Interesting article. He doesn't say it directly but is the implication to rest on the days you don't double?
Wonder if this approach would be appropriate for teens. I'm doing some basic coaching and there's so much conflicting info on the volume they can handle, it's impossible to get a researched and credible answer.
Because there isn't a set answer.
It's gonna depend on the kid. Some will handle lots (Jakob Ingebrigtsen was running 90 miles a week as a 14 year old), while others won't be able to do much at all.
The best approach is to base their progression on what they're currently doing, and then gradually increase that load over weeks/months/years. You don't just jump to a set amount and hope for the best.
Yep totally... the tricky bit is knowing if they're handling it or just appearing to. Some might appear to be handling it (eg no injury happens, they don't 'feel overtrained') but underneath, long term damage or at least, limitation of potential might be happening. I am still doing my research but there's this growth plate / bone density issue and it's hard to apply this in practice I get that there's part art part science to this and sometimes you have to use judgement but, it's hard when you could drive a truck through the range of possible answers.
Jakob is obviously a phenomenon, but I would reckon a lot have tried that mileage at that age and were out of the sport forever before they turned 17. Gjert (for all his faults) seems like a guy who'd look into the science of it and I don't think you can tell if long term bone damage is taking place through lactate strips. Either that or he just got lucky in that Jakob is for whatever reason, supremely resistant to overuse injury.
Increasing total mileage while staying away from injury and overtraining is always beneficial for runners, even if sometimes the benefit is marginal.
Increasing the duration of a single run is associated with higher risk of injury and overtraining, so by simple logic it is always beneficial to double (there is of course an edge case where 2 half a mile runs don't provide any trining stimulus at all)
However doubles come with overhead of time to change and get out running, running in the dark, having to use more clothes or wash them more frequently and so on.
So you start doing doubles when you have enough time on your hands.
As such, the answer for most people would be "never do doubles" because you'll never have enough time!
If you have a shot to be competitive at a high level, it may be worth your effort. Or if you're a dedicated hobbyjogger and are going to a running camp at elevation where you'll run 120 mile weeks in doubles to make the most bang for your buck, it's probably worth it to get used to doubling in advance so all this effort doesn't go to complete waste. If you scroll social media for hours every day and have the willpower to quit it, you'll have a wealth of time for a while, might as well run. There can be a lot of other scenarios. But generally doubling is just too expensive time-wise, you'll save at least half an hour running one 10-miler instead of 2x5, and that time is precious.
It's gonna depend on the kid. Some will handle lots (Jakob Ingebrigtsen was running 90 miles a week as a 14 year old), while others won't be able to do much at all.
The best approach is to base their progression on what they're currently doing, and then gradually increase that load over weeks/months/years. You don't just jump to a set amount and hope for the best.
Yep totally... the tricky bit is knowing if they're handling it or just appearing to. Some might appear to be handling it (eg no injury happens, they don't 'feel overtrained') but underneath, long term damage or at least, limitation of potential might be happening. I am still doing my research but there's this growth plate / bone density issue and it's hard to apply this in practice I get that there's part art part science to this and sometimes you have to use judgement but, it's hard when you could drive a truck through the range of possible answers.
Jakob is obviously a phenomenon, but I would reckon a lot have tried that mileage at that age and were out of the sport forever before they turned 17. Gjert (for all his faults) seems like a guy who'd look into the science of it and I don't think you can tell if long term bone damage is taking place through lactate strips. Either that or he just got lucky in that Jakob is for whatever reason, supremely resistant to overuse injury.
I can honestly say that I've never heard of a kid suffering from long term damage from running - that didn't know something was off.
You'd have to be getting training pretty wrong for this to happen.
Personally, if we think of "limitation of potential", this is probably likely to happen from not running enough early enough, when the body is still hyper receptive to adaptations and transformation.
I wouldn't be too stressed about getting a young athlete to do a few extra easy runs (and thus, upping their mileage); however, I would be worried about tonnes of anaerobic/speed work - and yet people seem fine to do this, but freak out about doing more mileage. I know which is the bigger stress, and it isn't easy jogging.
For a standard training week you're probably looking at 60-70 ish being reasonable on singles.
Say 13-15 mile long run, that leave 45-50+ to get done in the remaining 6 days which is easy enough.
If you want to add 10-15miles or more on top of that then 2-3 additional runs are a good way of doing it. Balance is everything though and its probably a good idea to make one run a bit long (e.g. turn a 7 miler into a 10 miler) before throwing more doubles in.
I used to think you should build up to around 60 mins per run then start doing doubles, by my stance on that has changed. There are studies showing increases in aerobic enzymes and hgh that occur when running twice per day, even at lower mileage. I think it's still worthwhile to do some longer runs for capillarization and other benefits, although I think the long run is overrated for 5k and shorter. I like loading up certain days and having lighter days between to avoid the monotony of just doing the same mileage every day. For example, I had a string of 100 + mile weeks that looked something like this.
