Summer Training 101: Villanova
How the Wildcats are getting ready for a run at a third straight NCAA title
By John A. Kissane
As featured in the Web Only issue of Running Times Magazine
As fall approaches, the prospect of the Villanova women claiming a third straight NCAA Division I cross country championship will become more and more palpable. After all, no school has won more titles (nine total) or approached the record six straight championships won by the Wildcats from 1989 through 1994. And of course no other team has defending individual champion Sheila Reid in the line-up.
Given all the history and expectations, one might excuse Villanova head cross country and track coach Gina Procaccio for scripting every single mile of every single team member’s summer training, but nothing could be further from reality.
“For me, the summer is all about down time,” she says. “It’s kind of mentally taking a break — just getting some mileage in, building a base. It’s real low-key.”
Procaccio seems to be following the approach of Marty Stern, her coach at Villanova after she transferred in from Florida in 1987 and ran on a world record-setting NCAA champion 4 x 800m relay squad before embarking on an outstanding professional career. “The extent of Marty’s summer training was, ‘Don’t get fat!’” she laughs. “That’s really what we’ve always done here at Villanova.”
There’s at least a bit more to it now and diet is not on Procaccio’s radar as a summertime concern, but when she says low-key she means precisely that. Almost none of her athletes spend the summer on Villanova’s suburban Philadelphia campus and the team will not reunite until late August when other students return.
“It’s such a long year for them with three seasons and they need a break,” Procaccio continues. “I think I’m very conservative with my training, really ultra conservative. I don’t like them to be doing a lot when I’m not there. But my team is pretty motivated so it’s not like I need to worry about them doing the training. It’s more just keeping it low-key.”
Priority No. 1 of Villanova’s summer approach is a two-week rest period, with absolutely no running, before the base-building phase begins. ”Everyone gets two weeks off at the end of the track season, but the season ends at different times for different people,” Procaccio explains. “Some kids finish their season at Big East, some at NCAAs, while Sheila ran the Canadian nationals in late June and Bogdana (Mimic) is running the Under-23 Europeans this month. But everyone takes two weeks off.”Procaccio says 55 miles a week by early August is what she likes to see her returning runners achieve, and it’s all relaxed running up to that point. “Maybe starting in August I’ll have them do a hill workout once a week or a tempo run once a week, but that’s about it,” she says.
Twice-weekly sessions of core and strength work and drills are mixed in with the easy running, and being as regular as possible with sleep is recommended. “Any sleep they can get before midnight is a bonus,” Procaccio says, “and I tell them to get eight to nine hours a night.”
Reid, who represented her native Canada at the 2006 world junior cross country championships before arriving at Villanova in the fall of 2007, became the first Division I runner to achieve a 1500m/5,000m double at last month’s NCAA outdoor track championships. Three weeks later she claimed the Canadian 1500m title, a clear statement that she will be an Olympic team contender next summer. But two weeks of down time following her victory at Calgary came as no hardship.
“I really needed a break, both mentally and physically,” she says, looking forward to six weeks of easy mileage before getting back to hard work. “I love working out and running intervals, it’s one of my favorite aspects of running. But it works for me to take the summer to really enjoy running and build up, to wait until I’m back at school to start working out. Actually seeing races on the horizon is what motivates me in my training.”
A serious injury in early 2008 still informs much of Reid’s approach to running and contributes to making smart choices. “I don’t take anything for granted,” she says. “When I’m getting in a good block of training and feeling good that doesn’t give me license to neglect the little things that have allowed me to get to this point. This past year I’ve been really on top of making sure I’m doing all the stretching and strength work, and it’s allowed me to be really consistent in my training. I honestly think a lot of my success has just been because I’ve been able to get in a very solid block of training, which I hadn’t been able to do in a while.”
Reid has never topped 60 miles a week and expects to max out at about 50 this summer before cross country resumes. That some of her competitors are likely doing considerably more isn’t a worry. “I really draw most of my strength from workouts and intervals,” she explains. “Usually my workouts are really intense, and I think that’s what allows me to get away with lower mileage.”
When the team reconvenes at Villanova in August and the new runners join the veterans, Procaccio will gradually insert quality into the mix. “We start school August 24th,” she explains, “so that’s still six weeks before our first meet. I figure that’s plenty early to start interval training. And we actually won’t do our first interval workout until September.”
There will be unknowns to figure out and a lot of hard training and racing in September and October, leading up to a shot at a third straight NCAA championship trophy in late November. Summer down time and relaxed base building, giving everyone a chance to “recharge the batteries” without a bit of pressure, may just be as important to this powerful team’s successes as anything else.
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