When Did You See Your Biggest Fitness Improvements?

It was between the ages of 20 and 23 when I took my mileage from 40-50 per week to 100-150.

Like Coach #46732 adding slogging both at the beginning and at the end of runs has always helped. I did it two weeks ago and this week I ran the fastest mile I have run in 30 months during a fartleck run. Faster than any repeat mile I had done over that time. I admit some of that time I was injured but...

The other training that helps me a lot is if I train a month or so until I have a solid daily training pace that I know I can run every day and feel like I am getting a solid workout. Then I switch every other day to fartleck where I run 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off but still average the same solid daily pace.

During my senior year of college, I dropped 36 seconds off of my 5000m pr.

I did not run until college, so I think the reason for the drop was simply the cumulative effect of training over time without any big gaps. The mile simply finally added up.

Progression:

Freshman year:

First 5k ever - 16:20 (indoors)

Last indoor 5k - 15:18

Last 5k of year - 15:12

Sophomore year:

Ran around 15:10, shifted focus to steeple.(mid 9:20s)

Junior year:

Ran 14:55, stuck with steeple (9:22)

Senior year:

Moved back to 5k/10k

14:19 (9:08 steeple)

Got away from the sport then came back to it as a master's runner and had another big improvement (from 15:58 to 15:29) after about 2.5 years of consistent running without a break.

Consistent volume over time is probably the single biggest factor assuming you are otherwise doing the basics (tempo efforts, long runs, smartly planned intervals and reps).

answer this.. wrote:

lease wrote:

When I did consistent doubles (~12 runs/week). Amazing improvement, almost immediately.

Haile Gebrasalassie said he only ever did singles. Who do you think had the most amazing improvement you or Geb?

Never seen that.

Geb makes it clear that he was careful to avoid too much stress. In his BBC Q&A session in 2002 he states: ‘I generally have 13 training sessions a week. On Sunday I only run once. Each week, I try to do 3 speed sessions, one long run (1½/2 hours) and one or two Fartlek sessions.

And: "I train twice a day every day, except Christmas." - Haile Gebrselassie

A lot of troll answers on the first page. To be honest, the thing that helped me the most and got me to where I did was just making things less complicated. Mostly, this meant I learned how to train off of feel. I used to look to the great running coaches like Jack Daniels, Vigil, McMillan, etc. and be obsessed with the pace calculator. Every day I tried to stick to what these formulas told me based on recent performances and all it did was make me RACE slower. Daniels has his easy days too fast, and McMillan had his steady states too aggressive...don't get me started on Vigil.

So, I got fed up with doing bad and just listened to my body more. I understood what a recovery run meant and went out for an easy feeling run. My distance runs were more relaxed, tempo runs became comfortably hard, 5k pace stuff was done at current 5k EFFORT, and so forth. I started off training slower than I had the past couple years but I ended up racing faster and faster...which meant training eventually got faster as well. I wasn't lining up perfectly with their calculator but was racing so much better.

I wanna go back and slap myself sometimes. Running is such a simple sport but us runner nerds have a tendency to over complicate it.

By normal training I mean that I didn't go through anymore of the hadd periods.

I typically did jack Daniels type of training, which before I'd always done for about 8-10 weeks pre-marathon after a 12-18 week hadd phase. Instead for those races I just did the daniels type training.

Looking back I know I switched because I got injured in spring 2008 and blamed it on the hadd training instead of me running 125 mile weeks and wearing myself down. I wish I'd stuck with it at least another year to see if I'd have improve quicker than I did.

Too late now, I'm old and have kids and all that and can't dedicate the time to run 110 miles a week for months at a time anymore, which is what it took for me to get where I was.

I think the most important factor for improvement is sustained, consistent training. I, unfortunately, am not a consistent runner. I train like a fiend for 6 months or so for a goal race but after the race I feel burnt out or get passionate about another sport/activity. I'm going on 8 months of continuous training now which is my longest continuous training since high school (I'm 30 to put that in perspective).

I did see a huge improvement when I upped my volume. I did a 1:36 half marathon in 2014 off 20 weeks of training with 10 weeks at 30-40 MPW. Then I spent 2 years fishing. In 2016 I ran a 1:24 off 20 weeks of training with 10 weeks at 40-50 MPW. For the longer races volume is certainly king.

When i lost my girlfriend.

Analdiction wrote:

When i lost my girlfriend.

Ya mean, Caster.

In my early 30's after I quit drinking.Seemed like losing 2 or 3 beers a night was like gaining 20 quality miles of running per week.

This is awesome. Thanks.

After 5 years of nearly uninterrupted training (runs at least 7 x week, maybe a couple periods of 1-2 weeks of for random foot pain) and simplifying my workouts, I set PRs in every distance except the marathon at the age of 29. Stuck to a schedule of 400s or 800s on Tuesdays, hilly medium long runs on Thursdays, and about 2hr long run on Sundays. Ran hilly, varied terrain and didn't get worked up about perfect conditions for workouts. 37:15 to 35:05 certified road 10k speaks to the magnitude of improvement. 60:00 to 58:30 10mile. 5k would likely have been sub 17:00, but I got violent food poisoning and landed in the hospital 4 days before penn relays (still ran, 17:20s, meh). Then I had an explosion of arthritis and hit 30 and got old and everything went downhill. I still see glimmers of that fitness, but I lost my base over the past few years.