Increased mileage at slow pace, improved a lot, increased easy pace, improvement slowed. What should I do?

try dropping your mileage first

Slow down. 7:30-8:00.

My easy pace has never really changed whether I was a 4:5X miler or a 4:20 miler.

Slow down the easy runs. Even slower than 8:15 is fine due to the increased mileage.

Back off the hard workouts. Go back to tempos and threshold. Those are probably too fast as well. A lot of runners do their workouts too fast, especially tempos and thresholds.

65 at 8:15 pace is really really different than 100 miles at 7:00. Make those easy days much slower. I can understand how they feel fine in the middle of them, but they are clearly piling up and wearing you down.

If it were me, I'd drop to 80 miles or so, slow everything down, and then bring the miles back up. But only if I was feeling great and running fast again.

Sounds like you are are training to run 100mpw, not run a faster mile time.

You should consider running by minutes rather than miles.

When you were running 65 mpw at 8:15, that’s like 76 minutes average per run

100 mpw at 7:00 is like 100 minutes average per run (if it’s in singles). If you are doing double now that you weren’t before, then it could be you are actually doing the same training you were before, just faster so you are not recovering.

Do you have a coach? I feel like you are pretty aimless right now.

wat to do wrote:

I built up from 40 mpw to 65 mpw and went from 4:40 in the 16 to 4:27 in a season, all easy miles at 8:15+ and lots of thresh work. Now I do 100 mpw w/ easy days around 7:00 and I’m not really much faster after 6 months of this (yes, still do hard workouts). Should I slow back down? I feel okay, but I didn’t feel much better on the slower easy days, but I raced a lot better comparatively to my training. Thoughts?

How old are you?

wat to do wrote:

I built up from 40 mpw to 65 mpw and went from 4:40 in the 16 to 4:27 in a season, all easy miles at 8:15+ and lots of thresh work. Now I do 100 mpw w/ easy days around 7:00 and I’m not really much faster after 6 months of this (yes, still do hard workouts). Should I slow back down? I feel okay, but I didn’t feel much better on the slower easy days, but I raced a lot better comparatively to my training. Thoughts?

Excluding the good advice you got from others regarding paces, it is important to know that going from 40 mpw to 65 mpw will bring MASSIVE improvements to any runner, but going from 65 mpw to 100 mpw already a lot less. Many people are close to their potential in the mile on 65 mpw, VO2MAX doesn't improve much anymore after doing 65 mpw (Daniels).

What would be more relevant is your 10k time on 65 mpw and now on 100 mpw. If you got faster over 10k, the training is working. Keep in mind how fast you will be able to race a mile is largely determined by your VO2MAX, and no amount of mileage can suddenly turn you into a 4 min miler. The people I know who run 4 min miles already run 4 min miles at 65 mpw, and 4:20 at 30 mpw.

65 mpw is plenty enough for a mile.

Focus more on the contrast of the intensities of each work outs. Easy should be REALLY easy. Long should be REALLY long. Tempo should REALLY be tempo etc.

Don't mix the intensities in each type of work outs. No need to have a half tempo/half long work out. Or half easy/half fartlek work out...

45 to 100mpw training for a 1600?

0/10

I’m a college freshman, coach isn’t super involved in my training. The workouts aren’t ball buster, lots of thresh like before. I’m 18. 3200 last year went from 10:45 to 9:55 and my 3k this year has been 8:55 so far. That is improvement, but my 5k is only 15:50, which is weird to me. I did doubles 5 - 7 days a week last year, this year is the same. Last year I could also kick hard at the end of a race and now it feels like I’m too fatigued unless it’s a slow first 3/4. I just want to know if maybe it’ll help to keep the easy pace fast for like XC this fall or if I’d be better off just slowing down and maybe feeling slightly better in workouts and races?

This is from Kenny Moore's training, former Oregon runner, who came in fourth in the 1972 Olympic Marathon (PR 2:11):

Training Plan Basic cycle of three hard workouts ( one long run, one short - interval workout, one long interval workout or pace run workout) followed b, taking care to do sufficient easy days after each for FULL recovery. Cycle was longer than one week.

