Cross training ideas

rachel53223

I have been running since spring this year and my goal was to get five 5K's under my belt this year. I have so far done 4, and have one last one to finish.

For the race coming up, I want to blow my time out of the water (so to speak!) however to do that, I know that just following the running days in my training program isn't going to cut it (that`s what I did for the second race and I did not get the time I was looking for). I also need to do some cross training and proper nutrition.

I need ideas on different cross training exercises I can do at home. Any ideas from fellow runners out there? My program is requesting 2 days of CT per week and I now have 3 weeks left to reach my goal.

rybo

There's not much that will significantly help in 3 weeks, but adding some strength training is a great idea. Full body, 2x a week will be perfect to help out in the long term

msf74

You simply don't have enough time for the full benefit of training adaptations to kick into place with lower intensity XT.

If your body can handle it you may be better off just throwing in some tempo runs or some sort of interval training to get your body used to running at harder efforts.

HardcoreP0rk

I would join a sports league. That's how I get my XT in 2x per week. I also add the bike, and have plenty of challenging hills near me. Pool works well too, but you need to learn good drills and training swims.

Agreed that 3 weeks aint near enough time. I would extend my long slow runs by 2 miles if I wanted to improve my time at this point.

canary_girl

If you're trying to increase your speed I would start adding some sprints/faster intervals to your running. Use JogFM to find songs that match your typical running pace and intersperse songs that have a quicker BPM rating. Aim to run at the faster pace a little longer each time you run.

BrianSharpe

At 3 weeks out anything you do now won't make too big a difference but for x-training I bike, row, & lift (I should be swimming too but doing laps in a pool bores me to death...)

One of the things I did this year was to get more consistent with my strength training and 2 things happened. I ran injury free the whole year (so far, but my race season is over so it will be lower volumes over fall & winter) and I set new PBs in my 5K, 10K, half-marathon & sprint and Olympic distance duathlons.