Is ot normal to lose 30 secs off your mile while base training?

obviously your life is at a good time right now because your relaxing and slacking off

-cheers

What else do you recommend I do during base training? I'm also doimg strides at the end of every run by the way.

Is your goal to run a quick mile time trial this month or is it to focus on mileage?

Well I am increasing milage but the whole point of speed workouts is so I at least maintain speed/speed endurance during base, no? If I'm gonna lose all my speed an not even benefit from the speed workouts then what's the damn point? I might aswell just spend the whole 7 days on milage.

TexCo wrote:

I have been focusimg on milage but still getting two quality speedwork sessions in a week (tempo and either 400/800/mile repeats

Doesn't sound like you're focusing on mileage.

You're overtrained.

noticer of too much wrote:

TexCo wrote:

I have been focusimg on milage but still getting two quality speedwork sessions in a week (tempo and either 400/800/mile repeats

Doesn't sound like you're focusing on mileage.

You're overtrained.

No, really I am. I've increased from 25 mpw to 40 in three months. 75% of my weekly workouts are milage. Wow, overtrained? You really think? I suspected that myself about a month ago so took an easy week two weeks ago which didn't seem to help.

I don't actually feel overtrained right now, I've been overtrained before and I feel nothing like I did then.

Infact, ai feel a lot stronger on my long runs, I highly doubt I'd adapt to feel that way if I were overtrained. My only problem is that my top end speed seems to be diminishing, which I'd expect maybe a temporary 10-15 second drop from pr shape to occur when focusing on base training but a 30 second drop seems too drastic to be good.

I think your body isn't used to the extra mileage. However I think it will start getting better. Additionally, are you tapering for these time trials?

Anyways I think it's a combination of being tired and hot weather. I wouldn't worry about it

Judging by how quickly you've ramped up the volume, you need to drop the volume for a week, maybe down to 25, then 30 the week after and then do your TT again.

Adding volume is tricky. It sounds like you didn't pay close enough attention to your paces and just went for the big number, slowly..

It is not wasted effort. Drop the volume and bring the pace up without racing your workouts. It will take a few weeks. Plenty of time to get near your old pace and have a decent volume increase before your season starts.

Age and gender?

How many years running?

What/when are you training for?

Tempo, repeats, long run. Rinse and repeat. Fiber is the best thing in a runner's diet along with grains. No monthly mile time trial. Focus on your heart rate at tempo pace and see if it gradually goes down. My HR at 6:00/mile went from 195-200 (my max, pretty much) to 171 with only a month of increasing miles and running well. You can do those runs, but you need a day off. I get about 6 hrs of sleep, run Mon - Sat and rest Sunday. I try to get about 10-12 hours of rest that day as a point of recovery.

Why the hekk are you competing the mile during base? Instead turn to the roads and run 10K, 1/2 marathon, XC. In my 40's I would begin pre-competition in about 5:00 shape, and be near 4:40 at my peak, so bout the same gap you are talking about %-wise. But I never raced the mile during base and didn't stress about it, enjoying the longer stuff instead.

If you are from Texas, as your handle implies, I would say it is directly related to the heat

Intersting question.

I sometimes take my athletes to an all comers meet toward the end of our summer base and they rarely run well at those. Granted we don't do a lot of mile specific stuff during the summer, but we do get some fast 200s at the end of tempo runs at least once a week.

I'm always surprised at how much slower they run after a summer of good training than they did during track season. I was completely different. I could go jump in one of those all comers meets and run within 10-12 seconds of my pr on just about any day of the week. I'd often run a meet in the evening after a solid run in the morning and still do ok.

I don't know what that says about my training. I did run lots of hilly runs back in the day, so perhaps I was getting some sneaky VO2 max type training without realizing it. Maybe it means that something was wrong with my training once the season started....idk.

for your case, don't be disappointed with a slow mile TT. Someone above said your body probably isn't used to the higher workload. I believe this is likely the case. BTW, my athletes who ran poorly at the summer all comers meet would usually go and have a very good season in the fall.

Slow-twitchers run better off base, fast-twitchers improve more with intervals + more recovery. FT Mo gets beat by no-names in winter cross, is untouchable in big championships, whereas ST Kamworor kills in cross, not any better in track.

average temperature in Houston, just as an example for Texas, is 8 degrees higher in July than May.

TexCo wrote:

Well I am increasing milage but the whole point of speed workouts is so I at least maintain speed/speed endurance during base, no? If I'm gonna lose all my speed an not even benefit from the speed workouts then what's the damn point? I might aswell just spend the whole 7 days on milage.

Your last sentence is, in my view, correct. Spend the whole seven days on mileage. That requires confidence and discipline. Confidence that the speed will return after you've adjusted to higher mileage and, after completing the important base training, incorporated some faster stuff. Discipline to stick to slow and steady mileage during base training without repeatedly sneaking in time trials to see where you're at, which I've long thought is like repeatedly digging up the vegetables in your garden to see how well they're growing.

TexCo wrote:

I have been eating good foods, lots of vitamins and protein, sleeping 7 hours a night and my ferritin and thyroid are both fine. What could be causing this?

7 hours sleep probably isn't enough. Try 8 (that's 8 hours actual sleep, not getting ready for bed etc.).

TexCo wrote:

Well I am increasing milage but the whole point of speed workouts is so I at least maintain speed/speed endurance during base, no? If I'm gonna lose all my speed an not even benefit from the speed workouts then what's the damn point? I might aswell just spend the whole 7 days on milage.

Especially when increasing your mileage drop the time trials and "400/800/mile repeats at 90-95% effort"-type workouts. Doing these will hinder your base training, recovery and confidence by the endless, slow TT´s. Especially in your case with a history of overtraining, not a good combination. I didn´t care what kind of mile shape was I when once logged almost 200km per week in the hard weeks in winter without workouts more than a weekly top speed sprint session. Did that almost 12 weeks. But once spring came I started some threshold runs and 1k repeats at 5k pace and was amazed how fast I was after zero 5k pace workouts. Ran pb´s from 400m to 5k that summer, didn´t PR at 1500 but was only 1+ sec away, ran it only once and before my peak. And I for sure wasn´t a "slow twitcher", but not that fast twitcher or runner either...

If you do the top speed work with the mileage, threshold runs, long repeats at 10k pace mostly, and some repeatable, comfortably hard mile effort repeats preferably on hills you buid the base stronger and stronger, not taking any money out from the bank during the base. But since you´re now increasing your mileage significantly you could drop the workouts altogether other than sprints to make sure that your body has a chance to adapt to one thing at a time. Once stabilized start workouts which I listed, without the TT´s.

By the way, are you sure that your easy runs are REALLY easy?

U.N.O is one of the best posters on here, and I generally agree with him, but I don't know that 40mpw is enough total volume to be able to completely drop all of the fast stuff.

My kids are running in the same mileage neighborhood as you, but are doing per week

1. a tempo run (either a true jack daniels style 20 min tempo or a longer slower one)

2. a long run of 20-25% weekly total

3. some sort of mixture of drills and strides and a small (no more than 2k total) amount of reps at mile race pace with adequate recovery. Reps have mostly been 200 and 300. Last week we did 3-5 x 400 after a series of drills. 2 minutes recovery. I feel it was harder than needed to achieve the goal of the workout (which is just to be comfortable and efficient at fast paces)

None of what we are doing is very hard and We're just filling in the rest of the week with easy mileage. This is pretty typical for us. We tend to peak pretty well in november.