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Little help here? (Read 248 times)


Latent Runner

    Is there a basic guide to go by as far as days per week to run and which days to run farther and which ones to back off?

     

     

     

    As a general rule, I would say there no such a thing as a basic guide to go by as far as days per week to run and which days to run farther and which ones to back off?

     

    Why?

     

    Because every body is different, and each different body reacts to the stress and stimulus of running differently as well.

    Fat old man PRs:

    • 1-mile (point to point, gravity assist): 5:50
    • 2-mile: 13:49
    • 5K (gravity assist last mile): 21:31
    • 5-Mile: 37:24
    • 10K (first 10K of my Half Marathon): 48:16
    • 10-Mile (first 10 miles of my Half Marathon): 1:17:40
    • Half Marathon: 1:42:13

      Thanks for your input.

       

      Sounds like I should also be running different distances not just the same milage every run. Is there a basic guide to go by as far as days per week to run and which days to run farther and which ones to back off?

       

      Right now i am back to running 2.5 to 3 miles 4 times a week. usually mon/tues then day off then thurs/ friday and then weekend off.

       

      Noting that we are in a similar place (run and fitness-wise), I can only say what others have told me.  It seems general consensus is to try to lengthen just one of those runs, so you do a long run once a week.  The long run might be 5 miles, at our level.  You'd have to slow your pace down to make it 5 miles, but that's ok.

       

      As far as I can tell, the idea is to lose weight (my number 1 priority), and to slowly build a base of more miles.  Not harder miles, but more.  Building that base supposedly builds your endurance, both your lungs and your legs.  This is different than trying to run the same distance (3 miles, for example) faster and faster.  Trying to just run faster can introduce too much stress to the body and perhaps cause injury.  Sprints, intervals, and the like, also can cause injury.  Makes sense (to me, anyway) that if you (and I) are overweight, then trying to run faster just puts more force down on our legs.  Force that we may not be ready for.  But running slow, for longer, will hopefully strengthen our legs, while also burning calories.

       

      An extreme comparison would be a 200 meter dash compared to a 5 mile run.  The 200 certainly gets me out of breath (it did even when I did it 30 years ago), but it also will result in a lot of pounding of my legs, and at my heavier weight that won't be good.  The whole thing will be over in 30 seconds, so there won't be that much cardio benefit.  I could do several in a row, but the cardio would still be intermittant, and the stress to my legs, knees, etc, would likely lead to injury.

       

      Or I could do a 5 mile run.  We've both been doing 3 mile runs, so a 5 mile is within reason.  We slow the pace down a little, and jog easy.  Less stress on the legs.  But it takes us an hour to complete the run.  That's a long time for the cardio to give us benefits.  We find the pace that is a good workout, but isn't beating us up.  We go conservative because we want to make sure we can finish it, without having to walk.

       

      And then the next time that we run 3 miles, we will have more confidence because we know we can run 5.  Our cardio will be getting better.  Our muscles will be gettng more used to the longer runs.

       

      But we probably don't want to run 5 miles too many times each week yet, because maybe that will start to wear us down if we aren't ready for it.  So probably just one long run a week for a while.  Then we up the distances again.  Maybe run some 3's, 4's, and a 5 in a week.  Or maybe even move up to a 6 mile for a long run.  Slowly, keep introducing the longer runs, and building up our endurance.

       

      As the weight comes down (mostly from diet), we can then introduce some speedwork.  But not until the weight comes down, and not too much of it.

       

      Anyway, that's the general plan as I understand it Smile  Or I could be wrong.  But at least it's the plan I'm currently using.  The mix in my case, is that I play one soccer game a week.  I started that at 212 lbs, and it was a doozy.  Beat me up and I was sore as heck.  Probably dumb to play at that weight, but it motivated me, and I took it easy during a game.  Now at 188, I don't get sore after a game.  I still take it easy, but do get some speedwork out of it.  Each week I find myself anticpating running more, and faster, at the next game.  Eventually, as I lose more weight, I'll introduce some sprints to my running (running outside of soccer).  That's me, how I'm doing it, and I consider myself basically a sprinter, or a 400m guy.  What I really am, who knows, just basically old, fat, and slow.  But in my mind, I'm more of a sprinter than a distance runner.  But the point I'm trying to make is that even I'm trying to be careful about not going out for my runs to do sprinting yet.  I want to hold off on that, work on some miles, lose more weight, get rid of my gut, get closer to my goal weight of 165, and then introduce some sprints to my runs.  Next Spring, I hope to be hitting the track and timing myself with some 400m runs (and they will be laughably slow).  All while still training for 5k's as my basic distance, my old man distance Smile

      jmoxie


        very good info!

         

        Thank you.

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