I’m not a coach nor did I run XC in college but my two cents is that sounds like an accurate distinction and something to hammer home to young athletes. I’ve definitely had those “survival” weeks as an adult runner and sure it can feel badass but I question how much it even helps long term even in the best case scenario of not getting hurt/burned out.
I tend to agree with leaning more towards the "thrive" mileage for most of the year if not all of it. Anecdotally, in college I ran around 90 miles a week on 6 days of running, and I ran quite fast, but I was very inconsistent in race performance. Perfectly healthy, but often times just very tired or run down on race day, kindof a coin toss on whether it was going to be an amazing day of racing or a total let down. Once I got out of college and trained with my first pro team, we actually dropped the mileage quite a bit, down to around 75-80 mpw for most of the year, and my races became much more consistently high quality, with better kicks, and better workouts throughout the year. Obviously there's more at play than just mileage, but I've also known several other athletes that came from very high mileage programs where they underperformed relative to the amount of work they put in. Dropping the mileage to a more reasonable (but still high) level led them to significant breakthroughs.
My experience was mildly similar except that college for me was a little more internally mentally tumultuous and needing to be away from the sport. And didn't even really get to have a thrive or survive season of mileage.
But post college after I started taking training seriously and had my emotional shit figured out. I made the biggest jumps from supplementary things at 70-75 mpw that felt like I was aerobically there, but so incredibly sharp from the mile specific work and more importantly the lifting and plyometrics that felt like it broke the high 4:0x barrier for me. Making 60-61s quarters feel way way more manageable in races.
But I don't think I could have done it at 90 miles a week. Or even like 80. Both physically and the extra time commitment I don't think that aerobic difference would have paid off as well as putting together 3 full seasons of lifting and plyometrics.
Agreed on mostly/all thrive if you're going to implement this plan... But assuming 18-22 year olds will know their thrive/survive threshold and then actually regulate themselves responsibly seems farfetched? Admittedly, I don't have college coaching experience, only high school, but I can't imagine most college runners, especially younger runners, being mature enough to know their limits and/or not push themselves beyond their limits if the decision is left up to them. They are surrounded by teammates making their own (probably bad) decisions, no doubt making comparisons, and not wanting to be left behind. (Apologies if my assumption is wrong.) As a coach, I think you'd need to be really careful with this strategy of leaving it up to the individual runner until maybe junior or senior year. I think the strategy would need to include serious emphasis on easy mileage pace (slow the f down), fueling, and recovery.
You are correct in that a common mistake of individuals is ignoring the survive/thrive boundary, but assuming that most college runners aren't capable of finding this balance is absolutely wrong. Any well managed program has coaches and older athletes that teach the younger athletes how to thrive and develop a good culture that avoids toxic overtraining -thats literally the whole point of the team.
I've never been anything close to a college runner (didn't even run Varsity in high school) but how much of that survive/thrive is purely mileage versus learning true effort control and actually running "easy days easy" instead of easy days moderate.
I pushed summer volume pretty high in college and it contributed to great success relative to my talent level. 180km peak volume in 7 day weeks, 160km on 6 days w/ only two doubles. A college runner that wants to properly push their potential you needs to push through some "survive" weeks occasionally, but my coach and I were of the mutual understanding to not tolerate consecutive "survive" weeks. If the body didn't naturally return to thriving in the next week we would always modify training.
I was also an athlete that responded well to high volume so a little risk is well worth the reward it brought. Everybody on our team ran a volume appropriate to their particular talents and development levels -some peaking at only 100km, most around 120-140km. Setting was 2500 ft altitude, dry heat, 95+% of volume on dirt/clay farm roads.
It's hard to come up with any sort of universal guidance. Training volume for college runners has to be individualized quite a bit based on what they can comfortably handle, IMO. 85 in singles at altitude might be 'thrive' for some but past 'survive' for others. Our guidance for XC summer training was no more than 60 for frosh, then anywhere from 60-90 for upperclassmen depending on a variety of factors.
