Winter Training for High School Distance Runners

Coach Jason Saltmarsh · USATF Level 2 Endurance Coach · 25 years coaching, 31 state champions

The season ended on a Saturday. By Tuesday somebody has asked you what happens next, and you do not have an answer yet, because you have spent three months thinking about one course and one race.

Here is the part nobody tells you. The twenty weeks between the last cross country race and the first outdoor meet will do more for your spring than anything you do in April. It is the longest uninterrupted block of training a high school distance runner ever gets. Most programs waste it, and they waste it in one of two ways. They take the whole thing off, or they race indoors every Saturday and arrive in March already tired.

That last sentence is the whole reason this guide has two halves.

This block exists whether or not you have an indoor season

If your program has no indoor meets, or no facility within reasonable travel, you have not been left out of anything. You have been handed the best training block of the year: twelve to fourteen uninterrupted weeks with nothing to taper for and nothing to recover from. The programs racing every Saturday would trade you.

The mistake I see most often is a coach with no indoor season concluding that winter is therefore unstructured. It is the opposite. Fewer interruptions means more structure, not less.

If your last race was this weekend, skip ahead to the break and come back for the rest in ten days. Nothing else on this page matters until that is done correctly.

Which path are you on

Answer this before you write a single workout. It is not a scheduling detail. It changes the shape of all twenty weeks.

Path A in one paragraph

Build for three weeks, race for six or seven, taper into a February championship, reset for ten to fourteen days, then build again for outdoor. Racing constrains the volume, so the winter peak is lower than Path B. That is correct, not a compromise.

Path B in one paragraph

Rebuild, then base for six weeks, then hills for six, then quality for two. Lydiard order, where each block earns the right to the next one. Nothing interrupts it, so this is the highest volume a high school distance runner will ever carry. The hard part is not physiology. It is consistency.

Assigning the level

Level is set by cross country peak week. Not grade level, not talent, not what they think they can handle.

Three rules on top of the table.

An athlete between two levels goes in the lower one. An athlete who was hurt this fall goes one level lower than their mileage says, regardless of how good they feel now.

A fast athlete with low mileage is not a Veteran. Talent is not durability, and the athlete most likely to get hurt in your program is the gifted sophomore whose ambition outruns their tendons.

No Fall Season is a beginner, not a returner. They take no break, because they have nothing to recover from. They run fewer days, and they never join the top of either path.

The athlete who arrives late

A basketball or swimming athlete finishing in late February cannot join week 16. Start them at week 2 of the No Fall Season column, compress the first six weeks into four, then follow the outdoor plan. Their heart is ready. Their bones are not.

The break

Seven to ten days with no running. Then one week of easy unstructured running. Then start.

The case for the break is strong. In trained athletes, aerobic capacity declines in the first weeks of insufficient training but stays well above untrained values, and much of the early loss is reduced blood volume that rebuilds quickly. In one well-known study, runners cut weekly volume by roughly 70 percent for three weeks and their performance held.

That is the model. Less running, not no running, and do not abandon the habit.

Two findings contradict the usual two-weeks-off advice. Athletes under 20 lose aerobic fitness faster than adults do, and keeping some activity through a break measurably blunts the decline. Two weeks of complete rest also costs measurable leg strength, which shows up in March as an athlete who cannot hold form in the last 400.

The half nobody plans for

A cross country season builds toward one Saturday, with every meet mattering more than the last. When it ends, the athlete has spent three months under escalating consequences, and no training log records that cost.

Watch for the athlete who says all the right things and has stopped laughing. That is the one you lose over the winter, and it happens in the first two weeks of November far more often than it happens in January.

The full treatment, including the letter I send to families the week the season ends, is in how long runners should take off after cross country.

Why the weeks repeat

This is the most important section on this page, and it is the reason a well-built winter calendar looks slower than the plan you used last year.

