Lightning flashes. Thunder cracks. Trees whip their limbs. A young man stands alone in the dark night. Beneath his feat lies a broken and dirty trail. Rocks and branches lay strewn accross this path. Although the trail stretches for miles through the hilly landscape unbroken, it is in some places thinned by the encroachment of the dirty weeds. Weeds which ripple in the light of lightning. The adolescent reaches down to rub his sore bare feet. Blood trickles from a punctured callus on one foot, but he rubs a bit of dirt upon the wound and sets his foot down nonchalantly. Tentatively he stretches his slender legs -checking for kinks and removing them methodically in the darkness. Lightning flashes again, and is followed by thunder’s reverberating rumble. Momentarily the path is illuminated. Rocks, branches and pitfalls momentarily revealed. In a practiced motion he springs forward as if thunder were a starting gun. The branches reach for his legs scratching him as he glides by. The rocks roll under him cutting and marring his feet. But he continues down the path, swinging up his knees and guiding his feet gracefully to the ground. With grace he fends off the rocks and branches. With grace he slips through the darkness. With grace he glides through the storm, down the lonely and quiet path.
Will revise, maybe add to it later.
This is going to be a tough season for us. We’re loosing the #1, #2, and #4 best distance runners this school has ever seen. But we’ve also got the best 2 freshman distance runner’s we’ve ever seen. A 4:35/10:20 guy and a 4:41/10:06 guy. MAN! Those are blazing times for freshmen! Our main competitor in the CCS is St. Francis Mtn View, and they’re returning all of their top 6. Their #1 guy is a phenom, too!
My goals for this season are really quite simple and very humble.
-Train from 6/13/05 to Thanksgiving weekend (state meet) without gettin’ injured.
Basic plans:
Weeks 1-10(15)- build up from an easy 30Miles/Week to 65-70Miles/Week. [Big Emphasis on volume buildup of everything, including crunches etc… max out at 250 ab reps per day and 100 pushups]
Weeks 11-14 maintain 65-70 Miles/Week and start lactic training. [Keep up with crunches etc]
Weeks-15-20 maintain 55-65 M/W while piling on lactic work (toughest part of season)
Week-21-27+ Lactic sharpening 50-55 M/W with lots of pace work and recovery.
Main emphasis this season is just the day-to-day training. I’m not going to freak out if I don’t hit 60M/W by my fifth week and then throw in two ten milers saturday/sunday in an attempt to get my milage up. sigh
Anyone have any advice about split workouts? I was thinking doing 5-8km in the mornings starting around my 6th-9th weeks.
Edit: Danmit, it’s the 2005 XC season… Hey, Rupert can you retitle this thing, or should I redo this thing?
way back when I was a XC madman myself (upon finding out I had some prospects in other track and field events, I abandoned it), Split workouts really allowed me to up my mileage. Endurance was always an issue for me, and I found that I could improve it better through the splits than heaping on the volume.
I went from 25-30m/w to 40-45 m/w, and I broke 17:30 5k as a result.
the bottom line is, I did the morning stuff just to loosen up - easy terrain, comfortable pace - and then felt pretty “warm” in the main afternoon training session, and I got better quality and more mileage. It worked for me.
I’ve read a lot of your logs palmtag, I think they are great! good luck
Weeks 11-14, perhaps you could reduce somewhat the volume even in this cycle, not only because of intro of lactic work -which will be light, I suppose, anyway- but perhaps as an adjustment period for the next phase, when lactic work will be more; in other words, to get into phase III (weeks 15-20) with some “recovery” from mileage in there already rather than waiting for this to happen during weeks 15-20 -it won’t 
When you reach around 45-50mi, I suppose you start having “split” sessions…
Good luck!
Edit: I would also include some easy strides from week 7 onwards… Nothing fast, or long (e.g., up to 400 m), but faster than usual.
It should be something like that, Nik. My coach has a more detailed plan, but that’s just a general outline of what we did last year. Thanks for the support. 
