From my personal experience (I ran XC in high school about 7 years ago and loved it), my recommendations are: (from what they're worth, which isn't much)
Sorry for the LONG reply, hopefully there was something helpful in there!
Thank you for the helpful tips! Another thing I am interested in is proper form. Any good resources for learning more about it? Or is there nothing more to it than one foot in front of the other? Disregarding injuries and inconsistent training how long do you think it will take to get to that kind of mileage?
