Dedication and hard work crucial for runners

The average college student starts his Sunday in the afternoon, waking up late in the day recovering from the previous night. For a member of the IU cross country team, this time is spent recovering from something different.\n8 a.m. -- At this time, the male cross country runners meet for practice and proceed to run an average of 18 miles. Most people are not done eating breakfast yet when the team is finished running almost 20 miles. \nAfter this routine Sunday, the rest of the day is spent recovering and doing the normal college student activities, homework, etc. The runners, of course, have no class on Sunday, so the opportunity for recovery is greatly appreciated. During the week, this luxury is not so readily available.\n"Practicing every day, and averaging close to a half-marathon a day, requires some recovery time," junior Tom Burns said. "We need to get some rest, and sometimes with class and homework it is hard to have (time) to fully recover."\nFor the cross country team, practice takes up more than just the couple hours they are actually stretching, getting prepared to run, running, and time after the workout.\n"Practice affects more of the day than the just the time we are there," Burns said. "It takes around three or four hours to recover from a hard workout, and sometimes when class is right after practice, there is not much you can do."\nThe practice schedule is different for each day, yet each week the runners average 90-100 miles, including two days a week with workouts in both the morning and afternoon. \n"Recovering from a hard workout is very important, yet sometimes it is hard with school and everything else that is going on," sophomore Eric Redman said. "But we know how important it is and you just have to find time."\nCoach Robert Chapman knows that this recovery time is just as important as the actual training itself. \n"A big part of how well we are going to perform is dependent not only on what training we do, but how well we recover from that training -- meaning how well we absorb and adapt," Chapman said. "It's not only what we do in the two to three hours per day we are training, but what we do in the other 21-22 hours per day."\nFor most students this lifestyle would be seem like they were giving up a part of their life by not being able to stay out until the early hours of Sunday morning, or eating junk food as a meal. Yet Chapman knows that his team does not have this mentality. The team knows that it is one of the top 25 teams out of nearly 300 in the nation for a reason. \n"We don't look at going to bed early, eating right, and running 18 miles on Sunday mornings as being a sacrifice. We look at it as normal behavior -- normal for an elite distance-runner," Chapman said. "Either you do it or you don't. No one is forcing them, but if they don't, it's all over. The reward for doing all of this is when they see the national top 25 poll and see their name in there just about every week for the last four years."\nTo maintain this elite ranking in the country, the team not only trains hard but does the little extras that make a team successful. With all the miles the team runs, there are necessary precautions to ensure the runners stay healthy and are ready for the next day's workout.\n"To be able to do this amount of work requires that the athletes do a number of things to support it. For example, we will go through a very detailed flexibility routine both before and after each of our runs," Chapman said. "We'll also spend 20 minutes in the cold (50 degree) whirlpool after most runs. Both of those processes help us recover faster."\nThe season is still relatively early for the male cross country runners, with the most important meets of the season still to come. The "base building period," as described by Chapman, ended in the beginning of October, yet the team is still putting in heavy miles.\nNext weekend marks the beginning of the big meets. The team will have a chance to put its national ranking on the line when it travels to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to compete in the Pre-NCAA meet against several ranked teams. \n-- Contact staff writer Alex Witteveld at pawittev@indiana.edu.