For a high school runner with a 40-50 mpw background as a sophomore last year, would an hour on my easy/recovery days be considered too long or pretty good? My last two weeks have been:
M- 60
T- 60
W- 60
T- 60
F- 60
S- 60
S- 75
Granted it's been boring as hell, I feel like I'm in the best aerobic shape of my life. By January, probably two of those days will be some sort of tempo/fartleck run, but I plan on keeping the hour easy runs.
60 minutes is good but I think upping to 70 would be money. It'll feel just as easy but it'll help more than you think. You'll thank me later.
sonofsam wrote:
60 minutes is good but I think upping to 70 would be money. It'll feel just as easy but it'll help more than you think. You'll thank me later.
He is already upping his mileage from 40-50 a week to around 70 miles per week and you are thinking he should do more. More is not always better and increasing mileage too fast is one of the biggest mistakes runners make.
Thought I should add that my runs range from 6 minute pace to 7 minute pace. Before my 75 minute long run, I basically just worked at getting to an hour every single day without switching anything up. The long run will eventually move up to 90 minutes.
Now what do you guys think about in season training? I still think I'll keep the hour runs, which would me more than I've ever done. My racing season training looks kinda like this:
Sunday- 60
Monday- 60
Tuesday- speed
Wednesday- 60
Thursday- speed
Friday- 30 if day before race/60 otherwise
Saturday- race/speed
Astro wrote:
sonofsam wrote:60 minutes is good but I think upping to 70 would be money. It'll feel just as easy but it'll help more than you think. You'll thank me later.
He is already upping his mileage from 40-50 a week to around 70 miles per week and you are thinking he should do more. More is not always better and increasing mileage too fast is one of the biggest mistakes runners make.
This is just during the base phase, but I get what you are saying. What would you suggest?
Also realized I was just posting under larry2. Wow I fail.
Throw in some tempo runs and strides after a couple weeks, they will be a good stepping stone to speedwork when the season starts.
larry2 wrote:
Thought I should add that my runs range from 6 minute pace to 7 minute pace. Before my 75 minute long run, I basically just worked at getting to an hour every single day without switching anything up. The long run will eventually move up to 90 minutes.
Now what do you guys think about in season training? I still think I'll keep the hour runs, which would me more than I've ever done. My racing season training looks kinda like this:
Sunday- 60
Monday- 60
Tuesday- speed
Wednesday- 60
Thursday- speed
Friday- 30 if day before race/60 otherwise
Saturday- race/speed
Sounds like a great plan. I was just going to say something about moving up to 90min long runs. You might want to back down the day after just to recover a bit. I ran a very similar schedule in high school, but did long runs Saturday and took Sunday as an easy recovery day (35-45min real easy). And as a few others have indicated, taking on some strides 2-3 times a week would be a good idea. I also agree on dropping the long run during the season. High school track is too short and to intense to bother with a long run most weeks. Your aerobic base from the winter will hold you over fine.
As far as adding in workouts over the winter, you could do a fartlek once a week, but if you are between 6 and 7-minute pace for most of your runs, you are already getting pretty good aerobic stimulus (unless you are a super-fast runner already), so adding on a tempo run AND a fartlek every week might be too much. I'd stick with straight mileage and possibly one "workout" per week. I put "workout" in quotes because it shouldn't be HARD like an in-season workout. You could do 30min fast during the middle of a run, or just do a traditional fartlek, with no time constraints or anything. Run fast until you start to feel tired, then run slow for a while, then fast, then slow...anyways, keep the structured workouts to once a week in the winter, and you'll probably enjoy your training a little more.
You mentioned that super fast bit. I'm a sub 4:20 miler and sub 9:20 2 miler looking to splash onto the bigger scene. I feel like this strength foundation will only help me in the now and in the long term.
60 minutes a day is great during periods where you're not doing hard workouts. You can still do fartleks and progression type stuff of course.
I found that once I started getting into hard track workouts, like 800's at 5k pace, 1600's at 10k pace, 4-5 mile runs at half marathon pace, and really anything at 3k pace or under, the 60 minute easy day was too much and I wasn't recovering.
So I dropped the easy days to 40 minutes and starting adding morning runs on my workout days. This allowed me to keep my mileage the same.
Increasing mileage too fast can lead to injury...unless they are running too little to begin with.
Everyone is different. I ran 80 mile week for along time until 1 day I decided to up it to 120 a week. That right! 40 more mile per week on a whim. I have been doing it now for quite a while with zero injuries.
How much improvement have you had?
From now I'd ask you guys to not have your answers swayed by the chance of injury. Obviously if I'm tired then I'll just slow down on the run. My 6-7 minute pace will surely slow down if I run hard workouts.
Run 75 on Wed or Thurday and make a couple of the other days 45 min. And of course you can always mess around with pace (instead of running 6 flat miles alternate 5:50/6:10 or whatever variation you like. The old start at 7 min or so and drop 10s ever mile after a couple mile warmup is also always fun).This is a pretty big volume increase. After 3-4 weeks, take a couple days easy. And if you are handling this easily, try some doubles over the summer.
bigboy wrote:
For a high school runner with a 40-50 mpw background as a sophomore last year, would an hour on my easy/recovery days be considered too long or pretty good? My last two weeks have been:
M- 60
T- 60
W- 60
T- 60
F- 60
S- 60
S- 75
Granted it's been boring as hell, I feel like I'm in the best aerobic shape of my life. By January, probably two of those days will be some sort of tempo/fartleck run, but I plan on keeping the hour easy runs.
It depends on how easy "easy" is. And on you. I suspect you can do it if you keep it to 5K pace + 2-3 mins/mile.
I specifically remember some days in XC where I would be so tired from the workout the previous day that I just ran at 8 flat pace. It's easy now to be in the low 6 minute range because that's all I'm doing.
Also, my in season mileage would only be 50 at the most, with most weeks being about 40-45ish. That doesn't seem like too much mileage to me.
Easy pace should never be timed.
I think 60 minutes for an "easy" day should be fine, but 60 minutes for a "recovery" run is too long.
Now everyone tell me how stupid I am and there is no difference between easy and recovery...
I'm having second thoughts on this. Maybe I should just do what my coach tells me to do.
biggus dickus wrote:
I think 60 minutes for an "easy" day should be fine, but 60 minutes for a "recovery" run is too long.
Now everyone tell me how stupid I am and there is no difference between easy and recovery...
There is a big difference in easy runs and recovery runs.