High mileage, NO speedwork. How much will I lose?

If that's the case, then I would say that you should consider completely ditching the watch and training plan, and just run for your mental health without measuring what you are doing. A healthy relationship with the sport shouldn't be based on fear or a need for control.

First off, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing what makes you happy. Finding something you enjoy doing every day is so important, and it will serve you well throughout your life. You never have to force yourself to do anything you don’t want to when it comes to running.

I have struggled immensely with the exact same feelings as you. I competed at a high level in high school, college, and then post-collegiaty. The workouts (and races) were always a major mental hurdle in high school and early college. I dreaded them. Even days before a hard effort, I would struggle to relax and sleep. I always felt my heart-racing, stomach fluttering, and actual fear leading up to the “big day”. Fast forward to my senior year of college. I upped my mileage to 80-100 and took the workouts much much easier. I didn’t hammer myself into the ground like I had been. The anxiety slipped away because I knew I wasn’t going to push myself into a dark place. I also started racing “from behind”, meaning I would intentionally go out slower than I needed to and only pick it up when I started thinking “this isn’t so bad . . . I bet I can pass that guy just ahead of me.” All of a sudden my PRs dropped substantially, and I was a lot happier.

If you ever decide you want to do workouts just to add some variation to your daily training or to prepare for a race, treat them as nothing more than optional and unimportant. Don't push it to the point of discomfort. If you do a “tempo” run correctly, it should leave you feeling invigorated, energized, and hungry for more. Don’t hold yourself to any set times or distances. Don’t plan out the workout beforehand. Try picking up the pace only when you feel good. If you start feeling anxious and uncomfortable, just slow down to your easy pace and enjoy your regular run. Even picking up the pace for 30 seconds and then slowing back down is totally fine. Give yourself permission to stop whenever you’re not feeling it. And if that means you’re never feeling it, that’s totally fine too. Another poster mentioned that it helps to only pick up the pace at the very end of a run. That’s great training! Nothing wrong with that. I’ve noticed that when I tell myself “I’m doing a hard workout” and start out fast, it’s mentally much more difficult than starting at a very easy pace and picking it up for a bit—only if I want to.

The perfectionist mindset is hard to shake. I have that to an extreme degree too. It got so bad for me that I started racing under a fake name because I was so anxious that people would judge me if I had a bad race. Now, no one knows who I am when looking at the results, and I actually have fun at races. I purposefully ran 2 or 3 this summer that I wasn’t in great shape for just to prove to myself that it’s ok to go out, do your best, and get your butt kicked with a smile on your face. You can really enjoy running, working out, and racing if you give yourself permission to have fun and enjoy the process without self-judgment. Good luck to you!

I've followed this thread and also your similar question on the advanced running sub on reddit. In my humble opinion, the response you received from BigBoy is the most helpful of all. He's clearly far more talented and experienced than I am, so I won't try to add much to what he has said. HRE (another true expert) mentioned Ed Whitlock, who also sprang to my mind when I read your post. I just wanted to add this:

I live in South Africa and once had the privilege of chatting briefly to Bruce Fordyce, who won a record number of the Comrades marathon in the 80s (a 90km road ultra we have here). He told me that he never did proper workouts until roughly 8 weeks before a race. He believed that doing it earlier was pointless because the body has a limited period in which it can adapt properly to that stimulus, and doing it too early is also an unnecessary injury risk. I appreciate that this is a controversial view. All I can tell you is that I used to be very injury prone and my own running improved a great deal by upping my mileage and keeping everything easy. It is for this reason that I'm slightly frustrated (without wanting to be critical because you have received some very helpful advice) by those who are trying to encourage you to be more welcoming of structured workouts and intensity etc. I frankly can see ZERO point in you doing formal workouts or anything intense which you don't like, at this stage. What you are essentially doing by running high volume at an easy pace is building a monster base. The ideal time to do that is when you have no races planned, which is exactly where you are now. Add to that that you love the high mileage easy stuff, and become stressed by everything else, it breaks my heart that you're worrying for even a second about not doing workouts. I'd ditch them indefinitely, if I were you, and just enjoy your mileage.

