Cross Country Running Program Article By: Mike Cochrane Katella High School At Katella, our distance program is year round, combining both cross country and track. Our cross country preparation begins formally in July. However, many of our athletes continue to run 3 to 5 miles 4 or 5 days a week on their own in groups (boys and girls) within a few days of the end of track season. This informal, athlete generated, running continues through June. These runs are generally street runs or they often make use of the Santa Ana River in Orange County, California bike trail and/or dirt roads near our school. The pace is easy (conversational) and relaxed. Katella has a strong cross country tradition and the younger runners are led by the captains and more experienced runners so that these group runs have become a traditional part of the yearly routine passed on year to year without any need of coaches. In July we begin two-a-day workouts with early A.M. runs of 3 to 5 miles and again in the late afternoon with the mileage increasing to 7 to 10 miles daily on weekdays. On Saturdays, the team will run in the hills 5 to 8 miles, and once in the month compete in a 5K or 10K. Some of our top athletes may run a half marathon in July. Everyone begins a weight lifting routine in July, along with the increased mileage. They lift on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays after the morning run. The lifts focus mainly on the upper body along with upper and lower abdominals and exercises to prevent shin splints. This weight routine will continue through October. The month of August brings track workouts, once a week in the afternoons after a lighter run in the morning. We also will begin to do hill repetitions once a week using runs of anywhere from 200 meters to 500 meters on varying degrees of steepness. Shorter, less steep hills will be run at a faster pace than the longer, steeper runs. When we get to the last week or two of August, the varsity athletes are running anywhere from 50 to 90 miles per week, depending on whether they are girls or boys and how far they run on Saturdays in the hills and Sundays on their own. The last week of August we travel to Pismo Beach State Park in California for a one week running camp. The two-a-day runs there incorporate flat beach runs, long road runs and runs in the soft sand dunes. While in the running camp we also continue our push-ups and abdominals routines as well as lots of stretching. In September, as the competition phase gets underway, we cut back on the A.M. runs to once or twice per week with the major emphasis being the afternoon workouts. The mileage is reduced to 30 or 40 miles per week including competition. We try not to have too many races during the season and focus on just one or two hard efforts before the championship races in November. We are fortunate enough to be in a league where we only race five times, including the league finals, so we can spread out our races over the season. Coach Mike Cochrane International Copyright © of CoachesEducation.com. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of CoachesEducation.com is strictly prohibited.