Transition to College Running (Read 934 times)

My advice is to not run anything fast this summer and just concentrate on building your base mileage. Chances are good that you'll get a training plan or at least some general instructions from your coach, so follow whatever they say for what you should be doing. College is probably going to involve a lot more running than you did in high school, so building up that base over the next 3 months is important. Here was my high school to college transition experience, although you should bear in mind that (a) I am a guy (b) most D3 coaches have more sense than mine did at that point and (c) I got no summer workout plan and had to figure it out for myself. In high school, I basically ran about 35 miles per week tops. Over the Summer, I knew that I needed to build that up so I worked up to running around 65 miles per week on a regular basis. The first week that I was in college, the only reason I didn't run 100+ miles was because I missed a few workouts due to freshman activities. I ran 85 miles that first week, 95 miles the second week, and then between 95-110 miles for the couple of weeks following that. My college coach was a former D1 scholarship athlete from Notre Dame that was basically trying to use similar training methods with a bunch of D3 walk ons. These days, he is much smarter about the information he provides to incoming freshman over the summer to get them ready, how much work he has them jump immiediately into their first season on the team, and has moved past the "run lots of miles, include speed work, and then race the guys that don't get hurt" philosophy. The current team there is much better as a result, I think. The idea here is just to make you aware that you'll probably be running more in college, so building up a base before you get there and are expected to run high mileage is only going to help, plus it will be good to build that base before you start mixing in speed work. Once you get to college, you really don't have time during cross country season to do any real base building before you start your speed work and racing, so it is better to get that done over the Summer. Good luck, I hope that you enjoy running in college. I certainly did.

My advice is the same, build mileage and base. I know that base building is something I never thought about in high school--it was go fast during the season, live my normal life during the off season (which kept me in reasonable shape). Running slowly is something that can actually be difficult to learn. Nonetheless, run slowly and twice per day.

I did a track season at a D3 school. Just stick with it and stay for the love of the sport. Put in a summer of LSD and all will be well.

First, this isn't HS anymore -- your coach is free to coach you year-round, which is prohibited at the HS level in most states. Talk to him/her, ask what you can do that will best prepare you for the training you will face in the fall. Second, while I agree that you need to build your base and concentrate on volume I STRONGLY disagree that this has to be all "LSD", or easy miles. If you have lost all your familiarity with running fast by fall you will be behind the curve. You need to come onboard strong and all ready to start speedwork -- again, a big difference from most HS programs. So while you should stay off the track, doing fast finish, progression, and tempo runs a couple times a week will only help you.