The First Two Weeks of Cross Country Practice: What I'm Actually Watching For
Written By Justin Roeder
Official IHSAA practice opened today across Indiana, which means every cross country team in this state just started its season on the same morning. It's my favorite two weeks of the year to watch, and also the two weeks where I see the most damage get done. Coaches are excited, kids are excited, and everybody wants to prove something on day one. That's exactly how a promising season turns into an October spent on the injured list instead of the starting line.
The first week is not a fitness test. Anyone treating it like one is doing it wrong.
I don't care how good an athlete's summer was. The first week back with the team is about reintroducing the body to group workouts, real terrain, and the emotional intensity of racing your own teammates for a spot. It is not the week to find out who's fittest through time trials nobody needed. The kids who show up calm and controlled in week one are almost always the ones still healthy in week eight. If your athlete's team is throwing hard efforts at them too early, this is worth a real conversation.
Summer mileage means nothing if week one wrecks it.
I've watched athletes build a genuinely strong summer base, then blow it up in the first ten days of the season because a coach ran a brutal time trial before anyone's legs were ready for that kind of pounding. The fitness from June and July doesn't disappear in a week, but the tissue that carries that fitness, hips, hamstrings, feet, absolutely can get overwhelmed fast if the volume or intensity spikes too quickly. We build our athletes' early season structure specifically to protect the work already done over the summer.
Watch how your athlete's body responds, not just how they feel.
Kids will tell you they feel great in week one because adrenaline is high and the season is finally here. That's not the signal I care about. I'm watching sleep, appetite, morning soreness that doesn't fade, and whether they're recovering between sessions the way they did in July. Those are the real indicators of whether the season start is being managed well. Our strength and mobility program is one of the best early warning systems we have for this exact thing.
Freshmen and new-to-the-sport middle schoolers need extra patience here, not less.
Every August I watch talented young athletes get pushed into the same workouts as juniors and seniors because they look fit and keep up in practice. Keeping up is not the same as being ready for that training load. The body of a 12 or 13 year old responds differently to accumulated stress than a 17 year old's does, and the first two weeks of a first cross country season set the tone for whether a kid loves this sport at 25 or quits by sophomore year. This is a huge part of what we focus on with our younger athletes.
Two full weeks of consistency beats one big impressive workout every time.
The kids who are running well at regionals and state in October are rarely the ones who had the best week one workout. They're the ones who just kept showing up, week after week, without a setback interrupting the plan. If your athlete's team schedule already looks aggressive this early, that's a flag worth paying attention to now, not in three weeks when something starts hurting.
This is also exactly when recruiting-age athletes should be thinking ahead.
For juniors and seniors, how this season opens matters beyond just August. College coaches watch full season arcs, not just a fast time trial in week one. Starting healthy and building the right way sets up a season that actually shows progression on paper. Here's what we tell families about recruiting timelines and what actually gets noticed.
If your athlete's team doesn't have a structured plan for these two weeks, that's a gap we fill.
Not every high school program has the staff or the time to individualize the first two weeks for every athlete on the roster, and that's not a knock on any coach. It's just reality with rosters of 30 or 150 kids. This is exactly the kind of gap our one-on-one coaching and consulting exist to close. Take a look at how our program works alongside your school team, not against it.
The season is 90-some days long from today until the state finals in Terre Haute. The first two weeks decide a lot more of that outcome than most people realize. Run them smart.
Coach Justin
