Here's the phase that is open to a lot of change and personalization. As the phase is titled, it is obviously based entirely around which distance will be your focus, with the paces geared towards your goals for that distance. I will give two sets of examples. I will lay out my specific training for my marathons and 1/2 marathons in a separate post, so this will focus on how I prepare my high school runners for their Cross Country season. In a typical Cross Country season Phase 2 will normally run from early September until mid to late October.
First, with my high school runners there is a major overlap between phases. Hills play a large part of Phase 1 and most of Phase 2. The reason for this is that hills are basically speed workouts in disguise. While they don't encourage as much leg turnover, the strengthening they provide more than make up for any lack of true speed (and a short enough hill can be hit hard enough to create some good turnover as well.
In a typical block of Phase 2 training, I will normally do a hill workout every 7-10 days. However, mixed in with these hill workouts will be more race-specific work. For this phase (normally lasting about 6-7 weeks) I two two different types of workouts (in addition to hills) which evolve as my runners' fitness grows. The first workout is done on an 800 meter loop (give or take 50 meters) where I estimate distances of anywhere from 200-600 meters for the runners to run up-tempo. Early in phase 2, this workout ends up being 200 meters fast with the remainder of the loop being recovery. This workout evolves gradually over the course of several weeks until by the end of phase two my runners are running 600 meters hard with 200 meters recovery. By working them at a pace faster than goal race pace, my runners legs get used to the strain of racing, and are able to hold a very fast pace for longer and longer. Normally by the end of Phase 2 my Varsity runners are hitting their 600 meters close to the pace they were hitting their 200's early on.
My other set of workouts, which I really focus on during the latter half of Phase 2 are my long intervals. These intervals again start shorter and evolve over time. These intervals normally start at about 600-800 meters with roughly equal recovery. I like to put my runners on loops that take into account recovery and interval, so if their goal is 3:00 for 800 meters, I tell them we start a new 800 every 6 minutes. This means if they run faster than 3:00 they get extra recover, and if they run slower they get less rest. This can be done for any ability level (every 7:00, every 8:00, etc...). For my slower or younger runners, they do shorter intervals that normally take 3-4 minutes (remember, your body doesn't know distance). These workouts evolve until we are doing repeat miles at the end of Phase 2, at or faster than 5k race pace.
Throughout Phase 2 the long run is greatly stressed. For my HS runners I normally set aside 1 day about 2/3 of the ways through Phase 2 and set it as a "Longest Run of the Year" day. My runners take a lot of pride in their long runs and most of them look at what they did on this day the previous year and try to top it. These are the days my runners run 13-14 miles (10 for the girls). Every other long run is normally 10-12 (8-9 for the girls).
Through Phase 2, as in most of my training, I put the runners on a mileage cycle of 3 weeks higher mileage followed by 1 week down, where mileage is cut by about 25% and no long run. This recovery phase is VERY important and should never be skipped.
NEXT - Phase 3: Sharpening
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