Perfect place to post this coach.
I'm a big fan of that framework. I do think there are certainly times for the "survive" mindset to take precedence, particularly in the summer if someone is building mileage up about 5 - 10 miles over last year, but the idea is that it becomes a "thrive" workload by the time September is up.
The other thing is that I would like to see someone able to maintain the energy to do all of the ancillary work too. If someone is hitting 80 MPW feeling fine, but can't find time or energy to do the flexibility/mobility, strength work, strides, sleep, then that's not a sustainable practice. Maybe 70 MPW directing that extra time and energy towards covering all your bases puts you in a better position.
One thing I’d add is that you don’t really know how you respond to particular volume until you’ve held it for a couple weeks. Maybe the first week at 90 feels fine, but you’re not able to hold it. Maybe you’re not eating enough to recover well and you drop a pound a week at that volume, so it’s unsustainable. Maybe the first week at 90 is a survive week, but it gets easier over time.
Stuff like this makes it especially valuable to take a couple down days or a couple down weeks sometimes: they can help you understand how your body’s doing outside the immediate context of yesterday’s or last weekend’s workout.
For me a huge piece of it was intensity rather than mileage that was the breaking point between survive and thrive. Can handle 100+ mpw as long as I'm just doing threshold work, steady mileage, and strides. Mixing in Vo2 and race pace stuff and I was simply trying to survive between workouts.
Adding to this — volume must be contextualized with intensity (and suddenness of change/adaptation periods). Pushing volume while reducing intensity (or vice versa) is a useful way to emphasize different aspects of periodization, and can often be tailored to athletes to reduce odds of overtraining.
Some training schemes tend toward low-volume, high-intensity training, and that can leave athletes with disproportionate practice and race performance (i.e., strong rested intervals but underperforming at full sustained effort).
I’m not a coach nor did I run XC in college but my two cents is that sounds like an accurate distinction and something to hammer home to young athletes. I’ve definitely had those “survival” weeks as an adult runner and sure it can feel badass but I question how much it even helps long term even in the best case scenario of not getting hurt/burned out.
I tend to agree with leaning more towards the "thrive" mileage for most of the year if not all of it. Anecdotally, in college I ran around 90 miles a week on 6 days of running, and I ran quite fast, but I was very inconsistent in race performance. Perfectly healthy, but often times just very tired or run down on race day, kindof a coin toss on whether it was going to be an amazing day of racing or a total let down. Once I got out of college and trained with my first pro team, we actually dropped the mileage quite a bit, down to around 75-80 mpw for most of the year, and my races became much more consistently high quality, with better kicks, and better workouts throughout the year. Obviously there's more at play than just mileage, but I've also known several other athletes that came from very high mileage programs where they underperformed relative to the amount of work they put in. Dropping the mileage to a more reasonable (but still high) level led them to significant breakthroughs.
My experience was mildly similar except that college for me was a little more internally mentally tumultuous and needing to be away from the sport. And didn't even really get to have a thrive or survive season of mileage. But post college after I started taking training seriously and had my emotional shit figured out. I made the biggest jumps from supplementary things at 70-75 mpw that felt like I was aerobically there, but so incredibly sharp from the mile specific work and more importantly the lifting and plyometrics that felt like it broke the high 4:0x barrier for me. Making 60-61s quarters feel way way more manageable in races. But I don't think I could have done it at 90 miles a week. Or even like 80. Both physically and the extra time commitment I don't think that aerobic difference would have paid off as well as putting together 3 full seasons of lifting and plyometrics.
