coleiolio wrote:
I see what you’re saying. I’m just not sure where I plan on capping my mileage, and don’t want to add too much too early. I’m not sure if I should progress into my peak mileage, or hit my peak mileage early and work on consistency and just make my workouts get a little tougher every couple of weeks.
Consistency is the name of the game. Don't worry too much about mileage goals or peak mileage or all that stuff. Keep the miles going, keep the quality doable. When things feel good, add a bit more (usually just a little bit). And when things are a struggle, scale back.
If you've got free time in your summer, read through some of the old logs out there from people like Bill Rodgers, Malmo, Shorter, Hodge, and others. You'll note that they don't hit the same mileage week in week out. It really fluctuates all over the place. And those guys weren't concerned with the occasional 0 day or super low week. If they had a sore hip or got the flu or whatever, their mileage tanked because they shut things down.
But week after week and month after month, you see the total amount of mileage they got in was huge. This is something I still have to remind myself about. I really like seeing all my weeks be 60-70 miles. But sometimes in the 50s or even 40s is fine. And likewise, sometimes getting into the 80s is fine to.
So play with your mileage amounts, and the whole time listen to your body. Life is weird in that sometimes things that stress us out aren't noticeable in the moment. It's only looking back that we see, woah, those couple weeks when I was dealing with X, that took a huge toll on me. So when you're dragging, back off. When you're rolling, keep it rollin. Keep track of the miles, of course, but don't sweat the exact numbers.