When bone is loaded hard enough to matter, a micro-crack forms. Bone-resorbing cells arrive around day ten, and the body spends roughly three weeks clearing the damaged tissue. Throughout that window the bone is more porous and less stiff. It is more vulnerable to load, not less.

Read that with a winter calendar in front of you. The bone is at its weakest two to three weeks after a jump in training load, which is exactly when most winter plans schedule the next jump.

So through week nine, hold every volume step for three weeks. After week nine, move to two-week steps with a down week every fourth, because by then the remodeling cycle has caught up with the loading cycle.

What this looks like in the spring

A seven-year study of Division I distance runners found the highest monthly bone stress injury rates during competitive months and the lowest during non-competitive months, with tibial and femoral shaft injuries peaking during the early competitive phase of each season. The female rate was more than double the male rate.

That is the fingerprint of a bad build. The tibia does not break during the base block. It breaks in the first three weeks of racing and building mileage at the same time.

Two athletes need extra patience. Anyone with a stress fracture history, because in high school runners a prior stress fracture raises the risk of another roughly six-fold in females and seven-fold in males. And anyone under-fueling, because winter is the window: holidays, less daylight, less appetite.

The full version, including what to do about the female athlete gap, is in why winter mileage jumps break tibias.

The five gears

Winter training uses the same five gears as the rest of the year, so an athlete who trains here in January recognises every word of it in August. If you have not met them, they are laid out in full in the high school cross country training guide.

The winter-specific rules are these.

Ninety percent of the running is Chat pace. All winter, on both paths.

Gear 4 is a locked door. Say that to the team directly. There is a gear we do not train in the winter and we only visit it on race day. It removes the most common coaching error of the whole block, which is letting a Wednesday turn into a race because the athletes were fired up and the weather was finally good.

Do not put a stopwatch on anything in the cold. Prescribe by gear name and talk test. A frozen 400 split tells you nothing except what the wind was doing.

What a winter week looks like

Here is week 3 for a Developing athlete. Week 3 is the same on both paths, because bone does not care whether you have indoor meets.

Notice what is not there. No intervals. No tempo. No time trial to see where everybody is. Twenty-two miles, almost all of it easy, two strength sessions, and strides on three days.

Weeks 4 and 5 are identical to this one. That is not an oversight.

Weeks 1 through 6 are the same on both paths

The break, the rebuild, and three weeks of holding. Nobody races. The path decision does not change anything until week 7, which is why you have time to make it properly.

All twenty weeks, for both paths and all four levels, are written out day by day in the Winter Training Block.

Strength through the winter

Two sessions a week, from week 2 through week 20, minus championship week if you have one. Thirty to forty minutes, after the run, never the day before a race.

In a meta-analysis of strength training and running economy in distance runners, high-load and combined heavy-plus-plyometric methods improved economy. Submaximal-load and isometric training did not improve it at all. In adolescents specifically, complex training, meaning heavy resistance paired with plyometrics in the same session, beat traditional resistance training for both running economy and power.

That is why every line of the winter strength work pairs a heavy movement with a fast one. Trap bar deadlift with box jumps. Single-leg hip hinge with bounding. Calf raises with pogo hops.

Three things matter more than the exercise list.

Load the calves, straight knee and bent. This is the shin insurance, and the soleus is the muscle most runners never train and then blame for shin pain.

The hinge is a skill before it is a lift. Load it only when it looks clean.

If you have no weight room or nobody to supervise, run the unloaded version. Keep every fast movement exactly as written and replace each heavy movement with its bodyweight equivalent. You keep most of the benefit and none of the supervision risk.

The full two-session system, with sets, progressions and the no-equipment version, is in winter strength training for distance runners.

The hill build

Path B runs a six-session hill circuit in weeks 13 through 18. You do not need a track, a clock, or clear ground. You need a hill you can find in February and the patience to add one rep at a time.

