Distance Running Strategies
The race is not always won by the fastest. Smart running can add to your success. Play the game in every way. Train hard, be mentally tough, and strategically smart.
Important Concepts:
Evaluating a Cross Country Course
A good race plan and familiarity with the race course are essential to competing to your potential. There is NO EXCUSE for not knowing where you are or where you are going during a race.
Evaluating a New Course You Have Never Before Run:
Hill Running Technique
Hills have bottoms and tops, ups and downs. Successful runners use all of the hill.
Bottom – Prepare for the hill mentally – Aggressive – brief acceleration in.
Up – Quick steps, head straight ahead, hands in front of your body, use arms – Blocking action can help with lift. Maintain position conserve energy unless at a crucial point in the race.
Top – Crest of the hill should be worked the hardest. Accelerate the last 5-10 steps up and out over the top. Build back to race pace as quickly as possible. Many (weak and foolish) runners relax and rest for a few seconds when they reach the top of the hill. This is an excellent time to try to gain a few strides on other runners.
Down – Use gravity - do not fight it. Lean forward a little and open up your stride. Try to land mid foot and not brake hard with your heels. Be aggressive but stay under control. Use arms for balance only as necessary - do not hold them out to your sides on purpose. Allow yourself to run free when near the bottom and carry that speed and momentum out onto the flat for as long as possible.
Regain speed
Crest aggressively lean forward
Quick steps open stride
Use arms with blocking action let go
Brief acceleration Carry momentum out =>
Important Concepts:
- Know the course.
- Know the competition.
- Know the conditions; weather, surface, race length, and size.
- Develop a plan.
- Start technique; position, don’t fight, not too fast.
- Finish technique; sight, position, jump.
- Sense of pace.
- Contact vs. solo. (CC vs. track)
- Front running.
- Hills; prepare, up, crest, top, down, finish.(see below for more details)
- Corners.
- Surging; softening vs. breakaway.
- Drafting.
- Passing
- Positioning
Evaluating a Cross Country Course
A good race plan and familiarity with the race course are essential to competing to your potential. There is NO EXCUSE for not knowing where you are or where you are going during a race.
Evaluating a New Course You Have Never Before Run:
- Memorize your meet schedule early in the season. Indentify in you own mind what general characteristics each course exhibits.
- Ask your coach and teammates what the specific course for your next race is like. Get their input on the location of the toughest and easiest parts of the course.
- After arriving at the course (right after you set up camp), read over the course map and look for general directions and land marks while standing in one central location.
- Identify hills, turns, trails, mile marks, and other landmarks that you see as areas that you can use to your advantage.
- Early in your dynamic warm-up jog over the last mile or more of the course identifying the marks at 1600M, 800M, 400M, 200M from the finish line. Remember that most runners will not sprint until they actually see the finish line.
- During the “team-walk” over the middle mile of the course, look for areas where you can put in surges. This is where most runners are slowest.
- Finally, look over the first part of the race course. Watch out for early turns or narrows that can separate you from the part of the pack with whom you want to run.
- In your mind, go over the entire course once or twice in the final minutes of your warm-up, noting those areas into which you are going to put special effort. This should be a simple plan.
- Remember how your previous races on this course went. What things did you do that went well or poorly? What did others do that gave them success or failure? Reconstruct how different parts of the course felt and what you were thinking of at certain times during the race.
- Take your successes (or others’ successes) and incorporate them into a new plan for this race.
- Alter the plan depending on any changes in the conditions of this race compared to past races.
- Do your warm-up on the course as described above.
Hill Running Technique
Hills have bottoms and tops, ups and downs. Successful runners use all of the hill.
Bottom – Prepare for the hill mentally – Aggressive – brief acceleration in.
Up – Quick steps, head straight ahead, hands in front of your body, use arms – Blocking action can help with lift. Maintain position conserve energy unless at a crucial point in the race.
Top – Crest of the hill should be worked the hardest. Accelerate the last 5-10 steps up and out over the top. Build back to race pace as quickly as possible. Many (weak and foolish) runners relax and rest for a few seconds when they reach the top of the hill. This is an excellent time to try to gain a few strides on other runners.
Down – Use gravity - do not fight it. Lean forward a little and open up your stride. Try to land mid foot and not brake hard with your heels. Be aggressive but stay under control. Use arms for balance only as necessary - do not hold them out to your sides on purpose. Allow yourself to run free when near the bottom and carry that speed and momentum out onto the flat for as long as possible.
Regain speed
Crest aggressively lean forward
Quick steps open stride
Use arms with blocking action let go
Brief acceleration Carry momentum out =>
