Running in the summer is one of those things that can simultaneously be the greatest and worst thing in the world. It’s 6pm and you still have a couple of hours of light for a trail run on the mountain before mountain lion feeding hour? Rad. You are on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation in Italy and your trip itinerary says 6am train ride to Florence for a full day of museum touring while your running schedule says mile repeats? Suddenly, running doesn’t seem as rad of an option.

For high school cross country runners, summer running is essential and yet an often overlooked component to the fall season. Building a mileage base and developing aerobic strength is important over the summer, and can give you a serious edge on your competitors and allow you to see big improvements in your own times. Logging miles over the summer not only prepares you for the more intense workouts and races come fall, but it gives you the strength to carry you through the season to championships season in November. Developing that weekly long run that consists of about 20% of your weekly mileage is so so so important over the summer. A proper summer training program is one that slowly increases mileage, volume, speed development and leaves you ready to ramp up the intensity stronger and injury-free come September. When you try to do all of this at once in the fall, or on the opposite side of things, burn yourself out doing hard workouts all summer, injuries and getting “flat” are usually the result.

RanMarin Summer Training Program in action

Of course, it is much easier to find motivation and purpose in summer running when you have a group to train with and a daily schedule to follow. This summer we started the RanMarin Summer Training program through the website RanMarin.com. It consists of an 8-week customized summer training program designed for athletes who will be entering their high school cross country season in the fall. It is a simple but potent program that has produced huge “jumps” for athletes that have followed it in the past. The nice thing about customized is that it works with each athlete’s past mileage, injuries, goals, and tricky summer work/vacation schedules to find a program that they can follow and use to improve. The training program also includes a weekly meeting that consists of a supervised trail run or workout with myself along with former Marin County running studs and RanMarin coaches Nicci Fish and Linda ‘Broderick’ Gill. It has been awesome to see kids commit to running over the summer and having fun in the process. We have been exploring new trails around Marin County, getting together for some group workouts, and even ran to Stinson Beach the other day from Kentfield. It has been a blast. We are in week 6 and I can vouch that are definitely some great Cross Country seasons that will be coming up this fall!

A handfull of the RanMarin group getting after some strides on the track

More info about the program can be found here: https://ranmarin.com/category/ranmarin-summer-training-program/

Julia and Sophie modeling the RanMarin tee

To purchase one of the awesome RanMarin t-shirts seen in the photos, email WeRanMarin@gmail.com! Did I mention they were made out of recycled water bottles in Guatemala?!

The RanMarin T-Shirt!

~Liz