high mileage question

If you simply do high mileage for the sake of high mileage, meaning above and beyond your current mileage level where you can actually build up and not break down, and you don't do anything about mechanics and anaerobic pathway; temporary loss of speed is inevitable. You always need to balance your program and time yourself so you will be race-ready by the time your competitions come around. If you don't balance your program and just did high mileage and nothing else, yes, you may, and most likely would, have a bad season and lose speed.

What high mileage does for you is to build the foundation upon which you build all the other "necessary" developments so you'll be ready to race. If you're simply looking for an excuse not to do that (to find some failure story to turn your back on it), this sport is not for you.

Agreed with the above poster. Increasing your mileage without any "form/efficiency work" (i.e. strides, bounds, etc) will slow you down and you'll be at a disadvantage for anything around 400 - 800 meters. If this is a 5k we're talking about, it won't do as much damage. Just be prepared to hit the quarter about 2 seconds slower than usual...just personal experience.

He asked about xc, not track.

I suspect the poor results are a lack of anaerobic training, since the coach decided to do almost no speedwork this season. What is the best way to maintain anaerobic systems over the summer without overdoing speedwork and peaking to early?

Don't run your 200's flat out. Run them about 1 to 2 seconds slower than your potential.

The coach was right to emphasize aerobic over anaerobic work. Assuming your son is running 5K races, the training should be 95+% aerobic.

Perhaps his problems stemmed from doing too much summer mileage. If it was a big leap over what he did the previous summer, I would think the problem stemmed from that.

What was his milage?How old is he?i always topped off at 70 miles.when i would go over that i would get hurt.So instead of risk getting hurt i would try to run a little bit faster.Also check his weight.Sometimes running alot of slow miles you might have a weight gain.you can run 800 meter repeats at 10k race pace with 1 minute rest and still be aerobic.you can run tempo runs and still be aerobic.The main thing is that he is working hard.His times will come down.

The previous summer he ran about 40 miles a week, which included two anaerobic workouts a week. These were mostly done at school, during non-required workouts. That season he ran about 16:50 for 5k. Last summer he ran as high as 80/week, with more training done on his own. In the meantime, his coach switched from doing 2 speedworouts per week to doing about 1 every two weeks. His best 5k time was 16:40. I guess he improved some, since he was running off of mostly aerobic training.

Well actually the coach was probably correct. Each case is different but I would say:

The jump from 40mpw to 80 is part of the problem, neccesary, but still its going to fatigue him, and not just for a couple of weeks but for the whole season. Next summer 80-85 mpw would be a good target and his body will be use to the miles so it will respond much better.

I am a little suprised he is doing anaerobic workouts during the summer period. There is really little use for them at that point in his training. The only time he should get any anaerobic work in during his base should be at the end of a tempo run (last 800m) maybe every other week. (note he should be doing atleast one tempo a week just no pushing past aerobic threshhold very often).

Once the season starts I would still hold off on any anaerobic work until 1/3 the way through then slowly start incoorperating it into the week until you are running 2-3 a week with 1/2 season to go.

What year is he, jr. sophmore? I would expect his times would significantly drop next year after a second summer of high base as long as he has good training winter-spring and next summmer. Hope this helps.

Great help! He is a junior this year, and planning on training hard this winter, after taking two weeks off. The two speedworkouts a week was standard during his freshman and soph years, although he ran mainly distance over the winter. I would rather have had him just doing miles, expecially when he began in his freshman year.

running dad wrote:

The previous summer he ran about 40 miles a week,... Last summer he ran as high as 80/week.

There's your answer, as already stated above. That's an improper increase in mileage from one summer to the next. I don't know what your son did for mileage during the winter and spring, but I suspect it was closer to 40 mpw than 80. A sudden mileage increase like that is a recipe for disaster. You should have seen that coming.

I ran lots of mileage (70-85) but never consolidated it over a period of probably 1.5 years. After taking off an entire Jan-June period (probably 20-30 mpw avg), I returned to 50-60 with a few tempos, a few repeats on the road, and dropped from 16:30-16:50 (I was inconsistent) to a solid, controlled 16:13 and 33:18 in about 2-3 months. And that 10k was run with no tempo run more than 3 miles and no run longer than 1:15.

IMO, mileage is additive in terms of fitness, but not necessarily instantaneously effective.

He ran 16.40 of 40 mpw but only improved 10 seconds on double the mileage? He should have knocked a minute off at least.

What do you mean when you refer to speedwork? My definition is that speedwork is sprinting.

There is no need to anerobic work in summer. The high mileage in the summer should include tempos and progression runs as well as strides. I don't know what you mean by speedwork either. Over the long run aerobic is better to develop then anarobic. Keep the milegae at 80 as long as its quality. Maybe your son slowed his easy pace down or ran too many junk miles. Could do 80 on singles.

Dont listen to Bingo.

yeah becuase overtraining never happens *sarcasm off

i don't think it would matter if he ran them too slow unless it were like 12 minute miles. he may have run too hard too much during his 80 mile weeks and he may have over trained or just be fatigued. I would do 80 mile weeks my frosh year of college with probably 75% of them @ 7:30-8 minute mile pace and i ended up running sub 15 that year. I dont think the 40-80 jump from summer to summer is the problem, most of the people on these boards are too afraid to get out there and put in the good mileage anyway. Just make sure when he jumps again to turn the intensity down when increasing the volume and maybe have 1-2 progressive runs a week, and a long run. Listening to your body is the most important thing.

NY Runner wrote:

Keep the milegae at 80 as long as its quality. Maybe your son slowed his easy pace down or ran too many junk miles.

please define 'quality' vs 'junk'

thanx

bump....i wanna hear the answer to this question

cali flyer: What was your 5k pb before your started running 80 mile weeks?