The no-contact period for this season ended on July 1st. Until then, I wasn't able to meet with team members in person for training. Fortunately, early season training is straightforward. You need to go out the door and run every day. CV, Tempo, vVO2max, Threshold, Reps, and Intervals will come soon enough. For now, you need to build your aerobic base, and the best way to do that is to run. Your pace should be comfortable, but not a jog. Each day you should feel like you could have done a little more. Consistency Is Key (remember that phrase).|

When school starts, varsity level boys should be running at least 35-45 miles per week, varsity girls between 25 and 35. But don't start at that volume. If you're just starting out, run about half of your target distance for the first week and increase the distance each week by 10-15% until you reach your goal level. If you ran track, you won't be starting at ground level and should start at about 75% of what you were running in track. Beginning runners can start at around 10-15 miles per week. The table below shows a progression from 10 to 50 miles per week. Up to 20 miles per week 15% is added for the next week; after that, it's 10%. The table assumes you'll have a rest day each week when you don't run. Also, you'll not likely run the exact number of miles per day shown. Make up for the differences as you go along and try to get in one day where you run about 20-25 percent of the mileage for that week. The goal is to run the total miles with one longer run for the week. All that said, you should never lose touch with race pace. After each run, perform 6-8 fast strides at 5k race pace or faster. You could also do this during your daily runs.

Warm Up First
Runners should have three warmups; one for base training; one for reps and intervals; one for day-of-race. I won't go in to the last two at this time, but for the early season running, you should take around 10 minutes to prepare for your run.

Here is a link to the Jeff Boelé Basic Warmup.
However, for base just do the first part and add leg swings.

Strengthen your Chassis
Here is a link to a series of Jay Johnson's SAM (Strength And Mobility) videos.

You should do one of these routines nearly every day. Just running isn't enough. Many runners tend to blow this off, but it's essential to your training. When we're able to meet again we'll go into more detail.

Remember I said above that Consistancy Is Key?
We'll that's the name of a book for high school runners that I recommend that everyone pick-up. It's only $15 on Amazon and it's one of the best books on training for High School Cross Country I've seen. I even have a signed copy :-)
Here is the Amazon Link.