Forums >General Running>Injury prevention advice as approaching 40-50 mpw?
Latent Runner
Don't forget that rest weeks - not just rest days - are valuable. If you increase your mileage or intensity to a very stressful level for a few weeks, don't be afraid to back down by 10-15 miles for a week before continuing. It's during these rest periods that your body rebuilds and becomes stronger.
Interesting, I've never considered (or even noticed) this before.
In June of this year I upped my mileage from sproadic 4 to 6 miles runs to 6 mile runs on most week days and 8 to 10 on weekends, and didn't notice any real fatigue. In July I again upped my mileage to 8 for most days, and longer 10-12 mile runs on weekends (I did feel some fatigue that month, bit it was mostly due to the extreme heat and humidity I was encountering during my runs); I held this pace through August and part of September. In late September I again upped my mileage, this time to 10 for most week days, staying with 10s or 12s on weekends; still with no noticable fatigue or need for recovery. With the exception of the occasional day off due to travel or a one or two day "taper" prior to a race, I've stuck with the 10 mile a day thing for the last two plus months. Funny thing, between mid September and late November my pace while racing seems to have gotten significantly faster. I say, "seems to" because while I don't have an Apples-to-Apples comparison, I ran a 5K in mid September at a 7:30 pace, and then a 10K in late November at that same 7:30 pace.
While I'm not saying you're wrong about taking an entire week off, it seems to me that my body has been taught to recover fast by the almost daily mileage, and taking a week off for rest and recovery would be both overkill and counter productive.
Fat old man PRs:
Sultan of slug
Yeah, I don't mean a week off entirely, just backing the mileage back down a bit. My marathon training last year included a couple cycles like this, and I've seen other plans that do this as well. It's the principle of supercompensation - you essentially overtrain for a limited period of time and then take it easy to rest up, rather than your typical slow and steady mileage gains.
I just did this again myself. I had a big mileage jump, doing three weeks at 50/60/52, rather than the 30-40 I'd been running before that. On the last of these weeks, I had three intense workouts as well. Last week, I reduced the mileage back to my previous baseline, which gave me the chance to recuperate before I enter a workout-heavy phase starting this week.
Ahhh, makes more sense now.
This has ALL been very very helpful. Thank you! Now I feel like I can form a clear plan and know that I am on the right track (even if it takes a while!). I'm going to hang at 30-35-40 for a few weeks or more, see where that gets me. Foam roll as suggested with focus on the potential trouble spots. Add some basic strides and hills after the hamstring thing appears cleared. And open up Daniels' again! It's been almost a year since I read it and it would probably have more value now possibly than it did then. And, of course, patience. I keep forgetting I'm 40.