Is There Value In Having One Big Mileage Week?

She has enough steady mileage in her legs that she most likely wouldn't get hurt, but I question why it's even worth the attempt. Is she currently plateauing in her performance and you believe she needs a jolt? I'd think a strong endurance workout followed by increasing her long run that same week would do a better job of that without increasing her weekly mileage more than a couple miles. Going from 40 to 50 you're most likely going to simply add easy mileage anyway.

Thanks for the response, she's not plateauing, but I eventually want her to get up to 50 miles regularly, so I feel like this is an easier route than just slowly raising the volume. So basically her weekly mileage would be:

41

42

41

50

40

50

50

...and so on. What would you consider a "strong endurance workout?"

Bump, Im curious

IIRC Renato once suggested somebody do 80, 80, 100, 80, 80, 100 for weekly miles - that is, modulation between weeks (some harder than others). So maybe you have a worthy idea there.

That's interesting. One thing to keep in mind is that her focus is on running the mile in the spring, so we're shooting to peak in late May and early June. So it's not like her times this winter are super-important. Thanks for posting that.

Hard easy has been a staple of training for 50+ years. A couple up weeks and then a week or 2 down is pretty standard. One week of high mileage (i.e. even going up to 60 or so) doesn\\\'t injury most people. It is when they decide to string 3 or 4 weeks of this above average (for them) mileage together that most people get injuried.

SlipperyPete1340 wrote:

Thanks for the response, she\\\'s not plateauing, but I eventually want her to get up to 50 miles regularly, so I feel like this is an easier route than just slowly raising the volume. So basically her weekly mileage would be:

41

42

41

50

40

50

50

...and so on. What would you consider a \\\"strong endurance workout?\\\"

I know that hard/easy weeks is used in many people's training plans, but I was wondering specifically if people had experience doing this with high school kids, particularly high school girls. I guess I'm nervous that a big jump in mileage will result in injury/burnout. On the other hand, I think it's got a lot of benefits, so I'm torn.

If you're torn between the two, then something is telling you the 50 may be too much.

Perhaps you can think in shorter terms than an entire week. Bump up the normal 40 mpw pattern to a 50 mpw pattern, but only keep it there for 2-3 days, and come back down for recovery. This will be a nice shot of stimulus, with a lot less chance of overdoing it by going for an entire week on the first try. Play with a 3, 4, or 5-day up cycle, and then take on the full week whenever you are more confident of it.

I makes sense to use "cycles". A daily cycle of various mileage and weeks of various mileage, incorporating easy weeks as well as easy days.

Dr. Jack Daniels done a training video on Flotrack where he advocated making larger mileage jumps instead of small incremental steps each week. Make a big jump and then stay there for 3 or so weeks to let the body adjust.

If I get time I will search on Flotrack and post it here.

Thanks again for the replies. @More than you think, I guess my concern is that she's currently doing well (just ran an 11:40 2 mile, 3:12 1000 double) so on some level I don't want to mess with things. On the other hand, while she's currently very good for a high school junior, maybe in order to become great we should try to bring the mileage up.

@joho, that'd be great if you could pull that up, you don't have to kill yourself finding it though!