XC races (Read 601 times)

You might want to provide some background as to age, sex, training background - both past and current - paces in training and various races (and their distance). Yea, I know age and sex are in your profile, but if you want help, don't make people work too hard to find needed info. If you're a freshman or sophomore, the varsity runners probably have a lot more base than you do and may be running more miles and more quality miles. The fact that you "can keep up with the varsity group fine" sounds like maybe you're working to have to keep up with them - and that may or may not be a good goal for where you are now. If your team is state champs and you're almost the worst on the team, well, maybe you're normal. Are the races hillier or more challenging than the training runs?

I was a middle of the pack runner in high school, so take this with a grain of salt. There really isn't enough information to tell what if anything he is doing wrong. He may be pacing himself wrong in the race, he may not have the mental part of the race down, he may not have enough of a base, he may not have enough speed for a shorter XC race but does better on longer training runs and probably would do better on longer races, maybe his effort is harder on training runs than the varsity runners, etc.

I was a middle of the pack runner in high school, so take this with a grain of salt. There really isn't enough information to tell what if anything he is doing wrong. He may be pacing himself wrong in the race, he may not have the mental part of the race down, he may not have enough of a base, he may not have enough speed for a shorter XC race but does better on longer training runs and probably would do better on longer races, maybe his effort is harder on training runs than the varsity runners, etc.

I just looked at her profile and I see that the OP is a female. I should not have assumed that she is a he, but I think my comments are still relevent. Bonkin is right that your coach is the place to start.

The great thing about cross country is that you get a pretty good idea of what other runners' times are, both on your team and on other teams. Something that was really helpful to me when I ran xc was to pick out someone who I knew was slightly faster than me or could finish the race around my goal time and then stick with them as long as I could. I don't know what your training schedule is like right now, and I certainly don't want you to overtrain and injure yourself, but it could also help you to go for another short run after some of your practices. The more miles you're running, the easier those 3 mile races are going to become. Finally, remember that in high school, runners peak at different times. We had girls on our team who were relatively fast their freshman year and got slower each year after, and we also had girls who were among the slowest when they started, but were running varsity their sophomore or junior years. MTA: You said your fastest mile is about 7min but that you slow down in the second and third miles. Don't aim for 7min in your first mile of a race or it will exhaust you. Start out a bit slower than what you think you can do and then try for negative splits. Knowing that you're passing runners later in the race will do a lot more mentally for helping you to keep your speed up than being passed, which could make you slow down even more.