Big Increase in Mileage - What can i expect

Should be fine with 50 off the bat, maybe more, but of course everyone reacts differently. Make sure you pay attention to your resting heart rate and scale training accordingly.

I've noticed a fantastic increase in overall efficiency above 65 miles per week. At this point you are approaching 'big-boy training' and your body may start to change to reflect the mileage.

You shouldn't lose speed as long as you keep strides/fartleks (ie 'speed play') and hills a part of your training. l imagine you will see some big changes in both the 10km and 5km. Try to get a bi-monthly long run between 90 and 120 minutes, and once you're comfortable with the mileage, start focusing on longer tempos. If you aren't doing tempos currently, start at 1x 10-12 minutes or 2x minutes and from there build your way up towards 30 minutes or more.

You should probably also get your blood tested after your initial mileage jump.

In addition, do some non-linear work (lateral band walks, etc) and ensure your hips and groin are strong.

Best of luck! I'd like to hear where you're at fitness-wise in 10 weeks time.

I've got a 5km race on New Years Eve that i'm targeting. Will use this to see where i'm at but not optimistic about a PB as i'm not quite in the same shape as I was back in the summer.

I'm hoping by ramping up the mileage over the next 7 weeks that I can get fairly close to PB shape. I've got 7 workouts planned before the race (1 per week on thursdays) and the rest of it looks like this:

Monday: 6 miles with strides

Tuesday: 10 miles

Wednesday: 8 miles

Thursday: 5km specific speed session (8 miles including warm up/cool down)

Friday: 6 miles easy jog recovery

Saturday: 6 miles

Sunday: 12-16 miles

Hoping to pretty much do that every week between now and the end of the year. That's between 50-60 miles. The key being to keep this consistent and only take a rest day if I really need it on either Friday or Saturday.

Switch your Sat and Sun. Looks good otherwise

You need to incorporate a second workout into that schedule. Most likely making Tuesday a tempo run - 3M up, 6M tempo, 1M down or something similar. Could also do 2 x 3M, 3 x 2M, 4 x 1.5M, 6 x 1M if breaking things up works better for you.

I always liked the Daniels approach of increasing your mileage by the number of days run once per month.

I think you start right at 50 this month. Assuming you run 6 days a week, then 56 miles in December, 62 in January, etc. Be sure to take a down week here and there.

A stress fracture.

I like Ricky's suggestion.

I know everyone is different, but I would remove 5k specific work during mileage builds. For me, those workouts are too taxing to be done while upping the miles. If the goal is getting hard paced stuff in for a race, focus on that and not miles. If the goal is to up the miles, move the hard, fast stuff until later when you're accustomed to the extra pounding.

I also think if you do more miles and keep some strides/fartleks/tempos in there, you will find that you're in 5K PR shape come January. Even without the specific work.

Then come spring, after a few months of 'big boy' training, add in the 5k specific stuff and watch your PR plummet even more.

Be patient, though.

Thanks for all the replies. I suppose a question on the back of them all is can you gain speed through mileage without the specific speedwork? Like over time, the mileage increase would go along way to improving general fitness and speed would come or is that less plausible? Basically in terms of running age I’m fairly new and haven’t got this huge mileage base to start adding the nitty gritty stuff to. And in order to maximise potential part of me thinks building the biggest base I can get away with is more sensible.

I did this once and it worked well. I moved to a new town about 6 weeks out from the big HM, my first time racing that distance, and hadn't had time for a proper build-up before. So I unpacked and jumped to 60 mpw (after a bunch of days off and maybe 45 mpw before that). My average pace dropped and I felt pretty fatigued for the first few weeks. I backed off to 50 after 3 weeks, then a week back to 60 before starting to taper off mileage for the race. I ran well under goal pace, so it's doable.

In your case, you'll probably find that you can't stay at 60 mpw forever. At some point you'll need a down week, maybe after 2 weeks, or maybe after your race. Feeling tired is okay, but don't push the pace. Also, I don't know how sustainable this will be with 5K training. You might have to reduce workout volumes, at least for a while.

SilvioDante0212 wrote:

Thanks for all the replies. I suppose a question on the back of them all is can you gain speed through mileage without the specific speedwork? Like over time, the mileage increase would go along way to improving general fitness and speed would come or is that less plausible? Basically in terms of running age I’m fairly new and haven’t got this huge mileage base to start adding the nitty gritty stuff to. And in order to maximise potential part of me thinks building the biggest base I can get away with is more sensible.

It depends how you're using the term "speed." If you're thinking along the lines of sprint speed, say your 200-400m times, even 800, then no. Base usually won't help with that.

But it seems like you might be using "speed" more along the lines of 5k pace. I personally don't count that as speed, the 5k is still primarily an aerobic event. Your pace for 5k is around 5:40 a mile. And without much special training you can probably run 5 minute pace pretty easily and hit a 70 second 400. None of that will go away with a focus on base. It will actually all get easier.

