Goals for next year

I believe it is possible. You will have to probably train harder than you did last year. You must stay healthy as well. What was your training looking like? Do you run year round?

It's of course a very realistic goal to say even if you don't tell how your training looks like now. 🧙🏼‍♂️🇸🇪

Sure. Absolutely zero training going into sophomore year when I ran 17:45. I also ran less then 20 mpw that whole season, because I was very injury prone, I also did nothing sophomore winter or spring. The summer leading into my Junior season was my first time really ever training. I hit 35 ish for most of the summer before running 15:55. Junior winter I ran 40-50 but got injured a few times, I don’t think load was the issue, just stress and low sleep. This summer, I just finished up my break after track, but my goal is to build up to mid to high 50’s, and I really want to emphasize long tempos and intentional threshold work. Ideally, If I could run 6-7 miles for my tempos at the end of the summer at around 5:20-5:30 and have that be comfortable, I think I would be in a good spot.

Less is more from the perspective of we do not want you to get injured 35 miles per week (five or six days) maybe your sweet spot then it's just a matter of fine-tuning the workouts to make sure you maximize the most of your mileage. Good luck!

Listen to your coach listen to your body and I'm sure you'll hit your goal

"I don't want to disappoint myself . . . " Don't say that. Its goofy. And get rid of the word 'goal'. Change it to 'Gonna'. A goal has wiggle room and an 'out'. You don't commit to a goal, you commit to a 'gonna'. While you're at it, tell the whole world what you are 'gonna' do. It gives 'stink' a more stink if your fail. Do your homework, identify all the gotcha's and how you're gonna avoid or recover from them. Like a guy said earlier, successful running is 40% neck up and 60% neck down.

you wanna be a dreamer or do you want to be a runner? your goal is be a second faster than the last time. really, i do like 5-10 second goals.

that's not because a bunch of seconds isn't possible. that's because you're improving a lot and should put in the work and take some pride in what you've done, and get a PR reward out of it. kids come on here wanting to drop 30s or 1m and then act like depressives when they drop 25s on a 5k, which is actually progress and pretty good.

so do small goals but repeat them. you get that 10 do another 10.

if you do this for negative "avoiding disappointment" reasons you will burn out. this needs to be something you get joy out of or when the mileage kicks up the times keep dropping you will be sick of it all. a goal too far away is not joy, it's a cattle prod. an athlete motivated by cattle prod eventually quits.

tempos, threshold, and more than you were doing when you got hurt? i look forward to the winter post aking how to get recruited when you were hurt all senior XC season.

use your brain, son.

Respectfully I disagree for a few reasons.

1. If done at the correct MMOL of lactate, tempos and thresholds are very low wear on your body relative to other types of workouts. It’s hard to get hurt doing thresh correctly

2. When I got injured it was mostly hard anaerobic workouts:lots of wear on the body. I was training for 800’s, doing 45 mpw with very hard vo2 workouts aswell.

3. in this instance, was more of a strength issue than a overuse issue causing the injury. I have been lifting and my squat has increased by 40 pounds since then.

4. Injuries aren’t always indicative of too much mileage, can be as simple as you got unlucky and your body wasn’t optimally adapting.

Thanks for the concern, but I’m definitely good to run 50-60 mpw, with 3-4 easy days, a long/tempo run, and a few thresh sessions.

this post was more of a post trying to gauge realistic goal setting. I like to make something to work towards throughout the season. I truly love running and am not worried about burning out lol. And for the “cattle” term or whatever I agree. However, I was 15:55 last fall, I got WAY more fit during track. I probably could’ve ran 9:20 or faster during track in the 2 mile. Telling myself I’m going to run under 15:00 isn’t really out of the reach whatsoever. I do however, choose lots of short term goals like: PR next meet, or beat so and so whom has beaten me in the past. Thanks for the reply

If you were in 9:20 2 mile probably in sub 15 minutes 5K shape