After the long, hard cross country season ends most of the athletes are ready for a break. The break for a cross country runner though is nothing compared to that of other sports. Their break lasts somewhere around a week depending on the athlete’s specific needs and then they start to prepare for indoor track.

Eastern cross country head coach Geoff Masanet said some athletes took anywhere from five to seven or even up to ten days off from running completely after the cross country season ended.

This break comes right around Thanksgiving and is helpful in getting the athletes rested and ready for the track season, Masanet said.

“Being away from practice and the intensity of it can be somewhat of a mental break for kids;” he said. “They are able to do a little catch up on their academics and they have more flexibility with their schedules.”

Masanet said that some of the older runners might not have taken any time off at all.

“If you have been running for years down time for you may just mean less miles,” Masanet said.

From now until January resembles what Masanet calls the “second summer,” because it is all about rebuilding up base mileage.

“During this time we focus on higher volume and less intensity work,” Eastern graduate assistant coach Eric Vetter said. “They have to account for the transition to the indoor facility; a shorter track, tighter turns. For some athletes it is not that big of a deal and for others it can be depending on what event they will be doing.”

All men on the cross country roster are also running indoor track this season, while only one woman on the cross country roster is not on the indoor track roster.

Vetter mentioned that sophomore David Holm is one of the athletes who will have a bigger change going from running 8,000 meters to running only 800.

“I will probably be running less miles when I go back down but Coach is probably going to still want me to keep training the same way,” Holm said. “We will get into a different training program with shorter workouts built more for speed. You have to do more speed workouts to get your body ready to run the faster 800 and not an 8K.”

Senior Nicole Flounders said there is not a huge difference but a few things that do change.

“The big difference is running in circles so many times and the sharp turns whereas in cross it is normally just a straight shot,” Flounders said. “Also injuries tend to flare up; general impact injuries from feet, to your knees, to your hips. So we have to be very careful of that.”

Along with the random injuries that can develop in the course of a season the cross country athletes have to deal with the toll of training basically all year long.

“Some of my guys will be putting in anywhere from 3,700 to 4,000 miles a year and that wear and tear of 50 weeks of training can be somewhat rough,” Southeast Missouri head coach Miles Krieger said.

Panther runners are also fortunate to have Lantz Fieldhouse at their use. If the weather is bad outside, the track athletes can train indoors. That is not the case at some other OVC schools.

Eastern Kentucky head coach Rick Erdmann said that EKU doesn’t have an indoor facility so they have to schedule practice around the weather.

“It’s individual in the fact that kids have to be motivated to work and run when the weather is not nice,” Erdmann said. “We don’t really look at ourselves as contenders for the OVC champion title in track.”

Masanet said that competing all cross country season takes a lot out of the athletes and the runners really needed that break but the other track athletes are “chomping at the bit” to get out and compete.

“Us distance people are going to be mainly just taking our time, easing into, and recovering where as the track guys are fired up and ready to go,” said senior Brad Runnion.