Murrieta Valley, Cont.

Murrieta Valley Boys XC
- 6 league titles
- 6 county titles
- 5 state meet berths
- 3 top 5 state finishes
- Consistently ranked among the top 10 in CA since 1998
- Team time record of 74:14 (3 miles)

Philosophy on summer training:
Summer training is certainly the hallmark of any good distance program and we are no different. In the CIF Southern Section we are required to take a 3-week "dead period" in which there is no contact with the team and coaches. We take our right after the school year gets out in mid-June, so we officially begin summer practice after the 4th of July. Summer is a time for us to get quality mileage in. We do not shy away from big miles, but the construct of our training plan does keep it somewhat limited compared to most. We spend most of our time at our local nature preserve the Santa Rosa Plateau; which has miles of great dirt trails over all types of terrain (we also have our home XC course here).

Over the summer we work on threshold training and increasing mileage and overall pace of aerobic runs. Our threshold training has developed quite a bit over the years, but we have finally "dialed in" what works best for our environment and us. Due to the rolling terrain around our school, we found it difficult to do long threshold runs at a consistent pace and HR. What we do now is run repeats on a 2-mile perfect square around our school. The varsity boys and girls will work up to 4x2-mile with a 3-minute rest interval between repeats. Most others on the team will do 2-3 repeats. Doing them in this manner actually takes you over the threshold zone, but run properly, the 3-minute rest is adequate to return to stasis. Our top boys will typically be able to run 4 at sub 11 minutes (exceptional runners sub-10:30). Our top girls will be able to run 4 sub 13 minutes (exceptional runners sub-12:30). Beyond that we work on speed development once per week, run fartlek training over hills (5 minutes at threshold and 3 minutes easy), and build up our long runs. We like to get up to 90 minutes or more on a single run once per week. Boys will work up to 17 miles and girls 15 miles.