A Great Summer XC Workout

Published July 2, 2025

Let's talk about workouts today, workouts that "build the aerobic engine."

The workouts I use to do this are:

Long Runs
Fartlek Runs
Progression Runs
Aerobic Repeats
30-90 Fartlek

Athletes learn the workouts in this order so that by week 5 of summer training they're getting a decent handle on the concept of "running by feel."

You can read about those workouts here and learn why it’s so important that your athletes learn to run by feel.

And while we’re at it, make sure you’ve considered the concept of “extending the aerobic stimulus” with post-run work that’s done immediately after the run, which you can learn about here.

Now it’s time for a workout that both continues to develop the aerobic metabolism and gets the kids ready mentally, for race pace workouts.

Aerobic Repeats

The goal with these repeats is to run longer repetitions, while keeping the repetition fueled almost exclusively by the aerobic metabolism.

We want athletes to run the fastest pace possible, for several minutes, without producing lactate. If they feel the telltale signs of lactate production – burning lungs, burning legs, a metallic taste in their mouths – then they’re running these too fast.

This workout requires a “date pace” effort.

“Date pace” effort is the speed an athlete could run a 5k cross country race on the day of the workout, not their goal 5K pace (i.e., what they’ll be able to run in October or November).

The workout will be 4 minutes at 5k date pace effort, followed by 3 minutes easy (not steady). Athletes will do between 3 and 5 repetitions before moving on to 5-minute and 6-minute repetitions in later weeks.

If this looks like a harder workout than the fartlek runs and progressions athletes have done up to this point in the summer, it is. Yet the athletes get to run easy, or even slow to a jog, between the repetitions.

This is all run by feel and the reality is that most kids are going to run a little slower than 5k date pace. That’s fine – we just want them to run longer reps and get them ready for the race pace workouts that will be coming later in the summer.

Frequency

This is a workout we’ll do after having done fartlek workouts and progression runs a few times. But, we don’t need to wait too long into summer cross country training to do these, for the simple reason that kids really like them.

Distance or Time

We always do these based on time, but if we looked at the math here, an athlete who runs 20 minutes for 5k and is doing aerobic repeats that are 4 minutes in duration, is essentially running repeat 1ks. But don’t try to translate this workout into distances, just assign the workout based on time.

Intensity

We’re aiming for 5k date pace effort, and we’re not letting them look at their GPS to see what pace they’re running during these segments.

Farther or Faster (or both)

Athletes need to be able to say they could have done one more 4- or 5-minute repetition, but that they might have needed more rest. They could say they would have needed as much as 5-6 minutes of rest. They do not need to be able to say they could have run faster, just that they could have run farther.

To be clear, this is a hard workout, and a well-run aerobic repeats workout will have your athletes finishing saying, “I’m glad I’m done!”

And as with all the challenging aerobic workouts in my system, they need to go immediately into the post-run work to "extend the aerobic stimulus."

Common Mistakes

The biggest mistake is that athletes run too fast on the first two repetitions. But again, if you assign this workout today, only 4-5 weeks into the season, we can’t assume that your kids have dialed in running by feel, yet.

If they blow up the workout, don’t be concerned, and make sure to tell your athletes that you’re proud of them for running hard.

To set them up for success, tell them to run the first repetition very controlled – slower than what they could probably run in a 5k cross country race, and then tell them on the second and third repetitions they could speed up a bit.

XC Training System

This is a workout I use mid-summer in the XCTS. It’s a “bridge workout” to the race pace workouts, and it’s a workout that is mentally challenging.

By the time you’ll get to the point in the XCTS where you’ll do this workout, your kids will be ready to both run hard in the workout, and then go straight into the post-run work to “extend the aerobic stimulus.”

“But where are the race pace workouts? The workouts we’ll do when official practice starts?”

Those workouts are in the XC Training System which you can check out here.

Let’s go!

Jay

PS – Last month I did a live class where I walked participants day by day through five weeks of training. There were over 100 coaches that tuned in live and many enrolled in the XCTS once they could “see behind the curtain.”

You can get all the workouts, PDFs, and videos here and then you can watch the concise, fast-paced class here.

You’ll have everything you need for training for the kids that are coming out for the team this month.

Enjoy!