Is it better to do doubles or longer runs?

Stop asking questions about doubles

It's all about padding stats around here, and the only stats we care about are your times and your miles per week. You pad these stats however you can, and you don't ask these silly questions. But here's my advice:

Starting your first thread on letsrun is much like your first day in prison. If you don't already know who to eat lunch with on the first day, you can expect a real ass pounding for the rest of the week until you pay for protection, join a gang, or post under a new name. Stand your ground, but don't be afraid to let the old schoolers take charge as long as they respect you. If you make it out without contracting HIV, consider it a victory.

In summary, you should be running doubles frequently. So why not run a triples? Everyone around here runs doubles, it's just so 5 minutes ago. If you wanted to be like everyone else, you chose the wrong sport. Regardless of whether you run singles, doubles, or triples the rest of the world thinks you are gay. So you may as well continue daring to be different.

Oppasdf wrote:

well since you can handle 85 in singles, why NOT then ADD some DOUBLES and be running 110-120ish?...also 18mile long run is a lot to do each week. and why a jog? why not "comfortably fast" as JK suggests?

i just mean that for most only doing 70-85mpw, an 18mile LR each Sunday without fail can be kinda taxing going into the next week, no?

and yeah, why a jog? im just saying that because i think people benefit more from a pretty SOLID long run pace, correct me if im wrong.

85 is pretty much all I have time and energy for with my schedule. I would love to put it a lot of 110-120 weeks, I just can't.

I bumped my LR up to 18 (still pretty normal, less than 25% of my miles) because mileage is easier for me to get on the weekends without work. Jog may have not been correct terminology, but I do make sure it's easy. Where my 'comfortable' pace is maybe in the range of 6:30 - 5:50, my Sunday pace starts around 7:00 for a few miles, hits probably 6:40 for much of the run, and gets to 6:15 for the last few. This never felt taxing. In fact I always felt fresh on Monday (had to force myself to slow down) and Tuesday.

I don't run a solid pace on Sunday because I treat it as a recovery run. I don't know that this is that uncommon.

My view on doubles is 10 a day in singles first. I would worry about overall weekly mileage before I would worry about a slavishly persued weekly long run. I would say an exception to the 10 in singles before doubles rule would be if you are working out frequently. But just doing base mileage, I would do 75 or so a week before adding a second run.

so i'm a bit confused between some peoples advice on letsrun compared to malmo's. Should you be running doubles at all times. Malmo I believe says start right away. Basically, should you be running your usual mileage and than add on an extra run for training benefits, or do you go the route of salazar and break up your runs and get short, quicker stuff in? Especially is the base phase period?

Who ran faster, Salazar or "Morning Run Zoo" guy?

I think the question is given a weekly mileage total, is it better to run it in singles or doubles. I would say if your longest run of the day is like 7 or 8, and my goal was to increase my mileage, I would scoot that up to 9 or 10 and then add a second run rather than running 7 and 3.

Malmo belittled 90-100 a week in singles and I think that is a sound belittling for most people, but I know plenty of dudes who had had plenty of success doing 90-100 a week in singles during their mostly base/strength training, then switched to doubles when workouts started and shortened the distance of their primary run.

I experimented with all kinds of combinations and I was most successful when I would do a single of 9-10 and a second run of 30 minutes or so 4 or maybe 5 days a week and, strangely, with a long run capped at 14 and working out twice a week - one workout an AT run and the other some sort of Vo2 max workout with relatively short recovery, but decent interval volume. I was doing 90+ a week with many doubles and a long run of only 14 or so. I think i felt less tired on that than I do now on 80+ a week in singles and fewer workouts (of course, I am 12 years older now).

I find personally that once I am running a single of more than 10, I think I tack on fatigue disproportionate to the benefit. I think I would be no more tired going 10 and 4 than doing 11-12 in a single. The key is to take your mileage just shy of the point where you are too tired to get in your quality. Once your mileage (and especially your "long run") starts eating too much into your ability to get in some quality, then you are letting the tail wag the dog.

Nom nom nom wrote:

For example, If I'm running around 70 mpw and already doing doubles 3 days a week, would it be more beneficial to split ten milers into say, 5/5 or 6/4 as opposed to just running 10?

Both.

What are your race times running 5:50-6:30 pace all the time? I know low-mid 14:00 5k guys that don't run anything but workouts under 7:00 pace.

I am not sure what happend with the quoting feature there, but it didn't quote right and the result was nonsense. Can't bother commenting again.

That screwiness happens when you quote someone who has already quoted someone.

