Cross Country Running

Question
My daughter (14 years) is training with the high school cross country team.  She is running every day (averaging 5 miles daily).  Is she at any risk with this schedule?  Should she have any "days off" or am I worrying about nothing?

Answer
Is she actually running 7 days a week with the team?  I assume its 5 days, Mon-Fri.  Even then, some kids may be able to handle this much, while others need rest days in-between, or at least some lesser mileage.  I hope there is some kind of coach that's leading & guiding this summer running stuff.  If she is running for 7 straight days, her body won't be able to handle that much running without any rest days.  I would recommend a 4-5 days/week schedule of running for 5 miles or less.  There's no need to run for 2x the race distance (4K to 5K is 2.5 to 3.1 miles for HS CC athletes), because the objective is to run as fast as you can handle over 2.5 miles or 3.1 miles, not over 5 or 6 miles.  A lot of high mileage programs don't work for today's youth athletes because their conditioning and capacity just isn't there to handle such mileages & volumes. Kids aren't playing as much in their development on their own, and aren't as active as kids were years ago.  This shift requires a change in thought in how to train today's youth athletes.  As a CC Coach, I have discovered that running shorter runs at higher intensities, with adequate rest and recovery runs as part of the training schedule, this will result in better improvements to become in better 'race shape' as the season progresses.  I use GPS speed & distance monitors and its accompanying data to measure & evaluate this type of training on my team over the past 2 years, and the kids have improved their race pace running levels by 20% in some cases, all without the high mileage programs that many coaches go off of.

I hope this helps you well, feel free to ask me any more questions or concerns you have about your daughter's running.

Rick Karboviak
http://speeddialcoach.com