Why not always run as hard as possible?

What the heck is maximum exertion?

I don't know if this is the best strategy for you (or even myself) , but when I run into limitation on available time and irregular schedule, I'll turn all my run into a progression run. Start with very easy recovery pace and then gradually increase to visit all paces, finishing with a sprint before easy cool down for 5'-10' or so.

You can play with how long you run at each pace. Generally more on the easy side, but I if there isn't much per week (say only 3 x 45') then I can extend the fast portion more. as I have more rest and can recover before next session. If you can do 4 x 45' per week near 10k race pace without problem, then I guess you can do it. May even increase the pace after a while.

Why not run those three hours as fast as possible holding your breath. That oughta do it.

there is no "best strategy" for the simple reason your objective is unobtainable, as is made clear from your own post.

I want to maintain my body's ability to absorb many miles per week...

with 3 hours total I won't even hit 30 miles.

obvious contradiction is obvious.

cheers.

umm what? wrote:

What the heck is maximum exertion?

Feel at the end of the exercise that I couldn't have exerted myself anymore. E.g. no "easy" or "comfortable" runs.

cotton shirt wrote:

there is no "best strategy" for the simple reason your objective is unobtainable

Of course there are better and worse strategies, for the simple reason that I can give you a clearly worse strategy: a single 3 hour slow jog per week.

I realize that I won't be able to maintain my current conditioning, but what's the best I can do?

just me wrote:

I don't know if this is the best strategy for you (or even myself) , but when I run into limitation on available time and irregular schedule, I'll turn all my run into a progression run.

Thanks for taking the time to read the post, and for the suggestion!

Because you will start to hate running and quit altogether.

The plan you laid out isn’t crazy. If that’s the time you have, that’s the time you have. You could do an easy run with strikeouts one day and then your next run do a tempo with 1 mile warmup and cool down.

Yes. Speed kills. You will get injured. It’s a hard lesson to learn by experience, but it’s what will happen if you try to always run at your limits.

It’s the easy mileage which brings about the greatest and safest long term gains. If you drop one thing because of time constraints it should be the speed work. It’s not nearly as important.

Easy miles built the base and boost recovery. The aerobic system responds slowly and requires a long time to develop. You can safely fine tune your running technique over time before increasing the intensity.

If you give up your base you will get faster for a while, then you will peak and burn out. Likely you will get injured after about 3 weeks unless you are very conservative with your warmups.

50 miles a week is really not a lot to begin with and you would be better served just putting in steady miles and throwing in some strides here and there as you feel like it. Your easy pace will also get faster with practice.

You can add in speed work later when circumstances allow it and you have the miles in your legs.

The body is changing all the time and the mind plays a part too. Injuries happen during build up because the part of the body are not suited for exertion at the same level. Endurance is low and the legs are strong. Then endurance is high and the feet ache. Feel good but the little muscles that balance out the stronger ones haven't developed sufficiently and are now nearing injury because slow longer runs were neglected. Or everything is fine but haven't worked out the stride yet and now the knees have reached the limit. Running for short periods at maximum leads to injury because the body is losing fitness but the parts are regressing at different rates. This is why someone can't start running with a 5 minute pace quarter mile and keep adding distance at the same pace.

Middle distance runners routinely have long runs many times longer than race distance in order to build a base that can be used up as they work on speed and race. Marathoners could similarly include 26+ mile runs in training, using PEDs to be able to run that far at a good pace and speed recovery afterwards.

Yes, you can do that. Do something like a progression run over hills and finishing with some strides. There was a seniior Japanese marathon, name who escapes me right not. Anyways, he did the same thing every day. Start and finish with easy running and would do something like 5 x 1k in the middle. Worked for him pretty well. Also, there was the German doctor, van Aaken while putting a good emphasize on LSD would have his runners finish with some harder efforts.

For some one who only wants to run 4 times a week for a grand total of 3 hours a week. How I would schedule such a thing. 15-20 minute warm up via easy jogging + strides + progression run or run over a hill course throwing in good hill surges + 15 minutes cool down might also do some strides or a few 200m reps

That should take you about 50-60 minutes, I know a bit long than you want. I would also highly encourage you to do some easy doubles on the other three days. You can always make time if you make it a priority.

I'm reading a book about the 4-minute mile. Roger Bannister was a second-year medical resident when he was training for the 4-minute mile attempt, and he could only run 35 minutes a day. He didn't have time to even warm-up or cool-down, and he ran hard for the full 35 minutes. Now, all of this assumes that the book I'm reading is correct. Anyway, there's this one anecdote that gets at the notion of what you've conceived.

From Alex Hutchinson:

"That moment of gentle culture shock has been on my mind as I process the news that Roger Bannister, the Oxford medical student who famously ran the first sub-four-minute mile in 1954 while training during his half-hour lunch breaks, died on Saturday at the age of 88. "

https://www.outsideonline.com/2286036/what-we-can-learn-roger-bannister

This is an interesting thread. We need more like this one.

There is a thing called periodization and it came to be because the body and mind need variety. Perhaps a man might improve most in the 10K if he did nothing but long distance and some interval training of 400 to mile repeats. You would need to run most of that work at near your goal 10k pace.

But many have experienced getting injured while sprinting 50 meters even though they were daily runners and marathoners. I bet there are also many people who have gotten injured while doing a 2 mile jog with a slow friend. (This happened to me on a tight YMCA indoor track...it aggravated some old plantar fasciitis.)

The best training has multiple speeds. Muscles work differently at different speeds. Some say you can actually rest muscles during a race by adjusting your stride length and cadence.

Also it seems as though easy long distance prepares you for the harder faster stuff later on. Plus I like to do sprints and strides while building my base. Then after you have built your base you do three basic types of training...

Long run, Intervals (speed endurance), and sprints (speed development or specific speed endurance).

But you can only do the "peaking," type stuff for so long. So each year, or for some even more often, you must return to

base training. Joe Newton used to say, the wider the base, the higher the pyramid the Egyptians could build, and that is just like distance running. I believe they also do that in swimming training.

I think the OP should do every run all out wearing ankle weights. He will take them off for his first race and be even faster.

first you should very very rarely do a workout at "maximum exertion" because you save that for your race effort. And you might not get injured but you will burn out extremely quickly and hate running

I would think theres a more important question you should be asking yourself: Why are you expecting to be able to maximize your race pace if youre only willing to put 3 hours a week into running?

Yeah, you might get a few good races with this strategy, but you are not going to develop as a runner and chances are you will give up on it. Theres just not really any shortcuts to developing your aerobic system so if youre serious about racing just get up 30 minutes early 3 days a week and do an easy shakeout

So the OP's idea is basically to drop all easy days and just do workouts. I've tried this when I got injured with a month to go in the season. Long story short, it's not a good way to heal an injury but it does keep you racing fit for a while (a few months anyway). Combine this with a lot of lifting and circuit-training and it resembles Coe's training so maybe its viable for mid-d.

3hr-marathoner wrote:

So the OP's idea is basically to drop all easy days and just do workouts. I.

Easy days aren't workouts?

It's already be done, it works great for some people and I train in that exact way.

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=309865

Hard/easy and lots of slow miles is not the only way to train.