Sample one week Run in Norway during August 1972 while preparing for the Munich OG 96 miles

Su 30 miles in 3:03 over hilly terrain, smooth largelyunpaved roads

M AM 3 mile jog PM 3 mile jog, stretching

TU AM 3 mile jog PM 3 mile jog, stretching

W AM 3 mile jog PM 16 x 330 1st 15 in 45s last in 42s 100 jog in 60s, for recovery, 5 mile easy run, 4 x 100 strides @ 7/8 effort

H AM 3 mile jog PM 3 mile jog, 20 pull ups

F aAM 3 MILE JOG PM 3mile jog

S AM 3 mile jog PM 8 x 1200m in 3:21 ( last one in 3: 12)400 JOG RECOVERY, 5 mile easy run, 4 x 100 strides @7/8 effort effort

Favorite workoutFavorite and "most valuable' might well be at odds. I loved the 30 to 35 miles runswith all my perverse soul. The most valuable is hard to pick, because ALL the bases ( speed, endurance, threshold building) had to be touched.

You look at this and think how in the world could he be that good with so many easy days. But some guys need more easy days, truly easy days, than others. And for many runners, although not all, they improve when the easy days are really easy, and the hard days really hard (of course, what matters is what the hard days look like, and what worked for Moore wouldn't necessarily work for anyone else).

What do you mean by "not really much faster?" It seems that you actually are faster than 4:27 now from what you've written. As you approach your limit improvements are going to come in increasingly smaller increments. You could just be coming to the end of the improvement line.

wat to do wrote:

I’m a college freshman, coach isn’t super involved in my training. The workouts aren’t ball buster, lots of thresh like before. I’m 18. 3200 last year went from 10:45 to 9:55 and my 3k this year has been 8:55 so far. That is improvement, but my 5k is only 15:50, which is weird to me. I did doubles 5 - 7 days a week last year, this year is the same. Last year I could also kick hard at the end of a race and now it feels like I’m too fatigued unless it’s a slow first 3/4. I just want to know if maybe it’ll help to keep the easy pace fast for like XC this fall or if I’d be better off just slowing down and maybe feeling slightly better in workouts and races?

8:55 is significantly faster than 9:55 already, but it does sound like you're overreaching. Run the easy days as slow as you feel like and see what happens.

Doesn’t a 4:27 indicate much faster than a 9:55 though? And shouldn’t I be faster in the mile? Because so far I’m not. And why would my 3k be “improving” when my mile and 5k (mainly the 5k) are not improving even with a lot more miles? I feel like improvement would slow down if I maintained or barely increased my workload, but I increased mileage 53% and pace 14% at the same time, workouts are faster, but similar effort.. just seems like everything points to racing faster, but I’m not.

Sorry that’s sort of a rant. Today instead of going my normal pace, I went as slow as I could while still running and not jogging and went 7:30s for 10 mi and my hr was barely over 130 (max is somewhere between 190 and 200) so I don’t think I was over trained or anything.

To the Kenny Moore guy (can’t see username while typing this reply), my problem while reading about this is you have stars like Kenny Moore doing what I used to do (or the other way around) and then you have guys like amp Farah (or any Salazar athlete) who went from that to glossy easy days and improved a lot. I’m trying to figure out what I should do and why, but not find examples just to support my bias. I wanna think long term.

HRE - you think I’m finding my limit after only 2 years of consistent training (and 3 years before that of social running 30 mpw)?

Again, sorry, my thoughts aren’t very well put together right now.

Slow back down to 8 min pace.

Mo* Farah

from that to faster* easy days

Typing on a phone.

Patience dude. What are you, 19? And as you say, you've been training for a few years. Give it time.

Run lots of miles, most of them easy, do some tempos, do some strides, occasionally do some really hard workouts (but not too often), or race regularly.

That's it. Do it for years. And years. You can't spend time quibbling over whether your should mirror your training on Moore or Farah when you're a few years into the game and 19 years old. I know what you're thinking about with Farah. Salazar dramatically increased the pace of his easy days and he saw improvement. Farah was like 27 when that happened. He had a decade of solid, boring, regular training under his belt before then.

I understand the feelings of impatience. I was there. There is no way to solve that, though. Just relax and run. Then do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And just make sure to not burn yourself out.

I don't know what your limits are. It's unlikely you've reached ALL of your limits but lots of people never get under 4:30 for the mile so it's possible. Really, I was wanted to point out that from your post it seems that you still ARE improving somewhat and to find out how much. Even if you haven't reached your limit you will improve in smaller increments as you get closer to it even if you're not there now. I still don't know how much you've improved since the 4:27. All of that said, logically, if you feel like you've regressed a bit when you started doing your easy runs faster it seems the best thing to do is to run them slower.

ThatAverageRunner wrote:

Slow down. 7:30-8:00.

My easy pace has never really changed whether I was a 4:5X miler or a 4:20 miler.

I'm the same. When I ran 4:40 I ran 25mpw at 7:30 pace whereas now I run 70mpw still at 7:30 pace and run 4:17.