Cross Training Questions

Should I run slow, medium, or fast when I'm running miles for cross-country training?

Public Comments

1. medium.
2. Keep a steady pace and breath in with your nose and out with your mouth. It feels a little weird but it helps. It gives your muscles air avoiding serious cramps.
3. run 10% slower than you would in a race. if this is your first time training, start off with a jog then build up speed everyday or take your mile time add a 2 minutes and maintain that pace.
4. When you are running long distance, you should always keep a steady pace. You should start out with a little sprint, then slow down to a steady pace that you can handle and at the end run as hard as you can. You should practice this to try to help determine when you should sprint and when you should pace yourself. At the beginning you want to sprint for a short amount of time just to get out of the crowd. Do not worry about people passing you. They will tire themselves. Keep your steady pace and then when you see the finish line, sprint as hard as you possibly can to pass any racers near you and cut your time down as much as possible. I hope this helps, good luck!
5. im a xc runner myself and what i do is i alternate between medium hard and easy every three days you go easy and then the other two days you go medium or hard depending on how your feeling. When going easy add three minutes to your mile pace and keep that for your mileage. For medium add two minutes and maintain that pace. For hard just try to add one minute to your mile pace and keep that but basically run about 90%.
6. You should run fast so your body will be used to the pain and you will be able to maintain a fast paste the whole race
7. The farther you go, the slower your pace should be. Mix up your workouts; your "average" workout should be a three miler at an easy pace, something you can do even if you feel bad. The goal is to maintain your pace, so keep track of it the whole time. Twice a week you should do a harder workout, meaning you increase speed, distance or incline (uphill). One five miler a week at an easy pace will do a lot to strengthen you. Doing a few half-mile runs at a fast pace with jogging in between makes a good hard workout, too. A third way to strengthen is to pick a course with a lot of uphill work; be careful, you can get really sore! So take the hill workout easy at first. Be careful runing on grass; you can turn your ankle easily, but also the uneven surface makes your knees twist around a lot and that's bad. Hard packed dirt or a real track is the best. Keep track of the mileage on your shoes; most are only good for 300 miles before the cushion is shot.
8. any
9. medium
10. run at a pace you can maintain throughout the whole thing
11. The answer is YES. You should run slow, medium and fast while training for cross country. You should do some long, slow runs, some shorter runs closer to your target race pace, and some shorter track work at a pace faster than race pace. You can also do all three in a workout. It's called fartlek, "speed play" in Swedish. You go out for a long run at an easy pace and at random intervals, for random distances, you pick up the pace, sometimes to an all out sprint. I've done it in a group where each person, in turn, gets to pick out where the next sprint will start and how far it will go.