Doubles completely changed my running. Frequency in general did. I used to always have calf problems above 35mpw. I scrawled these boards for info and I came across malmos advice on just doubling no matter what you are doing so I gave it a shot, I had nothing to lose. This will sound dumb to a lot of people but it's what I done, I increased my frequency to 7 days a week, just 3 miles per run, then I started adding double 3 milers at shakeout pace in the morning, almost instantly, my calves felt better on the evening runs and I could start to ramp up the distance on them without any issue to 70mpw total.
Paces all around started to improve, the early morning shakeouts also helped me with workouts on session days, I could really hammer sessions and my recovery both between reps and after was better by an order of magnitude, my calves are also a non-factor now after struggling with them for years at significantly lower volumes.
So I don't buy into this you have to be running so much in singles before starting doubles, my own experience is that the opposite is true, some people will say that running 3 miles in the morning at snails pace is junk mileage, but if it improves my ability to run longer and better evening sessions and makes me less injury prone, I call them Golden Miles.
I used to think you should build up to around 60 mins per run then start doing doubles, by my stance on that has changed. There are studies showing increases in aerobic enzymes and hgh that occur when running twice per day, even at lower mileage. I think it's still worthwhile to do some longer runs for capillarization and other benefits, although I think the long run is overrated for 5k and shorter. I like loading up certain days and having lighter days between to avoid the monotony of just doing the same mileage every day. For example, I had a string of 100 + mile weeks that looked something like this.
I found that once I started doing more than an hour on my easy days, it felt like too much of a stress to be a true recovery run.
This has always been the delineator for me. Once my mileage goals for the week exceed my ability to get an easy run done within an hour, it's time to add a second run. Trust me, I've tried the 10-12 mile easy runs too. And they're great for what they are! They're just not truly easy runs for me.
I used to think you should build up to around 60 mins per run then start doing doubles, by my stance on that has changed. There are studies showing increases in aerobic enzymes and hgh that occur when running twice per day, even at lower mileage. I think it's still worthwhile to do some longer runs for capillarization and other benefits, although I think the long run is overrated for 5k and shorter. I like loading up certain days and having lighter days between to avoid the monotony of just doing the same mileage every day. For example, I had a string of 100 + mile weeks that looked something like this.
M - 8 (easy) + 10 (workout)
T - 10 + 4
W - 10 + 4
Th - 8 (easy) + 10 (workout)
F - 8 + 4
Sat - 20 + 4
Sun - 8
So no rest and recover days at all?
Running for ~60 mins is a recovery day when you do 90-120 most days. I would take an off day every 4 weeks or so, usually by cutting out the long run to make it more like an 80 mile week. Not saying this is perfect, but just showing my preference for using doubles.
I found that once I started doing more than an hour on my easy days, it felt like too much of a stress to be a true recovery run.
This has always been the delineator for me. Once my mileage goals for the week exceed my ability to get an easy run done within an hour, it's time to add a second run. Trust me, I've tried the 10-12 mile easy runs too. And they're great for what they are! They're just not truly easy runs for me.
At the low end breaking your 39 min run into 2x15 never made except for short periods. And as you say trying to run 60+ every day is tough for a lot of people. So you either switch to alternating like 50/90min runs (and a lot of people struggle with that) or you double. and you can obviously double earlier by doing like 30/45 days.
the limit for a lot of people is that it takes a bit more time and squeezing it and sleep can get tough. In terms of training benefit/stress for easy days, feels like the 2 ~40min runs is best.
I started them at about 35MPW with 2-3 short extra sessions. That got me to about 50MPW and my times dropped dramatically. I was about 28 years old and went from 55:00 for 10M to 53:00. My ability to handle hard runs went from 1-2 per week to 3-4. The other runs were easier. The doubles make all the difference.
Unsure what your goals are For me when I was running for School of Mines I got more out of 65mpw of singles than any combination of doubles. I experimented with doubles at 50mpw and I started to gain weight, feel sluggish. Once I got over 65mpw of singles and started doubling to add up to 80/90mpw I felt like I was maintaining a good "training load" that wasn't happening with <50mpw of singles. Experiment, Listen to your body
As a high school kid running two or even three times a day worked during the summer and I was averaging more than 70 mpw. However, now I see that I would have seen more improvement with a little speed mixed in. We had literally no hills in my city. During the school year I got sick trying to run twice per day but that might have been mostly because I ran 5-7 easy in the morning with a interval workout in the evening with our coach!
In the early 1980s, when I was a teenage girl running cross-country in the New England interscholastic circuit, I would always run in the morning before breakfast and classes on my own, up to 3 miles. My school had team workouts in the early afternoon (and then classes again in the evening), so when 2:00 rolled around I went to the team practice (the training ranged from easy runs to hills and speed work, as one would expect)... But I would always, always, always do my morning run because that's how much I loved running at the time. In 1984 I became the girls New England cross country scholastic champion and I was probably running about 50 miles a week.
I still do something similar today, nearly 50 years later: I train in the morning before breakfast and my full time job, and when I can I run home from work which adds another couple of miles.