Miles vs. Minutes

I run kilometers.

As a high school coach, I'll say that minutes work better for simplicity's sake. It's easier to have them all run for a 50 minute out and back than to assign, individually, everything from 8 miles to 5 miles.

However, using minutes also makes the athletes less accountable for their own work ethic. A crawl at 50 minutes is still 50 minutes, and they figure this out pretty quickly. There's not as much of a downside (or chance of happening) with a kid blasting a run assigned in miles to finish in 2 minutes less time, or, conversely, slogging through 8 miles and costing themselves extra time.

For a dedicated athlete training himself, it should make almost no difference. You should know the purpose of the run beforehand and doing it in minutes or in miles should have little affect on the outcome. If I'm coming up with my own runs, I should be able to easily convert between the two based on my desired effort for that day. In other words, there's a distinction but no real difference.

I use distance for most runs. But for sub-threshold work I use minutes. The goal is to be able to sustain a constant high effort/HR for as long as possible.

I prefer minutes because that allows me the latitude to improvise training routes in the absence of GPS.

i think the whole idea of minutes is crap; unless you're running treadmill, out and back, or on a track, you've already pre-planned your workout based on the time allotment. you're still planning for distance, you're just putting some kind of a time restraint, which most non-elite coached runners would typically tend to slog rather than attempt to complete, in an attempt to recover from previous workouts.

if you're just some random dude running for time and pushing yourself, go right ahead, but if you're instructing someone else they'll likely take advantage.

kadoo wrote:

i think the whole idea of minutes is crap; unless you're running treadmill, out and back, or on a track, you've already pre-planned your workout based on the time allotment. you're still planning for distance, you're just putting some kind of a time restraint, which most non-elite coached runners would typically tend to slog rather than attempt to complete, in an attempt to recover from previous workouts.

if you're just some random dude running for time and pushing yourself, go right ahead, but if you're instructing someone else they'll likely take advantage.

You could say exactly the same for distance.

The problem with most dedicated runners isn't that they slog, but rather that they run too fast.

Can't find it, but there was a thread a while back talking about capillarization in running for X amount of minutes. Example I somewhat remember: At 55 mins, you will gain 500 (random number) capillaries, and each minute after that, an extra 50 (random), so 60 minutes is not THAT much better than 55.

Nobody "takes advantage" of minutes. I mean, we're all running to get better, aren't we? So why are we going to try to get out of training? My college team ran by minutes and we actually had the opposite problem - people would hammer runs all the time.

Lately I've been telling my kids that I want X miles in Y-Z range of minutes. Our top kids know they should be on the fast end and it still gives the JV kids an appropriate target without having them think they are "too slow" because they are behind the top guys. I've also found that our top guys will pull the younger ones along and get them started at a decent pace, letting them drop off later on in the run.

I've also started purposely designing A and B workouts and adjust who is in which group depending on how they're feeling each day, injury status, etc. Sometimes a B kid is doing well so I'll move him up. Sometimes an A kid is having a bad stretch, so I'll drop him down a bit.

Using minutes is a good way to organize a recovery run, but I like giving them strict parameters to attempt to curb slacking off..

I prefer minutes, personally. Its quite hard to accurately measure distance.

I would advocate using both, set the goal length of the run in either time or miles and then measure both units to fully record/understand the workout.

Neither distance nor time make sense without at least some reference to the other.

Even if you go out for a 60 minute run, in the back of your mind you know you were probably somewhere near X pace and can easily ball-park estimate your miles for that run. Same is true for running by miles.

on non workout days, I run minutes then give that time a distance on my perceived effort . For example: easy 35:00 in the AM, call it 5 miles. easy 1:00:00 in the PM, call it 9. That's my system, no need to get worked up about specifics.

This is exactly what I do.

Indianapolis Jones wrote:

on non workout days, I run minutes then give that time a distance on my perceived effort . For example: easy 35:00 in the AM, call it 5 miles. easy 1:00:00 in the PM, call it 9. That's my system, no need to get worked up about specifics.

Minutes make much more sense.

You are supposed to keep your heart rate/effort at a certain level for a certain amount of time. Simply running a designated distance at a specific pace will be hit or miss. Minutes and heart rate/effort are a much more accurate and optimal way to train.

both

minutes for easy/recovery days. miles otherwise.

/thread

Wtf. I didn't even know that real runners go by minutes.

162430 wrote:

This is exactly what I do.

Indianapolis Jones wrote:

on non workout days, I run minutes then give that time a distance on my perceived effort . For example: easy 35:00 in the AM, call it 5 miles. easy 1:00:00 in the PM, call it 9. That's my system, no need to get worked up about specifics.

Its easy for you to cheat. You may be running far slower than you anticipate, but you will still call it 9 miles.

I always use miles.

It takes the guesswork out of it.

Honestly cough up the 100 bucks for a GPS watch and do both. To appropriately train one's self they should be keeping track of both miles and minutes, this way you can track daily and weekly mileage, while at the same time tracking average paces and be able to properly watch and make changes as necessary.

Personally I run by miles, but I keep track of my time and pace for every run, I'll tend to run many Workouts and Fartleks by Time though, so I can get the desired time of elevated work in, but by the end of the workout I will know exactly how far I've run and the pace that I ran in.