With more miles (and a few strides/fartleks/tempos) you'll find that every pace from 5k on up gets easier. 5:40s will no longer be the struggle they once were. Even without busting out a ton of VO2 max workouts. It truly does feel magical. I've done some base builds in the past and I'm building up more mileage now. I just had a 10k PR a couple weeks ago off no serious speedwork. The race felt as hard as ever, but I was cruising along at what used to be my 5k race pace. The same is happening in my tempo workouts. I never have my watch show pace during these runs, I just feel them out. Each week I'm surprised to see what paces are feeling comfortable.

Yes, sorry. To clarify by speed I mean sessions specific to 5km/10km and improve my general running speed. I’ve never and will never race less than 5km. To be honest, my interest lies in the marathon and I’m having my first stab at the distance in April. All things are geared towards that really but I would like it if my times at the distances from 5km up to the marathon would improve as part of the process as I get fitter. I’m not interested in targeting the shorter races specifically it would just be nice for confidence if I can see my times at these distances come down with the extra training volume. I mean I’m not really looking to get drastically faster but more being able to maintain the little speed I have through to the marathon distance

This. ^

Don't worry about speed in the traditional sense. Embrace the 'miles of trials' and watch your times plummet. In fact, as others have said, you could actually drop the 5k work and focus on tempos for now. Save the race-pace work for spring.

If it's real speed you are after, you can always do full recovery 150's or 200's, or throw in a pre-workout 'ins-and-outs' warm-up where you run your turns hard, accelerating quickly and then jogging your straightaways very slowly, for 2 to 4 laps. Or finish a run w/ 4 x 200 @ working down to 800 pace. On tempo run days you can also do 4-6x60 meter sprints at 85-90%, or light-weight power cleans, both seem to prime to do a good job of priming the body and decreasing ground contact time. Hill bounds are your other option for lower impact speed building.

But 'speed' is what gets a lot of runners hurt. Bodies don't seem to handle hard speed sessions on a track the way they can handle longer slower stuff.

Also, I’ve always struggled with tempos and avoided them because I tend to run them to fast for my ability. I guess I try and run them quite close to a race pace. In the UK park run is very popular (weekly timed 5km) and I was running them quite hard every week as my tempo. Would you all recommend slowing the tempo down and running a bit longer than trying to run a hard fast 5km each week. I guess with my plan to increase mileage it would make sense to run a more comfortable tempo otherwise I’m just asking to get hurt. Thanks again for all the advice so far too - very helpful

"What can I expect whilst going through this increase?"

Resentment...you will be doing more running instead of doing other enjoyable things such as meeting friends, going for beers, hanging out with your girlfriend/wife.

Resentment from others...you won't be as available anymore due to your running commitments or you'll be tired and "hangry" all the time from your increased calorie requirements. People don't like to hang out with tired runners all the time. It's a drag.

Broke...you will need to spend more on food. You'll have less money to do the above things in my first answer. You'll have to buy shoes more frequently and you'll find you never seem to have enough clean shorts and will need to buy more.

Disappointment...you'll never be Eliud Kipchoge let alone Ryan Hall even in fat mode so you will wonder if it was all a waste of time when you drop the hammer on that 35 min 10k only to notice you are not even in the top 50 at your local charity 10k.

Have fun!

If your real goal is the marathon, then this base work is going to help you out even more.

As for running tempos too fast, that's super common. Especially if you're doing them in a race setting. Even if it is a more fun/low key setup like I hear many of the park runs are.

If it were me, I'd focus on longer tempo runs. The 20 to 25 minute tempo runs are the easiest to turn into races. Play around with things, but maybe for your next 10 mile run, go easy for 3 to 4 miles, and then go for 6 miles and try to just cruise. Don't worry about the pace on the watch or any mile posts or whatever. Just find a comfortably brisk pace and feel it out.

Feel free to keep doing the park runs every few weeks. But I'd probably end up doing fewer of them, and just run them hard and see what happens. Treat them more as a training race rather than a workout.

If you are interested in some of these training ideas, I'd recommend reading some of the JK posts on here. Also the HADD Running Document (google that and it will come up) is a great outline of basework. All of it focuses on training off heart rate, but honestly, it's all about aerobic miles, and the HR is optional.

I'm 29 as well, and recently went from ~45 mpw to 80 mpw (yes that big a jump), though my 5k at 45 mpw was around 16:15 in altitude. Within a month, I went from long runs being painful over 12 miles, to doing ~15 mile runs with the last 8 miles under 6 minute pace. Can do moderate runs at 5:45 pace instead of 6:10 pace. 10-12 mile easy runs are not too bad. I don't know exactly what to expect if I continue this for another couple months but it seems like really good things, because I feel all around really good right now, despite the large jump.

You'll need shoes more often.

crumpet wrote:

You'll need shoes more often.

The Hoka One One Rincon is a great shoe for marathon training

You're going to be more tired. If you find yourself tilting your head back with your mouth open during a post-run shower just lean into it.