Parents panic during the break. The season ends, their kid stops running for ten days, and by the second weekend somebody has emailed asking whether this is normal and whether everyone else is still training.
A coach who explains it before it starts does not spend two weeks answering the same question fourteen times. This is the letter I send.
What is on the page
- The whole letter, ready to send. Ten days with no running, one week of easy unstructured running, and the date winter training actually begins
- The reasoning parents ask about. Why aerobic fitness does not fall off a cliff in ten days, and what a three-season athlete is actually carrying by November
- The part that matters more than the physiology. Why the mental side of a cross country season needs the break more than the legs do
- What to do and what not to do during the break, including the line about a motivated athlete quietly training through it anyway
- Editable. Six orange fields: your team name, your dates, your season months, and your name
Send it the week the season ends, not the week winter training starts. The whole point is that it arrives before the questions do.
Enter your email and it arrives in about a minute. You get an editable Word version to put your own dates into.
One email with the files, then the occasional coaching note. Unsubscribe in one click, any time. No sharing your address with anyone, ever.
What happens next
- Confirm your email. A one-line email arrives within a minute or two from Coach Jason Saltmarsh. Click the link in it and the break letter is sent straight away. If it is not there, look in Promotions or spam, and drag it to your main inbox so the next one lands properly.
- Open the Word version first. This one is meant to be edited rather than printed. Put in your team name, the date the break ends, the date winter training begins, and the months your season actually ran.
- Send it the week the season ends. To families, not to athletes. Then send the athletes a shorter version of the same thing, because the athlete who reads a long email about rest is not the one you are worried about.
Where this came from
The break letter is one page of the Winter Kit, which is part of the winter training block: the twenty weeks between the last cross country race and the first outdoor meet, written out day by day for two paths and four levels.
- Winter training for high school distance runners. The full twenty weeks, free to read.
- How long should runners take off after cross country. The reasoning behind the letter, including which athletes should not take a break at all.
- The cold policy template. The other page of the Winter Kit worth having before December.
This is general coaching education, not medical advice. An athlete whose season ended with an injury should follow the guidance of the clinician treating them rather than the break described in this letter. 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.