Mileage Question

should read "if you guys..."

not

"what you guys think..."

7:00 would be fine if that would let you get your mileage up. Are you doing any tempos or fartleks during this base period? You could do one of those each week and then strides 2-3 times after a run and you'll be in good shape.

try starting out at 7:15 and working your way down..not only is that what seems to be the overriding the trend of most higher milage guys it also allows you to guage your effort and spread it over 9 miles a little better...

For example some days you'll feel fine picking it up to 6:30 and the end and other days 6:45 or 7:00 seems right. however if you start every day at 6:30 pace and when you hit mile 7 and realize that this wasn't 'one of those day' where you should have taken it out hard there's no way you can go back and run those first miles a little easier...you're already pretty beat.

If you run your harder miles toward the end you'll always have the option to just stay pretty relaxed and at least get the 8-9 miles in on days when you aren't feeling your best.

just a thought..

You're faster than me, so maybe I'm not qualified to offer an opinion.

But I don't think base season is a time when you're supposed to hammer every day. Go a bit further and slower. You can worry about speed later in the season.

Also, you could throw some workouts in. They don't have to be hard, but maybe twice a week do some easy speed work, and a weekend long run. Partly for maintenance, but partly to break your week up psychologically. I always found it easier to go for a run if I knew I was doing something interesting that day.

start doubling and soon you'll be able to run more than 7 at that pace.

Thanks for the help. I've done a couple of speed workouts. 8x400, 2x1600, etc. I mostly run alone because a couple of my training partners are injured at the moment. As a result I tend to go out pretty fast with the mindset of just getting the run over with. Sounds like I should try starting off more conservatively.

hs base trainer wrote:

I'm a senior 9:50/4:24 runner with a 15:55 5k. For most of my hs career I've functioned on low mileage, speed-based training. Also, up until this season I played basketball during the winter.

I'm in the middle of my base training, but I can never get farther than about 7miles or so. The runs usually feature some hills, and my pacing is around 6:30, but once I get farther than that, my pace drops off to 7:10-15. I'm wondering what you guys think it would be better to take the slowed pace and go for 8 or 9, or to keep with the usual routine.

Thanks

It doesn't matter if you never run farther than 7 miles per run at this point, at days you wish to run farther, simply run twice.

BUT, _most_ of the time you should be running at a pace at which you could easily run 2-3 times as far without undue fatigue. My advice: slow down at least 4 days/week.