In my latest warbling’s, I attempt to answer 2 age old questions:
1) How many miles should I run?
2) How fast should I run?
How many miles should I run?
Many runners want to improve their performance and become faster. Usually, the concept of increasing miles is an obvious choice as it helps to build an endurance base. But how much should a runner “run”?
The answer of course is not straight forward, but I would like to explore the concept of training in time rather than miles. Hopefully this article will explain why.
Distance of course is important as races are defined by distance. In particular, marathons require a concerted effort over a fixed period of time to prepare the body for race day. However for general training improvements it might be useful to think time on feet and not necessarily pace.
For example-
Say you train 3 hours a week and want to add another hour. For that additional hour of training, you effectively need additional recovery time. Some experts would equate that to another hour of sleep over the week. Therefore, if you haven’t got the time to sleep more then you haven’t got the time to train for that additional hour and if you did, it could be counter productive. The more time you train, the more recovery and rest you need.
Lets look at a professional athlete- they of course have all day to train and rest which many of us do not have. They also generally include a thorough warm up and cool down for every run, excellent nutrition, stretch and foam roll every day, include strength work and get between 8-10 hours of sleep on top of their down time. They do this all year round. Consistency is the biggest key to improvement.
So, not only would you benefit from additional sleep for the extra time spent training, ideally you would also need to find more time to stretch, foam roll, gym work, probably get a massage and try and keep this up over long periods of time (coupled with work/ family life/ non running related stuff). And importantly you need to be able to fuel your additional exercise. This is often an area massively overlooked by amateur runners and has resulted in increasing awareness of RED-S and associated disorders.
Therefore, sometimes when runners increase their training without looking at the other elements, they end up either injured/ exhausted or demotivated that they haven’t made any improvement.
So, I would always suggest ensuring that whatever level of training you can do, make sure it is relatively consistent week on week. If you do feel like you have further spare time then perhaps you weigh up whether you can support that extra training and instead consider spending it on the other ingredients that make a strong runner.
How fast should I run?
This then leads me nicely onto the subject of pace. Many runners are not always clear on how fast they should run during easy runs. Again, there is no definitive rule but many coaches and experts believe that runners should train to the 80/20 concept. That is, 80% of their runs should be easy whilst the other 20% is trained either at threshold or above threshold pace.
But how easy is easy?
A simple calculation would be to work out your pace for 5km. Your training pace ideally for an easy run would be 1 min slower per km than your race pace. Some literature even points to 1:30 a km slower.
e.g. If you run 5km in 25:00 mins then 80% of your runs should be at 6-6:30 mins/ km
But don’t overthink it. If you don’t like to look at paces then focus on maintaining an easy effort e.g. being able to have a full conversation with someone else. This also takes the pressure of having to target a particular distance during an easy run. If you just head out for 30 minutes or an hour, your body will soon settle into an easy pace for you. Or if you want to keep it really simple- save your legs for the hard training sessions and run easy when you don’t. Easy runs allow you to run harder when it counts the most.
Happy running 😊