I'm mid 30's and am starting to realize that taking a day off more than once a week is helping.
I'm mid 30's and am starting to realize that taking a day off more than once a week is helping.
Junk miles exist?!?!
Junk miles exist but mainly when you are near your fittest for a season. So, early in training they exist less, almost non existent. The week before a race they are almost all junk miles. The age where junk miles increase is probably 25 years old. So, just make sure to run a big base in training and take days or miles off in peak. See, there, you can throw away the junk miles and still run everyday and also, high mileage for the half of the year. ..boom?
When I was 42 I decided, not so much that junk miles exist, but that I was only going to get to run a certain number of miles in my life. I decide to limit my mileage to 50 something a week so I would get to run for more years.
My son started XC this year and I have been running while he practices since June. Their practices are about two hours long. So I started out walking and doing dynamic warmups for a while, doing my normal run in the middle and then walking until he finished. Still running just over 50 mpw, the only difference is the walking/warmup, I have cut about 1 minute off my 5 mile time.
The term junk miles, man, that's tough. Just doing miles for the sake of miles? "running for the log" as I like to call it (can't run 59 miles this week, need to get in that 1 extra for an even 60...).
I'm 48 and I take 1 day a week off as a general rule. I like to think that each run serves a purpose and while I may keep a loose tally on my weekly total, I try to worry more about each day accomplishing a certain goal, whether that's a hard work out or a slow recovery run. So even if I'm doing a slow slog on a Sunday after doing a long effort on Sat, I don't see that as "junk".