Forums >General Running>Establishing a new "baseline" mileage
Sultan of slug
I built up to 55 miles/week last summer/fall to train for a marathon. I probably averaged 45 miles for a few months there (and 30-40 for the first half of last year). Since the end of October, though, achilles issues have prevented me from really training.
Over the past five months, I've run some 30-45 mile weeks, only to have my achilles flare up, leaving me running 15 miles the next week. I've had a good 6 weeks that had just about zero miles. Now I have my injury under control and am looking to start slowly building my mileage back up.
My question is: Any suggestions for ramping back up? Daniels has explicit instructions on how to come back from a layoff, but that involves running at various percentages of your "baseline mileage." My problem is that it's been so long that I don't know what my "normal mileage" is anymore - it's been so inconsistent for several months! I've obviously lost fitness, but it's not like I haven't been running at all in the past few months.
Curious as to how others have dealt with similar situations. I've gotta start thinking now about my fall marathon.
What are you doing to treat the underlying issue that is causing the achillies flare ups? Until you deal with the base issue, any real training (Speciall speed) will cause flare ups.
I am not a doctor and do not know your particular issue, but look up Eccentric Calf Raises - It is the most common fix. These should continue to be done even after the achillies feels better.
How are you treating your achillies to get the flare ups down?
To your original question
If you have a history of 50-55 Miles per week, it usually is not that hard to build back up to it. I would 1st run easy runs for 2-3 weeks with a 2-3 days of striders to build up to a reasonable amount. If your history is 45-55 miles per week (A few years) you should be able to build up to 30-40 in 3 weeks.
If you just hit 45-55 once for a few weeks last year and your history (Consistently for a few years) is really only 30-35 miles per week. Then you should be a little more cautious.
I have run 46,000 miles in the last 9.75 years. So I can go from not running to running 70 MPW without much stress if I generally run slow with 2-3 days fo striders and work back to 90-100 MPW in 3 weeks. But there are 9 years of mileage backing my history.
Long dead ... But my stench lingers !