Base training for a whole year??

newbie runner wrote:

35 miles a week at 9:00 pace

lol

Dont hurt my feelings man :(

Taking a year off before starting career training is the dumbest meme Young Adults have ever invented, there is no excuse for sitting around for a year and not advancing yourself. Furthermore many people who do this never get around to actually getting any sort of valuable skills.

"But...but...I don't know what I want to do. I need time to decide!"

The answer is you want to do STEM. With a focus on the TEM portion of it. The other viable option is getting training in a good trade, but in that case you should be at a Trade school not taking a year off to do next to nothing with your life. It is going to be a hell of a lot easier to 'find yourself' with disposable income and a versatile skillset.

Base training for a year is fine. Your pace says you still need a lot of it and if you insist on 'taking time off' you can at least get a lot of good training in.

Oh no i got bad grades and have to retake my exams. i want to give it another shot and get in a better university. and yeah ur right i really do need alot of it right now :p.

Sounds like a great plan. Don't listen to the haters. They're jealous they didn't take a year off to build base before going to college. No half measures. Move to Boulder and hit the trails. Plus employers love gap years put to good use.

It wouldn't hurt, and might actually be a great idea. You would have a huge aerobic cabinet, to where in the future, you wouldn't have to do a lot of long mileage. You would just focus on quality workouts ( repeats, intervals, tempos).

However, throw some hill sprints in there at least once a week, that way your fast twitch muscles get utilized. And I would do some quality workouts like every other 2 to 3 weeks. Base building isn't just about doing slow, long miles. It's about reducing the amount of quality workouts to focus on building a huge aerobic engine, but you don't want to totally get rid of quality workouts during the phase.

You also need to remember that your body is still developing in a sense, because you are 18. You don't want to put too much mileage on your body. I would shoot for 60-70 miles to build up to over the year. And then in your early 20s you can focus more on hitting 80-90 miles.

If you are in the US go to community college first if you had poor grades. Most Schools will accept their students after two years and it is a great way to save money.

Thanks for yoyr response. ill increase mileage slowly. i have another question. my pqce is pretty slow right now. to increase it how i was thinking of doing a timed mile after every four weeks and guage my fitness from it and increase my pace accordingly? what do you think about this idea?

@community no im not from the US. i couldve gone to another uni in my country but it wasnt the best one. once i get done with these exams ill find something useful to do tho,shouldnt waste this year

newbie runner wrote:

Thanks for yoyr response. ill increase mileage slowly. i have another question. my pqce is pretty slow right now. to increase it how i was thinking of doing a timed mile after every four weeks and guage my fitness from it and increase my pace accordingly? what do you think about this idea?

@community no im not from the US. i couldve gone to another uni in my country but it wasnt the best one. once i get done with these exams ill find something useful to do tho,shouldnt waste this year

Start working on your speed now. The first things to do is strides following runs, a few times a week.

newbie runner wrote:

do you guys think i should build a strong base for a whole year,get to the point of doing 80-90 miles at better pace and then focus on speed,tempo runs etc? or should i do all the phases like tempo,intervals and then start over the same cycle?

Base training includes more than just easy runs; that means it's repeatable training which can be continued for months and still keep the progression going. Variety of terrain and pace prevents stiffness and muscular imbalances, with the other obvious purposes of the more intense workouts. At ~9min mile pace you practically won't use your hamstrings at all. Besides, going from 35mpw to 80-90mpw in a year is risky by itself. Believe me, you don't want to train a full year without a break at some point.

yeah good idea ill work on my speed too. do some co-ordination drills+strides

i will have exams coming up in may/june. might take 2 to 3 weeks off at that point. i think that should be good enough?

Bad decisions wrote:

"But...but...I don't know what I want to do. I need time to decide!"

The answer is you want to do STEM. With a focus on the TEM portion of it.

Repeating popular advice (major in a STEM degree) makes you look smart. Adding a twist (emphasis on the TEM) makes you look even smarter.

Failing to notice the M stands for "Math," which is useless for anything other than teaching high school (or as a throwaway degree before grad school) leaves you looking dumb again.

newbie runner wrote:

might take 2 to 3 weeks off at that point. i think that should be good enough?

3 weeks is better than 2. It really depends how hard the preparation and season was. A former 5k elite runner Marius Bakken took 6 weeks off from programmed training, although he did some occasional short shake outs with strides during that time.

Failing to notice the M stands for "Math," which is useless for anything other than teaching high school (or as a throwaway degree before grad school) leaves you looking dumb again.

Very few degrees make someone more employable than math. Folks with training in math can work in banks (finance), some kinds of engineering, computing, etc. It's a good indicator of intelligence and ability to learn to have completed a math degree, and technically oriented employers at successful businesses understand this. People in sales don't, but that's why they work in sales.

newbie runner wrote:

hello everyone

im 18 years old,male and taking a year off before i start university.

i started running some 18 months back and one month ago i started following jack daniel's training program. so i average around 35 miles a week at 9:00 pace. do you guys think i should build a strong base for a whole year,get to the point of doing 80-90 miles at better pace and then focus on speed,tempo runs etc? or should i do all the phases like tempo,intervals and then start over the same cycle? i wont be racing for a year. so peaking for a race doesnt seem useful imo. what do you guys think?

Forget about "base"-training and do the "All in one package" year around. :)

hey coach ive seen your posts around here and i know you prefer more speed etc. but i think base would benefit me since ive been a pretty lazy kid and was very fat before i started running.so i think focusing on building a base would benefit me alot. you train kenyans and other athletes but they have a strong running background to begin with.