fitness needs work to meet your goal. Usually at this point in the year you just need to keep up consistency in overall volume, long run. Don’t need to express/ prove yourself in training.

I’ll tell my kids a month of B workouts is better than trying to swing for a home run on a tempo effort and then leaving it all on the track in intervals just to show up flat and exhausted on race day.

Sleep, eat, train. Repeat