I need to race real fast in 3-4 weeks. Right now I haven't been doing the best on doubling, in the past month only doubling 1 or maybe 2 days. I'm planning on doing doubles 5-6 days a week now, just tacking on an extra run of a few miles on workout days and easy run days. Will I see the results of this within the next 3 weeks? I haven't been having the best of workouts right now and I'm hoping this could help increase fitness and mileage without hurting recovery too much.
It took me about 3 weeks before I was injured.
Well I have doubled 3x a week before and gone up as much as 4 but not consistently. But due to a lot of factors this last month I only double once or twice a week.
maybe split the recovery days into 2runs for that day
I run doubles 6 days a week but can never tell if it works or not.
Hope that helps.
first try the triple wrote:
It took me about 3 weeks before I was injured.
Yep, same here.
I doubled in college 3 - 5 days a week on average (i am sure i did 6 sometime in there). I didn't start making large improvements like i wanted to until my junior year. I would have have become an All-American if I didn't double.
3 weeks is not enough time...at all. The extra miles you put in now will help you in a year.
Doubles wrote:
I doubled in college 3 - 5 days a week on average (i am sure i did 6 sometime in there). I didn't start making large improvements like i wanted to until my junior year. I would have have become an All-American if I didn't double.
3 weeks is not enough time...at all. The extra miles you put in now will help you in a year.
WOW, forgot an important word...should have read "I would NOT have become an..."
Adding in all those doubles just for a few weeks is actually more likely to make you more fatigued over the next few weeks in my opinion. Yea running twice in a day over the long term is probably easier on your legs and body in general, but it's something your body's got to get used to. If you haven't done it consistently then you are going to need some time to adjust.
If you need to race "real fast" in 3-4 weeks, you're better off leaving the mileage alone or dropping it a little bit and getting in some faster work... All you can do in 3-4 weeks is general sharpening...you're not going to really improve your strength too much in a couple weeks and adding in all those doubles won't do anything good for you in the short term in my opinion. Good luck.
See, my story is a little bit complicated. I thought I was supposed to race real fast 2 weeks ago and dropped my mileage, sharpened, the whole thing. Then I found out I was actually supposed to race real fast in 3 weeks... so I'm kind of scared that I lost fitness a lot and am trying to bring it back up now. I've done doubles 3-4x a week before. I would do doubles 5-6x a week for the next 2 weeks then bring it down to 3-4 times before my race. This is along with I am doing some workouts like tempo runs, strides, hills, so on.
bump
Stop worrying about minor races and just train solidly for a while, unless you're gonna get cut from the team or something like that.
Yeah, that's the reason why.
ask joemac on that daily 5 minute mile thread if he feels a fitness improvement by doing a strong effort every day. Maybe that would be better than doubling.
agip wrote:
ask joemac on that daily 5 minute mile thread if he feels a fitness improvement by doing a strong effort every day. Maybe that would be better than doubling.
^This. Don't double, just run fast all the time. Period. You're toast anyway.
agip wrote:
ask joemac on that daily 5 minute mile thread if he feels a fitness improvement by doing a strong effort every day. Maybe that would be better than doubling.
Maybe hell will freeze over, and bats will fly out of my ass on the same day?
What a silly question. How long until you feel the effects of 80mpw? How about 60 or 5 or 40? How long until you feel the benefit of lifting? How about core? How about nutritional eating?
Just do it consistently for several months and then race. No point in doing some doubles for 3 weeks and thinking it's suddenly going to make you faster.
FWIW, Jack Daniels said it takes atleast 10 days before a runner begins feeling the benefits of a workout.
I'm going to keep it going for the months past the next 3 weeks, but I kinda need a big improvement in the next 3...
If you're worried about your doubles negatively impacting your race in a few weeks, then just make sure that your doubles are very light and easy and short. Keep them at a duration/intensity that takes nothing away from your primary run, and don't adjust what you're doing with your primary training just because you're running twice a day.
It's OK if your secondary runs are short and easy (especially at first). It's OK if they're shorter than some magic number that someone says is the least amount of time worth the trouble of getting out the door. Even 15 minutes is great for a start--just get out there another time each day.
It may take months for you to notice a benefit from doubling, but I've also seen many people (including myself) notice a benefit after just a couple of weeks.
Don't kill yourself with your doubles, but do them (in such a way as you don't reduce your primary training) and you'll get faster.
Ralphy wrote:
FWIW, Jack Daniels said it takes atleast 10 days before a runner begins feeling the benefits of a workout.
I don't believe that for a moment.
The body adapts to hard work over 2-3 days (4-5 if you make yourself REALLY sore). If you have a background of doing the same stuff every day for a few weeks (be it steady running or XBox), then you introduce something new and strenuous then you will (a) get tired, (b) recover, then (c) supercompensate.
Try it. Do a solid 5 miles every second or third day; or move to the track and do 10x400m, or lift some weights. You'll probably get a measurable improvement from each of the first few sessions.
Now it's quite true that if you stack up a lot of sessions together and have a very hard period of training where you are testing your body's ability to recover, it can take 10 days or so to lighten up and feel fresh. But that's different.