This Is the Month That Makes or Breaks Your Cross Country Season

By Coach Justin Roeder

Track season's been over for a month. State finals are old news. And if you're a middle or high school distance runner in Indiana, you're either out there right now building your summer base, or you're telling yourself you'll "start next week." I want to talk to the second group for a second, because next week always turns into the week after that, and then it's the first day of official practice in August and you're starting from zero.

Here's the thing nobody wants to hear: cross country season isn't won in August or September. It's won right now, in the middle of July, on days when it's 90 degrees and humid and nobody's watching. The kids who show up to the first day of practice with six or eight weeks of consistent running already banked are the ones who are racing confident in week three of the season. The ones who show up cold are playing catch-up the whole year, and in a sport where the season is basically a countdown to sectionals, you don't have time to catch up.

So what should this month actually look like? Keep it simple. Most of your running needs to be easy. I mean genuinely easy, conversational pace, the kind where you could talk in full sentences the whole time. If you're gasping on your "easy" run, you're not building a base, you're digging a hole you'll have to climb out of later. Save the hard efforts for one, maybe two days a week, and even then keep them controlled. Strides after an easy run, a fartlek here and there, nothing that leaves you wrecked for two days.

Mileage matters, but consistency matters more. I'd rather see a kid run 25 miles a week for eight straight weeks than 40 miles one week and 10 the next because they got too excited and then got hurt or burned out. Build it up slowly. If you jumped from 15 miles a week in June to 35 this week, that's how you end up with a stress reaction in September instead of a state qualifier.

And don't sleep on the boring stuff. Hydration matters more in July than any other month of the year. So does sleep. So does eating enough. I see kids who nail their workouts but skip breakfast and wonder why they feel flat by mile three. Distance running rewards the runners who take care of the whole picture, not just the mileage log.

If you're a parent reading this, the best thing you can do right now is make sure your kid actually has a plan and isn't just winging it based on what their friend posted on Strava. Every runner is different. What works for the state champion doesn't work for the kid running their first season. If you don't have a coach checking in over the summer, find one, even if it's just a quick conversation to make sure the plan makes sense for where your athlete is at.

Six weeks from now, official practice starts. The gap between the kids who used this month well and the kids who didn't is going to be obvious by the first meet of the year. Which side of that gap do you want to be on?