I understand your longing already for next years XC season, but if you really want to get faster I would suggest you focus more on your upcoming indoor and outdoor seasons. Trust me, the under-distance training from 5k to I'm guessing anywhere from the 400m to 3200m will significantly increase your speed, which will carry over into next year?s XC season. Trust your coach, he'll make you faster. Besides that the true ingredients to getting faster are simple: Train smart, train hard, and race faster!

Run more.

Run more miles, period.

In HS I ran 10-20mpw as a freshman/sophomore and only progressed from 20:30 to 19:17. Summer before junior year I ran 30-40 mpw and ran 17:24; did it again the next year and ran 17:01. I continued to run 40-45 mpw the first half of college and didn't break 17.

Third year of college I cross-country skiied a TON over the winter, probably equivalent to running 50-60 mpw and ran 16:16, ran a 16:13 my senior year.

Post-college I continued increasing volume and by the time I was running a lot of 80-90 mile weeks I was at 15:37.

In 2006 I did 3 months of 90+ mpw every week with 6 out of 7 weeks 100+mpw leading into my goal race. I ran 15:18....for the SECOND half of a 10K that I opened in around 15:40.

I'm not saying you should go out and run 100 mpw right now, but that this is a simple sport and there are no shortcuts. If you want to get faster for next season, run more miles now.

quote:<HR>Originally posted by slowrunner2102:
I'm in 11th grade, and this was my first year of cross country, and i loved it. The season ended, and i hate to say it but I am kind of slow.

My 5k pr is 21:02. I'm thinking of running indoor track until my school starts cross country again.

While I am waiting, is there any exercises/work outs I can do by myself/with a friend to get faster, so next year i might be able to break 18 minutes??<HR>

Run?
haha, of course. I don't really have that many workouts to share with you, but look at the book Jack Daniels Running formula. The advice I can give you is a positive mindset, and patience. Any Olympic runner will tell you that. I myself have a PR around 20:02 it dropped from 24:30 my freshman year. I am a sophomore now. Its 4 full minutes. I made some mistakes and I should have been around 18-19. But I wasnt. My mental aspect broke after a bad Time Trial, I couldnt run better all season. Now Winter Track is starting and i have one goal, OWN the TWO.

Dont over train. And my advice is TALK TO YOUR COACH. He knows how to get you better at running. Before the season starts, I would start to raise your mileage, nothing drastic. No more than 5 miles a week. and try to reach around 60-70.