Lydiard put hills after the base block for a reason. They develop leg power and flexibility to support faster running while the aerobic work continues underneath, and they do it without the impact cost of flat-out running on frozen ground.

The session: warm up as normal, find a grade of roughly six to eight percent with about 300 meters of usable slope, run the 300 at 800-metre effort, walk or jog down, full recovery, repeat. Start at four reps and add one a week, trimming the pre-session run so the weekly total holds.

Path A does not run the circuit. A race week already carries one hard effort, and the Saturday race is it. Instead, the Wednesday threshold session in weeks 7 through 12 finishes with four short hill sprints. Same stimulus, no second hard day.

Week by week, with the rep progression and the ice substitutions, in the winter hill build.

Racing indoors

Path A only. Four decisions, and you should make all of them in November rather than in the moment.

Who skips indoor. Freshmen in their first year of organized running. Anyone with a bone stress injury this calendar year. Anyone who ran a season best at the championship and looked wrung out doing it. And anyone whose family tells you they are exhausted, because the family is usually right and you are usually the last to know.

How many races. Six to eight across the whole indoor season, and not every athlete at every meet. An indoor season where a distance runner races ten times has produced a February peak and an outdoor season built on nothing.

The double-hard problem. An indoor season means racing Saturday and doing quality midweek. That is two hard efforts a week for eight straight weeks, after a full cross country season. On a race week, the race is the workout. Coaches lose more indoor seasons to Wednesday than to Saturday.

Taper, then reset. If there is a championship, taper for it. Drop volume about 20 percent and hold intensity. Then take ten to fourteen days of easy running and strides with no quality at all.

What the track itself does

A standard indoor track is 200m with a curve radius of roughly 17 meters. A 400m outdoor track has a radius of 36 to 38 meters. Where banking is absent, the athlete fights lateral force with every stride through every turn.

Practically: more repetitive load on the inside leg, and a dense fast surface that stresses shins, calves and Achilles tendons. It also means an athlete walking from a 20 degree parking lot into a 70 degree building who thinks they are warm when they are not.

Which of the 1000m, 1500m and 3000m each athlete should run, and when to decide, is in choosing indoor track events.

When a week falls apart

It will. Holidays, exams, a storm, February vacation, a bus that never came. Here is the order of operations.

1. Cut the volume, keep the frequency. Four twenty-minute runs beat two forty-minute runs every time.
2. Keep the strides. They take four minutes. They are the last thing to cut, not the first.
3. Drop the quality before you drop the long run. In a base block, the long run is the session that matters.
4. Never make up a missed week. Rejoin the calendar where the calendar is.
5. If they missed more than ten days, drop back two weeks and run forward from there.

The March handoff

Here is what a well-coached athlete walks into the first outdoor practice with. Volume at or near their cross country peak, arrived at gradually. Eighteen weeks of strength work in their legs. Hill work in their history. Turnover they have touched twice a week since December. And no injuries.

Test three things in week one, and none of them is a race. A threshold effort, to see where fitness actually sits. A set of strides, watched, to see who lost their mechanics. And a private question to every athlete about whether anything hurts.

Then build the outdoor season on the athlete in front of you, not the one who ran the state meet in October. Sometimes they are better. Either way, meeting the actual athlete is the whole job.

The transition itself, including the six-week and two-week versions depending on how much runway you have, is covered in the indoor to outdoor track transition. If you are looking for a surface to bridge the two seasons, gravel is the answer.

Ten rules for the winter

1. Decide which path you are on before you write a single workout.
2. Seven to ten days with no running. Then one week easy. Then start.
3. Hold every volume step for three weeks through week nine.
4. Ninety percent of the running is Chat pace. All winter.
5. Four to six 80m strides after three easy runs a week, from week three. Never after the long run.
6. No quality until the volume has been rebuilt.
7. Two strength sessions a week. Heavy paired with fast.
8. On a race week, the race is the workout.
9. Write the cold policy in November, not on the cold morning.
10. Avoid running on ice at all costs.

