Jane
Hey everyone. I was thinking about how awesome Dave has been with his 8 miles and doing 20 tomorrow! It got me wondering, instead of following a training schedule to train for a half or full marathon, does anyone just run. Like go out 5-6 days a week and just run what they feel like, maybe add in a long run once a week?
That is what I do much of the time.
Never run, if you want to never run, don't start because you'll never stop.
race obsessed
Most if not all of my runs are basically just go out and run for an hr, on weekends it's 1.5 to 2 hrs.
I do a lot better with a plan of some kind. I'm not a slave to it, but I like having structure. Currently I'm not training for a race but have a goal of maintaining at least 40mpw during the winter. I'm trying to figure out a schedule that will make that work best for me.
Lol yeah i do that.
You know paulski66 said he was abandoning a training plan and just running a lot of miles. I didn't ever read his RR. Does anyone know how that worked for him?
I don't do well at all without a plan that includes the distance and target paces. I don't stick to it slavishly, and I'll adjust running days or swtich the various types of runs around to fit changes to schedule, but I need a schedule. Otherwise I end up running less and less, and skipping runs, and before I know it, it's been a week and half since I ran.
I don't have a plan for every day in advance (like, for example, a three-month training plan with the days mapped out), but I know how far I'm going to go when I walk out the door. There are different directions I can go that end up being a 5k loop or a couple of different 4-mile loops, or a 5-mile loop, or a route that leads to a path for long runs.
If I try to just go and see how I feel, I'll quit after a mile. If I tell myself, "I'm running 5 miles," then I do it.
Chief Unicorn Officer
Mile 5:49 - 5K 19:58 - 10K 43:06 - HM 1:36:54
mom/superwoman
Thanks for your input everyone! I just got a chance to read them all. The last couple months I was doing milage buildup I just ran what I felt like, 6 days a week. I started my intermediate plan this week and it just seems like I'm going backwards. During my buildup I didn't do any strength training but going from 6 running days to 4 seems weird to me. Oh and Matt- I followed you on twitter.
Young mother cooking, eating, and running for both mental and physical health. And I'm not as serious as that makes me sound :) www.eatrunlivehappy.com
Mmmmm...beer
I noticed that too, all the plans I looked at would have me decrease my frequency and mileage, and that didn't make any sense. I get that part of it is trading some easy miles for speed work, but I can't see dropping from 50mpw to 30mpw (or less on some plans). So I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and add speed work to it.
-Dave
My running blog
Goals | sub-18 5k | sub-3 marathon 2:56:46!!
I've never gone with a "structured" plan. I've always built up to a certain point of mileage and kept it there. This past summer I incorporated speed work while training for a HM. I am now coming of a running injury. I'm not sure if it was doing too much at the same time with the long run and speed work, or just plain biomechanics stuff. I plan on continuing a build-up again soon, but will be not caring so much about pace too much.
Running is my mental-Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Team TJ
I agree with this part completely. If I were focused on my pace exclusively, I would have quit by now. I'm still SLOW in comparison to most on here but I'm more focused on longer distance.
Running for TJ because he can't.
MothAudio had a post on Facebook this morning that illustrated very well when it's fine to "just run." He was out for a planned 8 mile run but felt great and turned it into a 14 mile run. The key for him was that he doesn't have any quality workouts planned for the next few days so the fatigue from this run wouldn't affect his future runs. Of course, that assumes that your goal is to race. If your goal is fitness, then go out and jog 5 hours per week and don't worry about pace at all. You can do that at a fairly low intensity and get all the health benefits of someone running much higher mileage.
Short term goal: 17:59 5K
Mid term goal: 2:54:59 marathon
Long term goal: To say I've been a runner half my life. (I started running at age 45).
Puker
Just remember that this is a discussion board and that there's not really much to discuss concerning unstructured running. Therefore, structured running workouts are going to dominate the conversation here, but that doesn't mean that structured workouts dominate everyone's running.
Personally, I have enough people in my life telling me what to do and when to do it. Since running is part of my escape from that, my yogging is fairly unstructured.
Feel sick and dirty, more dead than alive.