Increasing your mileage (Read 1242 times)

I'm a huge believer in high mileage, but it's easy to fixate on mileage as the only thing that matters. If you're running so many miles that you can't pick up the pace, then it's usually counterproductive. You should be able to run your long runs hard, as well as hitting one other good workout per week. If that feels too tough, then you're not recovering, and you need to back off both mileage and intensity (as Willamona noted). Your specific workouts are the ones that will have the most effect on race performance in the short and medium term. High weekly mileage is not specific conditioning; it is general conditioning, and is the foundation of success for years down the road. One other tip I've offered to runners trying to work on their long-term aerobic development: Don't think about pushing your mileage higher. Rather, think about not letting your mileage slip backward. If you were to start at 30 miles/week, and increase by only 1%/week, you'd be running around 140 miles/week in 3 years. The reason it doesn't happen is because we let ourselves backtrack. Be conservative in your mileage increases, but just don't let them reverse. Because you clearly need the occasional down week, I find it helpful to track monthly mileage. As long as each month is higher than the last, you're on the right track. Try to string together 8 months of gradual mileage increases, followed by one slightly down month, and then another 8 months. Almost all of my PRs come after 6 months of steadily increasing mileage. I don't mean to sound too casual about suggesting a 17 month progression. I realize that it's a huge deal to commit to a year and a half of steadily increasing mileage. The payoff can be significant, however. This is the approach (conservative mileage buildups combined with weekly fast, though not necessarily hard, running) that took me from a 3:45 to 2:30 in the marathon. It's taken girls I coach from racing 22 minute 5ks to running fairly comfortable 5k tempos in 20:30.

Not a lot to say, really. It's all about consistency. The body can adapt to just about any kind of stress, but as you start reaching the "rare air," it takes a lot longer to get there. This is especially true in the longer distances. I don't think I'll ever break 4:20 in the mile, and I've lost count of the high school kids who have crushed me in 5ks, but marathons in the low 2:30s actually put you in rarer company, because so few people ever put in the work to reach their potential at those distances. It started with never missing a day of running. I'd maybe miss 5-6 a year, depending on illness and the occasionally brutal travel day. However, once you stop accepting a missed run as a possibility, it's amazing the ways you'll make it happen. I've gotten up at 2am to get a run in before a flight. I've gone for a run in the Detroit airport at 3am when I was stranded for 12 hours. Eventually, I started running 2x/day. Easy days can be 16 miles now. If you jump to that kind of training all at once, you'll fall apart, both physically and mentally. Like I said, the key is to never backtrack. Add distance and workouts with care, because you know there's no turning back. It's definitely not for everyone. In fact, if you consider it a major sacrifice, then I wouldn't try it. I do it because it's what I want to do. There's no way that sheer willpower could make me put in this kind of training. Sure, willpower gets me out the door when it's pouring rain, but most of the time I love what I do. I don't see myself as giving anything up; I see myself as choosing the thing I most want. Even my social life hasn't been sacrificed. I'm still fairly young, and I guess I "miss out" on the bar scene, but I have more fun getting breakfast on Sunday morning after a long run than staying out till 3am on Saturday night. I've made friends all over the country in the running community. In fact, I've got so many standing offers for couches to sleep on, that I'd have a hard time thinking of a city I'd need to travel to and get a hotel. Runners are some of the nicest people I've ever met. My best advice is to not think about what might happen really far down the road. If someone had come up to me a few years ago and asked, "do you want to run 2x/day, go to bed at 9pm, stop participating in any other recreational activities, and be friends almost exclusively with runners?" I'd have said, "NO FREAKING WAY." It happens slowly, one small commitment at a time...10 minutes earlier in the morning to run a little longer...one less beer at night...one less TV show...and before you know it...