Common questions

How long should distance runners take off after cross country?

Seven to ten days with no running, then one week of easy unstructured running before structured training begins. That applies to athletes who finished a season. An athlete who did not run cross country takes no break and starts running.

What should high school runners do between cross country and track?

Rebuild aerobic volume gradually, hold every step for three weeks through week nine, keep ninety percent of the running at conversation pace, and lift twice a week. Programs with an indoor season race six to eight times and taper once. Programs without one run a six-week base block, six weeks of hills, and two weeks of quality.

How many miles should a high school runner do in winter?

It depends on cross country peak week, not on grade or talent. A Returning athlete peaks around 30 miles, Developing around 40, Veteran around 50. Programs without an indoor season carry a little more, because nothing interrupts the build.

Should high school distance runners run indoor track?

Yes, if the program has one and the athlete is healthy, but race six to eight times rather than every Saturday. Freshmen in their first year, anyone with a bone stress injury this calendar year, and anyone who looked wrung out at the cross country championship should skip it.

How cold is too cold for track practice?

Write the thresholds in advance rather than deciding on the morning. Practice outdoors above 20°F wind chill, shorten the session and cover exposed skin from 20°F to 0°F, and go indoors below that or any time there is ice on the surface. Note that the wind chill index models a person walking, not a runner into a headwind. The full thresholds and the wind chill math are in how cold is too cold to run.

What indoor event should a distance runner run?

Default a cross country runner to the 3000m and the 1500m. An athlete arriving from a winter sport runs the 1000m and the 1500m. Freshmen run the 1500m. Nobody is a 1000m specialist in December.

When does outdoor training start?

Week 20 of the block, which is the week after the reset. Test a threshold effort, watch a set of strides, and ask every athlete privately whether anything hurts before you write a single outdoor workout.

Keep reading

The winter series

• How long should runners take off after cross country. Seven to ten days, then one week easy, and the athletes who should take no break at all.
• Why winter mileage jumps break tibias. The three-week remodelling window, and why the female rate is more than double.
• How cold is too cold to run. Wind chill thresholds for a team, and why the number on your phone understates what a runner meets.
• Winter strength training for distance runners. Heavy paired with fast, both sessions written out, and the no-weight-room version.
• 1000m, 1500m or 3000m: choosing indoor events. Five athlete profiles, one 400m time trial, and when to commit.
• The winter hill build. Six sessions, the rep progression, and what to do when the hill is under ice.

Related

• The indoor to outdoor track transition. Six-week and two-week plans for the March changeover.
• Anaerobic speed reserve. Why the open 400 predicts the 1600, and the charts for reading it.
• High school cross country training. The five gears in full, and the season this block feeds.
• The 22-Week Season Blueprint. Where these athletes go in August.

Sources

• Mujika I, Padilla S. Detraining, Part I. Sports Medicine. 2000;30(2):79-87.
• Houmard JA et al. Reduced training maintains performance in distance runners. Int J Sports Med. 1990;11(1):46-52.
• Effects of training cessation on VO2max: a meta-analysis, including the greater decline in individuals under 20. PMC9398774.
• Wolff A et al. Seasonal Patterns of Bone Stress Injury Incidence in Division I Collegiate Distance Runners. Am J Sports Med. 2025;53(3):708-716.
• Risk Factors, Diagnosis and Management of Bone Stress Injuries in Adolescent Athletes: A Narrative Review. PMC8073721.
• Llanos-Lagos C et al. Strength training methods and running economy at different speeds. Sports Medicine. 2024.
• Effect of complex training on lower limb strength and running economy in adolescent distance runners. Frontiers in Physiology. 2025.
• NFHS, Guidelines for Competition in the Cold.

This article is general coaching education, not medical advice. Any athlete with pain localized to a bone, pain that sharpens during running, or pain that does not settle within two weeks should be evaluated by a physician before training continues.