I am testing my limits. The plan: run an all out mile until my legs tie up, and I collapse. Trying to see how far I can last, and how many days in a row I can maintain this plan before something makes me stop. Also, once I get the appropriate data, I'll take a few days off, and see what I can do after the break, then resume typical training, and see if this has any long lasting benefit or detriment. Baseline mile time: 4:36. Wish me luck.
One mile a day. 365 miles per year.
Your mileage is too low.
For clarification, are you running a mile or running until your legs tie up and you collapse each day?
Also are you doing a warmup/cooldown or just slamming a mile straight out of bed in the morning?
Tell us the results when you have them. I'm curious and have considered this approach. I know conventional wisdom is that you should alternate easy days with quality days and vary the type of workout, etc. Yet, I kind of think that actually running the race you are targeting to improve is the best way to do it, unless the day-after-day intensity is just too much and leads to injury. Curious if you have gradual improvement vs. plateau vs. peak and valley days. My guess is improvement in early stages but quick plateau followed by some trough days in the middle but who knows.
running as fast as you can until you drop will get you to about 175 meters, not 1 mile.
I predict you will see improvement as long as you can stay mentally sharp. But the mental side will be hard to maintain. Going to defcon 4 on every run is going to take a serious toll on your psyche.
agip wrote:
I predict you will see improvement as long as you can stay mentally sharp. But the mental side will be hard to maintain. Going to defcon 4 on every run is going to take a serious toll on your psyche.
Great answer. Eventually (like by week 2) the OP will some days just not feel motivated to give the 100% race-like effort he was planning. His body (or mind) will naturally force him to take some "easy" days even if that easy day means he simply does the mile that day in 5:05 instead of 4:48 or whatever he busted out the prior day. There's a reason there is usually only one track meet per week.
Good questions, needs clarification. I will still warm up, cool down (hopefully), treat it like a typical race, scheduled everyday. Although for the mile, I will not pace it as a mile race, saving for the last lap, but not like a 100m either, otherwise it will be useless. I will run at a pace appropriate to the day, at a maxed out mile pace, which I laready know is 4:36 (68.5ish). So at first that may be 60-62(?), but I would imagine it will soon be slower than 68.5, as I start feeling the effects of day after day.
As far as the low mileage, this is just an experiment, so I want to see if the all out efforts have a benefit or detriment on the subsequent normal training, and also any effect on the first mile time trial after a brief recovery break upon ending the experiment.
Go for it... i like it.
This is exactly what I did when I started running as a middle schooler. Had no idea what I was doing and no coach but somehow got the idea that this was how you become a fast miler. After about 2-3 weeks I plateaued at 6 flat (not trying to impress anyone with that) and after that I found it very taxing mentally to do it every day. It felt pointless to be working so hard without measurable gains.
Do it. Your not good enough that you are wasting your running career, it's just an experiment that will be interesting to see how you handle it.
I tried to do this for all of 2012. My mile PR is under 4:10 and my 10 mile PR is under 53:30. I lasted until January 26th before I could do no more. I ended up with an IT band injury followed by a hamstring injury that kept my mileage below 30 mpw until August.
Im interested. If you actually are doing this then it would be really cool if you bumped this thread everyday and tell us your times,splits, and how the mile went. I could see myself following this for awhile.
Roger Bannister did something similar to this, though he wasn't running every day. He would just go balls to the wall three or four days a week because he was busy with med-school stuff the other days, if I remember correctly. I always wondered about this approach.
Running a mile until you drop would require ridiculously perfect pacing. You're going to plan the whole run so that you collapse after running exactly 1609.344 meters? And you're going to do this more than once?
Yeah France wrote:
I tried to do this for all of 2012. My mile PR is under 4:10 and my 10 mile PR is under 53:30. I lasted until January 26th before I could do no more. I ended up with an IT band injury followed by a hamstring injury that kept my mileage below 30 mpw until August.
lol i tempo 10 miles in under 53:30 every week.
Sounds like training they were doing in 1912, not 2012.
run to the limit wrote:
As far as the low mileage, this is just an experiment, so I want to see if the all out efforts have a benefit or detriment on the subsequent normal training...
Does this mean you're still training normally and just doing this in addition, or this is the only "training" you're doing?
I guess this isn't happening?
We should conclude that he only had 1 fast mile in him. Wonder if it improved his fitness?