The Interconnectedness and Contrast of Track and Cross Country

At schools across the Metro League, a wide range of athletes find sports suitable to them due to the many options across the fall, winter, and spring. Consider runners, who have two such sports they can partake in, with track in the spring and cross country in the fall. However, the two sports often contrast in ways that the average viewer or fan may not realize. The underlying changes and challenges mean runners must shift their physical adaptabilities, mentalities, or overall focuses due to shifting team environments, coaching and training standards and styles, injury risks, and more.

As a member of the Eastside Catholic cross country team, I have seen runners favor one or the other, or commit to just one entirely as I have. Some athletes have a drifting focus from cross-country by midseason or begin doing track practices away from the team. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach. That being said, I’ve also seen athletes thrive in both sports. I spoke with two such runners, sophomores Colby Jensen and Zach Fewel, on the adjustments they make and their opinions on each sport in regard to their interconnectedness and contrasting points.

The Role of Coaching

Coaching is an integral component of most sports, but especially in high school with young minds eager to learn how to perfect their crafts. Coaches are needed to guide the young Metro League athletes on training, nutrition, and more. Despite the conceptual consistencies, coaching between track and cross country is vastly different.

Metro League cross country coaching teams often will have far less coaches than a track and field team will have due to the differing kinds of coaching needed for different field events, and these high school varsity teams will even often have both a distance and a sprinting coach for the running events alone.

Such differences can be paramount in the impact of coaches. Colby Jensen said that throughout his two years, his cross country coaches “focused more on the experienced runners” and less experienced runners were grouped together to train as directed by the captains, especially during the summer. In contrast, Jensen said that due to there being significantly more track coaches, more runners are able to get more individual attention as the coaches could go “1 on 1 with everyone and adjust needs, especially with me in block start. In just a year working with Coach Anthony (one of EC’s sprint coaches this past year), I was able to blast through the blocks.”

Injury Prevention and Recovery

Jensen has become a leading voice in injury recovery within the Eastside Catholic athletic community, especially among sophomores. He’s dealt with a myriad of injuries from running that have limited his ability to participate at certain meets, but overall, he has risen above these daunting injuries. He agreed that he’d often forced himself back from injuries too quickly when they’ve occurred in-season, due to the sense of urgency to return in time for the most important meets including the Metro League Championship.

In regards to which sport is easier to come back to peak performance from an injury, Jensen said “definitely track because I’m in a shorter distance (100m or 400m), so you don’t go through it as long. But in cross country, it’s a dedicated 5K (3.1 miles) for everyone.”

He stated that returning to peak performance to be sustained for far longer than is needed in a track meet is more difficult than running the low times needed for 400, 200, and 100 meter races when returning from an injury, but that overall a 400 meter race is arguably harder than a cross country 5K because of how it often pushes a sprinter past their anaerobic window, or sprinting capacity.

Zach Fewel added, “It’s easier to get injured when you’re going faster, so there’s definitely that aspect to it, but your body is more tired when you’re in cross country training because of the increased mileage. I would say you’re more prone to injury during cross country almost because when you’re in track, it’s more controlled. You’re just running around in a circle.”

The unpredictable terrain of a cross-country meet can often be far less forgiving than any rubber or tartan-floored track ever could be, with wild card factors like tree roots and more increasing the risk to get injured during races.

Training Regiments and Rest

Not only is the training for each sport important, but for runners who participate in both sports, acute consistency with built in rest is needed to allow a seamless transition from one sport to the next.

Fewel stated that, during the season, cross country is much more physically and mentally demanding due to the massive amounts of miles that runners including himself cover, along with weekly races and occasional invitationals over the course of the season. However, he also shared his opinion that track is the more rigorous sport in the build up to the start of the season due to the return to speed-focused workouts after 6 months of runs that mostly range from 6 to 10 to even 13.1 miles, a half marathon, for him.

As a result, rest is incredibly important to both mitigate injury but more specifically in this case to help ease runners into the transition. Zach, who typically runs a consistent 6 days a week, also values extended recovery time.

He said, “I have two resting periods in the year, one right after track and one right after cross country.”

These two periods are each two weeks long, and he just took one of the two following the conclusion of his track season in mid May while he awaited the release of the cross country running plan from new head coach Benjamin Benson.

Fewel says one to two weeks is the perfect length of the occasional break for runners because “if you take a break shorter than two weeks, you’ll never actually lose [running] ability. They’ll just rest your body.”

This means that the time length toes the line between helping your body fully recover from the grueling season while also not impacting running ability if the extended breaks aren’t used too often by a runner.

This applies to sports and physical activities beyond track and cross country. In weightlifting, which both Zach and Colby have taken to, lifters are advised to take a “de-load week” once every three or so months to allow their body to fully recover in between challenging work that is wearing on the body.

Overall, significant rest is necessary to adjust between the two sports, especially for runners like Colby who have to shift from a 5K all the way down to a 400 meter, less than a 12th the distance but it is still a factor for consistent distance runners like Fewel.

Team Environment and Culture

The two sports also have distinctly different environments and culture, as Metro league track and field teams are made up of runners but also athletes with other focuses and other sports they participate in. And even among runners, the makeup of the team is often drastically shifted, as a majority of the top sprinters in the state do not participate in cross country. Two of the A team 100 meter sprinters for Eastside Catholic, Tyler Cristoff and Dash Lamebull-Ingram, are on the football and basketball teams respectively. While this influx of athletic talent is necessary to have the best sprinting team possible, it also can make it harder for cross country runners transitioning to long distance track runners to connect with their fellow sprinters.

So is it easier to build comradery through cross country or track?

“Cross country easily,” claims Fewel. “You know everyone on the team. Everyone races the same distance. It’s more like you’re in it together. In track, there are some guys running for 10 seconds at a 6 hour meet (100 meters), and then there’s people like me running a combination of the 1 mile, 2 mile, and the 800 meter races.”

This split doesn’t dissuade either of them from continuing to participate in both however, for a myriad of reasons.

While Fewel first ran cross country, his main goal is to lower a track time, “I mean, right now, of course, I’m in cross country training, so it’s all about reaching a 5000 meter race time below 18 minutes or whatever I can do. But overall, if I could choose one to have a really good time it would be the mile.”

It is arguably the most iconic length of any race, right up there with the marathon and the 100 meter. Fewel hopes to break the monumental 5 minute mark.

He sees a chance at achieving this goal in his junior year “because I feel like I’ve seen more improvement this season than last season, so I’m like, I have a chance at it. That’s my goal.”

With more individually focused coaching, along with iconic goals to hit, make track something Colby and Zach will continue to commit to over the rest of their high school careers. The unrivaled inter-team comradery and competitiveness of cross country cultivate an environment worth buying in to.

Both are halfway through high school and are seeking to become four-year varsity athletes in cross country and track, as many Metro league athletes before and after them have successfully done. The path in doing so is far from easy, but it is also far from a lonely one.