Follow feel, or follow plan?

ya... you've got to get out of your own head. Stop thinking and just run. If you feel good, run more. After that, run faster. It really isn't that hard. Sheesh.

That doesn't answer my question at all, thanks troll.

Don't worry about the plan. If you feel good, then why not run further? Listen to your body. Don't overthink the mileage -- your body doesn't know the difference between 30 and 35. Maybe your original plan was a little too conservative. 35 miles isn't a lot, even at the beginning.

A mixture is best by far.

It is ideal to have a plan set out that covers at least a few weeks at a time, and then follow the structure. Don't try to follow it to the letter, this often leads to injury as people try to hit mileage targets whilst feeling terrible. If your plan appears to be over ambitious once you start actually putting it into practice, just tone it down.

Likewise, if you felt comfortable running 35 miles a week then do that for a few weeks. The load on your body is cumulative, after a while you will naturally feel ready to move up. It is possible that you could run 60 miles next week, but do that for a month or so and you may feel finished.

If you run completely by feel with no thought and planning you will find it hard to show consistency, specificity in your training and perhaps even progression.

I have to disagree. Summer base training for XC is limited to two months. He can't spend a few weeks at 35 miles! The summer will be half over and he'll have gotten nowhere.

He should absolutely be increasing his mileage every week. I'm not saying go from 30 to 60, but if he feels good at 35, there's no reason he can't do 40 the next week even if his original plan said 35 next week.

I'm afraid I have to disagree that you should rush to increase mileage. It is much better to be cautious than to try and increase mileage every week to fit your made up targets. This is the main reason people get disappointed with their running and encounter injuries.

Like I said if he does 35 for 3 weeks then moves up to 40 for another couple weeks and so on he will be far better off than trying to move up quickly to reach a number pulled out of the air.

The training he would have been doing isn't useless because it is less than 60 miles a week. He will be increasing the load on his body more than usual and adapt to that training provided he recovers properly (down to diet and sleep mainly). Point is, if he is doing more than he was he will be running and racing better than he was previously.

There is a reason this particular runner is starting from 20-30 miles a week and not 50, he probably isn't used to that kind of mileage.

You have to learn to run by feel. Start now. You'll never know your limits without approaching them. But don't rush it. And be careful when you enter new territories of training.

I think this depends on how much thought was put into the plan. Did you schedule fewer miles because you wanted to be able to add more later? Were you trying to avoid injury?

There are days where I feel great, but I scheduled myself to run 30 minutes and feel great, so there is no reason to add another 10-15 minutes. I accomplished my goal.

As long as you're improving, don't push the envelope too much just for the sake of more MPW