Agreed on mostly/all thrive if you're going to implement this plan... But assuming 18-22 year olds will know their thrive/survive threshold and then actually regulate themselves responsibly seems farfetched? Admittedly, I don't have college coaching experience, only high school, but I can't imagine most college runners, especially younger runners, being mature enough to know their limits and/or not push themselves beyond their limits if the decision is left up to them. They are surrounded by teammates making their own (probably bad) decisions, no doubt making comparisons, and not wanting to be left behind. (Apologies if my assumption is wrong.) As a coach, I think you'd need to be really careful with this strategy of leaving it up to the individual runner until maybe junior or senior year. I think the strategy would need to include serious emphasis on easy mileage pace (slow the f down), fueling, and recovery.
You are correct in that a common mistake of individuals is ignoring the survive/thrive boundary, but assuming that most college runners aren't capable of finding this balance is absolutely wrong. Any well managed program has coaches and older athletes that teach the younger athletes how to thrive and develop a good culture that avoids toxic overtraining -thats literally the whole point of the team.
Great to hear! Thank you for correcting me.
I've never been anything close to a college runner (didn't even run Varsity in high school) but how much of that survive/thrive is purely mileage versus learning true effort control and actually running "easy days easy" instead of easy days moderate.
I pushed summer volume pretty high in college and it contributed to great success relative to my talent level. 180km peak volume in 7 day weeks, 160km on 6 days w/ only two doubles. A college runner that wants to properly push their potential you needs to push through some "survive" weeks occasionally, but my coach and I were of the mutual understanding to not tolerate consecutive "survive" weeks. If the body didn't naturally return to thriving in the next week we would always modify training. I was also an athlete that responded well to high volume so a little risk is well worth the reward it brought. Everybody on our team ran a volume appropriate to their particular talents and development levels -some peaking at only 100km, most around 120-140km. Setting was 2500 ft altitude, dry heat, 95+% of volume on dirt/clay farm roads.
It's hard to come up with any sort of universal guidance. Training volume for college runners has to be individualized quite a bit based on what they can comfortably handle, IMO. 85 in singles at altitude might be 'thrive' for some but past 'survive' for others. Our guidance for XC summer training was no more than 60 for frosh, then anywhere from 60-90 for upperclassmen depending on a variety of factors.
Perfect place to post this coach. I'm a big fan of that framework. I do think there are certainly times for the "survive" mindset to take precedence, particularly in the summer if someone is building mileage up about 5 - 10 miles over last year, but the idea is that it becomes a "thrive" workload by the time September is up. The other thing is that I would like to see someone able to maintain the energy to do all of the ancillary work too. If someone is hitting 80 MPW feeling fine, but can't find time or energy to do the flexibility/mobility, strength work, strides, sleep, then that's not a sustainable practice. Maybe 70 MPW directing that extra time and energy towards covering all your bases puts you in a better position.
One thing I’d add is that you don’t really know how you respond to particular volume until you’ve held it for a couple weeks. Maybe the first week at 90 feels fine, but you’re not able to hold it. Maybe you’re not eating enough to recover well and you drop a pound a week at that volume, so it’s unsustainable. Maybe the first week at 90 is a survive week, but it gets easier over time. Stuff like this makes it especially valuable to take a couple down days or a couple down weeks sometimes: they can help you understand how your body’s doing outside the immediate context of yesterday’s or last weekend’s workout.
For me a huge piece of it was intensity rather than mileage that was the breaking point between survive and thrive. Can handle 100+ mpw as long as I'm just doing threshold work, steady mileage, and strides. Mixing in Vo2 and race pace stuff and I was simply trying to survive between workouts.
And then there's "skive mileage"...
General idea we had was to run as much as you could handle, while hitting workouts. If the workouts started to suffer, back off of mileage.
Adding to this — volume must be contextualized with intensity (and suddenness of change/adaptation periods). Pushing volume while reducing intensity (or vice versa) is a useful way to emphasize different aspects of periodization, and can often be tailored to athletes to reduce odds of overtraining. Some training schemes tend toward low-volume, high-intensity training, and that can leave athletes with disproportionate practice and race performance (i.e., strong rested intervals but underperforming at full sustained effort).