The light glows faintly in the eastern sky of the Penn State campus at 6:30 in the morning. No sound but the crickets can be heard, as most of the student body is asleep.
This is when Tyler McCandless, along with most of the men's cross country team, prepares himself for the day of training ahead by running a relatively short distance.
"I usually run about four or five miles on my morning runs," McCandless said. "Just enough to get me warmed up for the rest of the day."
Such is the life of a cross country runner. Conditioning comes after nothing when an athlete needs to prepare to run a five- to six-mile race every week. Building endurance becomes the runner's entire life.
"The runners need to develop not only endurance, but speed and power in their running," coach Beth Alford-Sullivan said. "We want our guys to run at a sub-five-minute pace, which requires everything from being generally fit to getting into specific training regimens."
To build the team's endurance, Alford-Sullivan and her staff develop a program specific to each runner. This allows for the more experienced runners to get more out of their days and the younger ones to grow into the cross country lifestyle.
And that's what cross country running is: a lifestyle. Nearly every runner rides a bicycle across campus rather than takes the Blue Loop. The team keeps a healthy diet, though some go to the extremes.
"I pretty much eat a normal student diet," teammate Brian Fuller said, "but Tyler [McCandless] is insane when it comes to it."
McCandless stresses a whole grain and carbohydrate diet, making sure to eat immediately after running. His devotion to keeping his body as healthy as possible, more than what he actually takes in, sets him apart.
"My diet's unusual for a typical college student, I guess," he said, "but it's not for a standard healthy diet."
Team practices follow a training schedule that varies day-to-day. Mondays are called "swing days," as the team runs less on these days than normal. Swing days allow the team to recover from the previous weekend's meet.
Even on these easier days, though, the team still runs longer distances than some athletes would on a typical training day. Alford-Sullivan recommends each runner do up to 30 minutes of slow running, while some returning upperclassmen, such as McCandless, jog six to eight miles.
"The mileage per week varies individually," McCandless said. "Me and some of the returning runners like Teddy [Quinn] and Brian [Fuller] will run over 100 miles a week, which averages to about 16 or 17 miles a day. The freshmen run a little less, around 70 per week. It all depends on the person."
The team gets most of its hard work done on Tuesday. After three miles of warm-ups, the coaches set up workouts for the upcoming meet. Typically, these workouts consist of running 800 to 1,000 meters repeatedly, building up to the five or six miles that make up the course.
The only other extensive workday comes on Sunday. The team runs "over distance" the day after racing, tacking up anywhere between 10 and 18 miles, Alford-Sullivan said. It also uses Sunday to hit the weight room, focusing on abdominal workouts.
Finding the line between working hard and over-training proves challenging. While running 70 to 100 miles a week is considered normal for cross country, doing too much puts too much work on the muscles and does not allow the runners to recover, McCandless said.
Recovery time is sometimes overlooked when it comes to putting together a training regimen, but not in the case of Alford-Sullivan's team. Runners use Wednesdays and Thursdays, called "maintenance days," to stay in shape, but not risk any injury because of overwork. The team lifts weights on these days, using a high-rep, low-weight method to build endurance. It focuses on running drills and moderate paces to avoid risking injury.
One key aspect in avoiding over-training is coming back to school in shape. Alford-Sullivan stresses the importance of the runners keeping up their regimens during the summer months.
"There is no way a cross country team can compete without being in shape over the offseason," she said. "We have an involved training program that begins in early June or July, whenever the students get out of classes, that builds mileage over the summer."
The summer programs are not structured workouts, but they require the runners to cover a lot of miles to prepare for the long season ahead.
"It's a lot like filling up gasoline for a tank," said Quinn, a junior runner. "The more miles you run over the summer, the more fuel you can fit in the tank during the season. It's stretching out how much your body can sustain."
This form of commitment separates cross country conditioning from that of other sports. Times cannot improve over the course of a week's practice; improving speed and endurance takes months -- even years -- of dedication.
"It all comes down to consistency," McCandless said. "Years and years of quality training. Sometimes when you get too fancy, when you try and do too much, you end up peaking too early in your runs and burn out."