I wish you all the best in addressing your depression. I've suffered from it on and off for years and it's no joke. Running has been a lifeline and while I appreciate the comment you got (maybe on reddit) about being careful about an unhealthy relationship with running, sometimes it's the lesser of two evils. I too have been accused of having an unhealthy relationship with running, and the accusation is probably fair. But I also know that if I didn't run, I'd have gone mad by now, and so I'm so grateful for it. But I've also promised myself that I'll never do anything in running which makes me not enjoy it. For this reason I've pulled out of races at the last minute in the past, because the logistics caused me more stress than they were worth. I really hope you take comfort from the comments which assure you (correctly) that your current training is very advanced and will definitely make you an excellent runner, and just enjoy it.

After highschool I just ran 8-15 miles every day at 6:30-8:00 pace, did some soccer field sprints once a week or two when I felt like it, did that for 6ish months and immediately ran 4:42 solo in a Mile TT when my 1600m PB was 4:39.

So your approach could definitely work, especially in the marathon where speed isn’t nearly as important. I will also add that this era of my training was very good for my mental health. I’d never have a decided distance or workout for the day. If I got 5 miles out and wasn’t satisfied, I’d go another mile or two before turning around. If I wasn’t feeling it, I’d turn around 3-4 miles in and call it a day. Some days I wanted to go fast and didn’t just wanna pound pavement for an hour, so I’d jog a mile and a half to a soccer complex, do some sprints, and go home. Never did anything I didn’t feel like doing. Naturally progressed to 65-75 mile weeks. It was great!

You can get very fit by just doing unstructured runs. My former roommate didn't like structured workouts at all, got huge anxiety on the track. He just did a lot of mileage and ran just a hair over 2:00 off the WR in the marathon at the time off his huge base (probably 170 - 200mpw with very little work that would be called "hard" intensity wise).

I used to be the guy blasting my runs at the redline and I got into that bad cycle of worrying too much about workout times. All that ended my enjoyment of running and I quit. Years later I came back at it for fitness about the time this website popped up. I learned so much here in the early days. The greatest day of my fitness life was the day I went outside with the goal that the run was going to be 30 seconds SLOWER per mile than what I'd been doing for months, and knowing that I'd get in better shape that way.

I'm old, kinda fat, and slow these days. I've recently started running again for fitness and I do everything hideously slow. IT WORKS! Do a metric butt-ton of slow running and you'll see your fitness improve a lot. Use a heart rate monitor and set a 'speed limit' for yourself. You'll be chomping at the bit to let those legs rip.

This is how you lose your fear of intensity. Rarely let yourself run intensely and, when you do, your body will beg you to let it blast off!

I enjoy the high mileage which usually doesn't include speedwork, rarely do I do that. Was like that for 8 years and I slowly improved in every distance. Now, it's not the fastest way to improve speed but in time you'll get faster even when you're running a lot without speedwork.

I do / did 95% easy like 8 minute miles 5% hard and run 34 10K.

Thanks so much to you and BigBoy for your replies. I will definitely take your advice to heart! You seem to genuinely care and its heart warming to know there are people like you still around. Its also nice to know I'm not alone and I really appreciate sharing of anecdotal experiences more than anything.

I've heard a lot of mixed responses, but having experienced the same feelings as me and telling me how you got through it, I am going to take your advice to just enjoy it for mental health reasons and let the fitness be a byproduct rather than the goal itself. I hope you are in a better place mentally now, too, and wish you the best :)

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience and advice. It really means a lot to me and, especially since you've experienced the exact same feelings as I am, I will take every piece of your advice. All the best to you :)

What a great, thoughtful, question. I am an older but fairly accomplished (for an old guy - 16:52 5K at 57 yrs old) and I do very little intense work. I think you can be a pretty good runner on just high mileage and "running by feel" as you describe. Could you be faster with the intense work? Sure, but if you don't enjoy it, why do it?

I think races are a good way to get in some more intense workouts. Sign up for local 5Ks, etc. and use them for your more intense work. It is way more fun and accomplishes pretty close to what those intense workouts would do.

Good luck!

This is really a gem of a thread as things go around here. Interesting comment from Fordyce. Thanks.

A couple of things that come to mind, most of which have been mentioned.

Fartlek workouts are a good place to start, also consider 'run to the barn' where you speed up the last few miles of a run, doesn't have to be planned just let it loose when you are feeling good.

If you go the traditional workout route (or fartlek) just don't split your watch at the reps and keep it running.

