Cross Country season is our chance as Drury runners to train together as a team and compete as individuals and as a team in fall meets. I believe both our men's and women's teams are strong enough and have enough fast runners to do well at the GLVC meet and also qualify for the NCAA National D2 Cross Country Championships. My goal is to help you run your best at those important meets.
We run long in training sometimes, we run hard in training sometimes and we run short and easy sometimes. All are important components of total running fitness. The 6000m to 100000m races are 85%-90% aerobic, and only a small percentage anaerobic, so most of our summer & fall training focuses on aerobic volume. The aerobic system is substantially more efficient than the anaerobic system so it is important to maximize aerobic capacity, which results in improved cardiac output, increased capillarization and oxygen extraction, slow twitch muscle fiber recruitment and numerous positive metabolic adaptations. The reality is that aerobic capacity takes much longer to develop, relative to anaerobic fitness, which is why we start the summer building mileage. It is not possible to be a competitive cross country runner at the NCAA D2 level without doing the summer training. Shortly after practice starts we'll add more tempo runs and faster intervals to develop anaerobic capacity and improve our ability to buffer the acidity that comes from running without adequate oxygen. In the meantime, we also want to stay as strong as possible(thus, hills & core work) and avoid illness and injury(thus, plenty of sleep, rest, water, stretching and ice baths).
I promise to do my best to give you through the season the proper training and workouts(and the right amount of rest) and guide you to the end of the season so you can meet your personal goals and team goals. I'm looking forward to being with you again as your coach and I am excited about what we can accomplish as a team.
Coach Van Arkel
No comments:
Post a Comment