Tips for cross country racing??

Question

hii. well im a xcountry runner and was wondering if anyone has any tips or strategies on running fast for the races. i run the 5k (3 mile) race in the low 20's. i really want to break 20 minutes and i was wondering if anyone had any tips? thanks so much!

Answer 1

Go at a good, solid pace on the uphill and dont try to slow down. Most people get killed on the hills because of lack of preparation or going out way too fast and burning out. You must be mentally tough and focus. Pump your eyes and keep looking forward. Once you get back on flats, then you start going back to race pace.

Answer 2

on days when you are not training with your team, run on a treadmill and track your pace...

if you don't have access to a treadmill, divide the distance you ran (in miles) by the time in which you ran it (in hours) and this will give you your average speed for the entire run in miles per hour

Answer 3

1. simply breath in through your nose out through your mouth try not to breath too heavy!!

2. Simply hold your ams @ your side and swing them back in forth gently don't criss cross them or swing at and angle swing them straight!! Your fingers should be relaxed!! pretend your holding a chip.

4. Make big strides!!

5.focus on your goal picture yourself finishing w/ a gr8 time over and over. Think of things that make you happy!! (Maybe a big cake?!?!)

6. read this article it is gr8!!

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,71...

7. for breakfast you want to combine a carb and a proriten so have one peice of whole wheat toast with some peanut butter on it and a glass of water try to eat 2 hours before. Don't over eat trust me!! The night before have a carb like pasta. Drink tons of water the week of. How much? Take your body weight in pounds and dived it in half that is how many oz. of water you should have.

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If you have to run it after lunch make sure that you don't drink any milk and eat pasta if it is possible. Milk is horrible and will make you sick easily.

Try to strecth before you run.

Pace yourself, do not go too fast nor too slow because you dn't want to end up having to walk the last few laps nor do you want to finish wishing you had done better.

Don't walk at all because despite the fact that it may seem you are running/jogging so slow it won't matter, you might not be able to start running again, besides you don;t want other people to think that you have to walk the mile and you can't even run it.

Keep yourself motivated and tell yourself that it will all be over in less than 20 minutes, and that everyone else has to do it too.

Good luck and don't give up.

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one last tip i have for you is try and have a watch with a timer on it and set goals for each lap..

Hope this helps!!  

Answer 4

The 5k or 5,000 meter run is 3.1 miles long

A good strategy often used by distance runner is the 2/3rds rule. This is a fancy way of saying run the first 2 miles at a realistic pace that you can handle for you current level of fitness. The last mile should be more of a challenging pace that you can maintain for the last mile.  If you run 6.20 min per mile up to this you will be at 19 minutes, with 200 meters to the finish line. This would put your finishing time at about 19.40 - twenty seconds under your goal time.  

Your posting did not mentioned hills,but they are very common in xc, so here are some idea on how to run the hills.

Note: Your posting did not specify where on the course the hill(s) are located or how there are or how long the hills are so that was not factored into the finishing time above.

Hills are a fun part of cross country (xc) racing, the can be used to your advantage of the can be a big disadvantage. As a result, the distance runner needs to mentally tough and attack it intelligently. Training on hills is the best way to learn how to run them. However, this the internet we don’t have that option available to us here..sorry.

Run the same pace going up the hill, but shorten you stride and lean into it as you start going uphill. This means that you will need to nee to pump your arms more. When you reach the peak you will be tempted to slow down...don't.

Once you reach the plate (mesa) maintain the same pace. However, if the hill has a downhill portion then try to run down the hill and carry to extra speed onto the flat portion of the course. This will give you an opportunity to further open up a gap on those runners behind you and close on those in front of you.

Good luck

Experience running cross country in hs and college

20 of experience running distance race: 5k - the marathon

10 of coaching high school distance runners for XC and T/F

Answer 5

I used to run, so here's some tips

-Get good training shoes

-Try out racing spikes for races only, they'll shave alot of time off

-Eat pasta or carbs like bread 1-2 days before

-Work hard(obviously)

-Hydrate properly

-Try doing some repeat workouts, our coach had us do like 1 mile or 800 repeats once a week to build speed.

Good Luck