Brian: I experimented with all kinds of combinations and I was most successful when I would do a single of 9-10 and a second run of 30 minutes or so 4 or maybe 5 days a week and, strangely, with a long run capped at 14 and working out twice a week - one workout an AT run and the other some sort of Vo2 max workout with relatively short recovery, but decent interval volume. I was doing 90+ a week with many doubles and a long run of only 14 or so.

Of course. Running 2/day + not killing yourself on a needlessly lengthy long run + moderate workouts = just about right.

And as you said, it's more exhausting to run singles even for significantly lower weekly totals.

Put those together, and I'm left wondering why you (and others) advocate sticking with singles until reaching 70 MPW. If a runner aspires to run doubles (maybe he also has a mileage figure in mind, say 90 or 110, or maybe he listens to his body and care less about numbers) this season - why they hell wouldn't he start doing them tomorrow or even this afternoon? Why should he work his way up to ten miles a day on singles first?

I've ramped up from 30-40 to 70-90 MPW a handful of times in the last 4 years, and have just done so again going from 40 to 80 in 3 weeks. My experience says ramping up is *far* easier and quicker on two runs a day. And now I figure to have quite a few 75+ mile weeks under my belt by the time a parallel-universe nsmb would've reached similar mileage cautiously building up his singles until he hit 70.

Here's an example of a 70 mile week with doubles:

Monday: 10

Tuesday: 4

Wednesday: 4 am, 6 mile tempo pm (9 total)

Thursday: 10 am, 4 pm

Friday: 6

Saturday: 14

Sunday: 4 am, 9 pm

71 total

Yeah, that is a good point. I think people have different points of reaching diminishing returns in a single run compared with the fatigue accrued and I think I have found around 10 miles/70 minutes is my point. A tsome point, each additional mile in a single adds more fatigue than the fitness benefit gaines.

When I decided I was too lazy to run doubles anymore several years ago when I figured out I had reached the pathetic limit of how good I could be, my concession was to try to get most of my easy singles around 11 and my long run around 15+, but as I am turning 40 soon and my mediocre race times will suddenly mean something, I think I am going to go back to the 9-10 for the main run with a second short run of 30 minutes or so. And privileging a workout over a long run on many weeks.

Alot of this is just personal prediliction. After years and year of 80-90 a week in all manner of configurations, I feel worse the day after an easy 15 miles than I do the day after 7 miles at Half Marathon pace. Aerobic fitness isn't the issue - I will feel like ass after 90 minutes of running when my breathing is so slow I could recite the Gettysburg Address.

Butts wrote:

Here's an example of a 70 mile week with doubles:

Monday: 10

Tuesday: 4

Wednesday: 4 am, 6 mile tempo pm (9 total)

Thursday: 10 am, 4 pm

Friday: 6

Saturday: 14

Sunday: 4 am, 9 pm

71 total

Yeah, that's basically my plan for the fall.

M - 5 (easy)

T - 4/10 (workout day - tempo or long reps)

W - 10 (med-long)

Th - 5 (easy)

F - 4/10 (workout - hills or short reps)

Sa - 4/6 (speed maint day - short sprints with full recovery)

Su - 13-14 (long run)

Total - 71-72

I think its dangerous to assume that anyone who runs fast has the one and only method to running fast. German Fernandez ran faster in HS than most of the planet could ever hope to. Would you recommend playing soccer and being injured a lot to someone who hasn't run as fast as his HS times?

I probably AVERAGE about 2:00 slower than my 5k pace for all of my easy days. I always start out really easy until I'm warm. I build pace as I feel more comfortable.

Low 3:40s and low 14s. Don't get me wrong, I would run slower if I had more time, but I want to cram miles in. I do this as comfortably as possible.

This is 74 total.

Personally, I don't see the benefit of doing anything less than 7 (might drop that to 6 on a 70mpw schedule) except for a morning run before an afternoon/evening race (I do in fact "double" on race weeks if I have a race after 2:00PM, 3-4 mile jog to wake up). If that works for you then by all means, go for it. If it were my schedule (assuming 71, not 74), I think I would choose

Monday: 11

Tuesday: 9

Wednesday: 6 mile tempo pm (12 total)

Thursday: 6

Friday: 9

Saturday: 14

Sunday: 10

I don't get why throw two days away with a mere 5 mile run. I think in this scenario, I'd run 9 instead of 5 on those days and ditch the AM run on T/Fri. I don't see why I would even leave the house for a mere 5 miles unless it was a second run or a double. It takes me that long just to get warmed up.

Or 4 + 4-6. A couple easy ~half hour runs probably does more to improve my recovery than hamper it, and bingo, 8-10 miles on the day instead of 0-5.

I start to get stale with too many long days in a row. The 5 mile day, for me, is basically a rest day.