Ditch the GPS watch for a TimeX and don't care about how any one run goes.

Run hilly routes/trails for speedwork in disguise.

Find people or club to run with, you said there are none but try checking out local race results and reaching out to people around your ability on strava (or at a race, even if you dont run it).

If you are on Strava and it's a negative for you, get off of it (you could still use something like R2W, logarun, runningahead)

If planned intensity is the problem, then just run by feel. When you are feeling good, run hard; if not, run easy or moderate. That way, you have no anxiety about a big workout, because there's no plan, but you'll probably feel good enough to go hard a few times a week. Summer of Malmo sounds something like this for tempos.

the answer lies within the strides. the truth of the matter is that speed workouts are meant to push yourself to your limits but the slower you are or the slower your goals are, the less helpful the speed workouts become. with that said, too many miles at slow speeds will make you slower at slow speeds as well. if you want a good training program to prepare yourself for a decent marathon without being competitive against fast runners, do some strides after you easy miles. maybe 4x100m at a pace that is pretty fast but not all out

Do you still want to want to time-trial sometimes/see how fast you can run? Or are you not bothered about the times you could hit?

If you still want to run as fast as you can in races, then it would be worth doing literally one hard tempo run a week. That would be the difference between very fast racing and more mediocre racing for me. If I was able to run 80-100mpw including multiple runs of 14+ miles, all easy, then throwing in one tempo a week would let you throw down some FAST times, especially with the strides. That's actually close to an ideal schedule for me, and I want to race and don't dread speedwork.

If, on the other hand, you don't want to race for now either, then just run long and easy if it makes you happy. You'll probably gain fitness this way anyway, and if you want to race later, just adding in one hard tempo a week for 2 months or so will make you extremely quick, as all you'd need would be sharpening at that point.

Im happy to time trial every now and again as I think it would be interesting to see if my times are changing, but not very often as they are very stress provoking for me at the moment.

Same with the hard tempos unfortunately, but maybe if I can get my mental health in a better place the desire to race will return and I may add the tempos for a few weeks leading up to a race. The strides are very little to ask though, so I will certainly be doing those! :)

Thanks, I think strides and hills are important to maintain turnover and strength and I will continue to do these! All my miles will be run to feel, so some may not be far off marathon pace. Others may be a little slower if I feel super tired but i think I'll take this time to focus on maintaining good form, especially up hills. This prevents me from running too slow as that's when my form just feels awkward and sluggish, particularly if running 8:30 or slower. I expect the majority of my runs to be around 7.30-8 min/mi, with many of these being over rolling hills :)

Keep yourself running since that is your goal…whatever that takes. You’ll maintain a good level of fitness, and maybe one day the craving to do workouts will come back.

Do one run a week where you leave the watch at home. Pick it up (just a little) here and there if you feel like it, but there’s no pressure to maintain a time because you don’t really know what speed you’re running. You’re not dipping into truly fast speeds. It should feel good!

Mix it in with a slower warm-up and cool-down and don’t map the mileage of the run. That way there’s no way to verify if you pushed yourself enough. Simply being out there are throwing in some medium/steady work is enough. Doing that with strides should keep you fit. Keeping it easy enough that you’re never breathing intensely can be your litmus test. The gasping for air and pushing myself to my limit is the thing I sometimes fear. Taking off 30s/mile faster than an easy run just feels liberating, but isn’t hard.

What are you running your chill days at? To answer your question about fitness, it may be different if your easy runs are 8:xx or 10:xx.

But honestly, the vast majority of people who run a marathon in 3 hours and XX minutes never do any strides, tempos, or speedwork, so you’ll be fine regardless.

You might try doing fartleg (in the trails) but do it by feel. Also you might try doing it on hills. I enjoyed doing this and got a lot of cardio benefit out of it and there is no stress from trying to achieve a timed distance. So say you feel like going something like 2 mins normal 4 mins medium and 1 min fast * 5. Maybe another day you don't feel as strong then just do 3 mins normal 3 mins medium and 1 min fast. There is a million ways to structure it but you choose so the stress is gone. Say then you throw in the hills and it becomes a challenge to work on your pacing on the hills. Obviously when you are going up hill during a medium then you have to compensate. Never have I finished a session and thought that it was a waste of a workout.