No summer vacation for training harriers

When the temperature starts heating up in the middle of the summer, most people use it as an excuse to go inside, ramp up the air-conditioning, and make themselves a sundae.

Princeton's cross country runners, on the other hand, spend their days outside on the pavement, doing their best to ignore the heat index and their cool, comfortable living rooms.

Distance running requires a particular dedication to training in the off-season since the success in the sport depends almost entirely on conditioning. Even when they are not in season, the team's harriers maintain strenuous workout routines that are in many ways no less intense than workouts in season.

Sophomore Brett Campfield explained the need for a strong summer training regimen.

"We definitely do not want to train less over the summer, because it sets the tone for the whole year," Campfield said.

Summer workouts can be seen as a gradual and continuous uphill climb. At the beginning of summer, a typical runner will start out slowly — of course, "slowly" has to be understood in relative terms — to build up a base. Senior captain Catha Mullen, for instance, begins with evenly-paced runs that vary between eight and 12 miles long.

Since the typical person might not understand what building up a base entails, Catha Mullen gave a simple explanation.

"The key ... is getting the mileage in," she said. "In order to get a good base for cross country, I've found that it's a good idea to bump your mileage up by five to 10 miles a week."

Campfield echoed this sentiment for the men.

"The general idea for ... the summer is to build up a solid base of miles to come back to school in the fall in the best aerobic shape possible and free of any kind of injuries."

Of course, Princeton's runners do not simply pound the pavement for three months and do nothing else. It is crucial to get in a good mixture of workouts.

The most essential alternative to long-distance running is speed training, which members of the team begin to add to their regimen in the dog-days of summer.

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"I would put 20- to 30-minute harder runs in the middle of all my long-run days," freshman Christy Johnson said. "Or other days I would do Fartlek-type things ranging from five to one-minute intervals."

Fartlek training, also known as "speed play," is a workout that combines slower-paced continuous running with shorter intervals of intense effort. Such workouts often focus less on optimizing aerobic conditioning and more on building up muscular strength.

Mullen also emphasizes exercises that one wouldn't immediately associate with running.

"I also like to complement [running] with weights or an ab routine," she said.

In particular, core workouts — those which stress the abdominal muscles and the muscles of the lower back — are a neglected but essential element of becoming a better running.

As the Tigers' harriers approach the beginning of the season, they all have built up a strong base of miles, have stellar cardiovascular conditioning and have worked to maintain strength in the necessary muscle groups.

In many ways, the last weeks of August are the most difficult training weeks. Workouts become more formal and structured as team discipline begins to return.

"In the two weeks before pre-season, I follow a day-specific schedule that [head coach] Peter Farrell has given the team," Mullen said.

For the men, the time before preseason was spent together in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. There, 11 members of the team got together to work in high-altitude conditions for three weeks.

The upshot of all these workouts is that returning to school is almost a relief. While most students bemoan the sudden lack of central air-conditioning and feel the strain of piles of schoolwork, the members of the cross country team can kick back and relax. They know they've been doing hard work all summer long.