*Confirmed* Harvard XC Unorthodox Training Method?

This is really interesting information about Harvard’s XC workouts and tryouts. If I read correctly, the athletes will be operating at or near the oxygen-debt level during the entire workout. No indication if there is time for a quick breather before the weights sessions but the pace of the running indicates 80%-90% maximum effort, depending on the phase of the workout.
And apparently the hard running + weights combo pays off. Just compare Blanks’ and
Robinson’s running forms in the last 2k of yesterday’s race. Graham is fully upright, shoulders back, arms in motion but controlled. Ky’s posture is bent over, arms are almost motionless, hugging his chest as if he were protecting himself from cold temperatures. Not efficient at all. Solution: Ky, transfer to Harvard. The weather's a lot like Palo Alto!

Has this training ever worked for more than 2-3 athletes per gender at one time? I'm on a different team but our coach has us doing easy runs at 6:10-20 pace now. I feel like I'm getting fitter but I'm also dealing with small pains coming up that I never had before.

Two NCAA MD/Distance Champions in one calendar year. And now another NCAA Championship for Maia. Jealous much?

It isn’t 80% easy running. It is 80% in zone 1 which goes from something like mp+10s to easy running 2–3 mins slower.

if you are a 14:00 min runner anything from 5:30-8:00mins could count. The 5:40 type runs would be sort of hard(I.e you wouldn’t want to them every day but you might run say the last hour of a 16 mile long run) while something like 6:10+ would be an easy run.

the 80/20 rule sort of ignores all the important training questions. Everyone is on the 2-3 hard workout(20% of 10-13 workouts) bandwagon since like the 60s. The question is how easy is the 80%( to you push them up to lt1 or back off), how hard the 20%( 15 mins vo2 max or 40 mins around lt2), and so on. We don’t really have great answers to either of them. People have had great success with tons of variation…

It seems there are two main issues being discussed in this thread.

As a high school coach, I'm more interested in how the circuit work is integrated into the training. Are there other coaches, at either the high school or college level, who have had success and avoided injuries with mixing circuit work into distance runs or workouts, instead of leaving it as a separate part of practice?

The question of aggressive paced distance runs and the need for more relaxed paced recovery runs is very different from high school to college running. I think most would agree that going some degree of hard every day might be sustainable for older and more seasoned college runners, but would be highly risky for the majority of high school athletes.

Harvard Junior, Victoria Bossong ran 2:00.92 today at the Florida Relays. Top NCAA time so far this season. She's one to watch.