Thanks for the info on double days, goldilocks 
6/13/05
Week-0 Monday
Workout: 2 hours of heavy (rock) lifting, 5 trips up steep hill with heavy laden barrow, close to 2 dozen medium-medium small hand carried rocks.
Good work day today. Part of my step-dads Strengthening Holistic Intense Training System (…figure out THAT acronim…) Anyway, hands are raw, but other than that I’m just good tired. I start running on Saturday, depending on how my whole body’s holding up.
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6/14/04
Week-0 Tuesday
Workout: 2 MORE hours of heavy lifting followed by a chicken-coop-mucking session.
Man my forearms haven’t been this sore since the Buffy marathon.
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0
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6/15/05
Week-0 Wednsday
Workout: Hour and a half of Rock lifting
Not too bad… my computer died today, Grrr…
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0
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6/16/05
Week-0 Thursday
Workout: No workout today, needed to recover. Had a blast spending the whole day with my lady-friend.
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6/17/05
Week-0 Friday
Workout: No Rocks, but I did depletion situps on an decline bench… OUCH!
89
66
33
36
27
14
1…and then I fell off the bench
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Oh, yeah… Lady friend
WOW i learn something new everyday about training, on here.
What the hell are depletion sit ups, they sound good.
I like this
Well… I did as many as I could do in one sitting. I waited a minute or so (25 deep breaths) then did as many as I could. I was grunting and howling when I did the last 14. It kind of woke up my family… Tee-hee.
6/18/05
Week-0 Saturday
Not much today, Except that I can’t lean forward… depletions were way too hard, methinks.
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6/19/05
Week-0 Sunday
Workout:
0
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0 (eh not bad for an off week…)
6/20/05
Week-1 (Woot! First training day) Monday
Workout:40 minutes… Should’ve been easy, but my back trails are so godanm hilly there ain’t no way you can do them easy or slow… This run felt like the hardest 40 minutes I’d ever done in my LIFE! Oy Vey… My abs were still a bit sore from the depletion situps.
Four Hours Later: I did 2 1/2 hours of shoveling. Clearing the driveway is hard work. My shoveling-thumb is very very sore…
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6/21/05
Week-1 Tuesday
Workout: NAda. I got new shoes today. My arches have been gettin’ sore. It started about a week ago when I started my manual labor. Don’t know why I haven’t reported it in my journal. I bought thicker tougher trail-running shoes and I am going to be doing office work until I’m good to go again.
Workout:
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6/22/05
Week-1 Wedsnday
Workout: I went to the beach with my new shoes. At first I didn’t even think I was going to run, but I started jogging around, and right away I noticed that my arch didn’t hurt at all. Once I’d been running pain free for 20 minutes I decided to keep running. 45 minutes later, I decided to stop.
200 steps accross (small beach)
6’ +/- per step (1Meters)
200m Across the Beach
200m x2 (Down the beach and back)
400m
400mx20=5 Miles
(I did all that math in my head during laps 14-16)
Ouch… 5 miles in 65 minutes. Not that the meterage mattered today. I’m more happy that I was able to run pain-free for 65 minutes solid. Icing and asprin-ing today FOR SURE.
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6/23/05
Week-1 Thursday
No access to flat ground today, I stayed home and did some light core work.
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6/24/05
Week-1 Friday
Workout: 800m jog, dynamics, 57 minutes (9.0miles), 800m jog, stretches, cool shower, 200mg ibuprofen
Good workout today. I went out the first 1/4 pretty well, and rested the second 1/4. I pushed the next 1/3 of the run real hard, and then took a mile easy, with a strong 800m finish.
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Week-1 Saturday
Workout: 30 mins easy, stretches, cool shower
I did my whole workout today on grass… OUCH! it had recently rained, or been watered or something, but it was very soft, not muddy, but sticky. I felt like I was running on a sticky beach. But it was either that, or run on concrete… I chose the strenght workout
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6/26/05
Week-1 Sunday
Workout: Nada… err actually I did 2 X-men.
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