Sorry if this post is unusually navel-gazing of me, but I’ve got lots of friends who have a lot more experience than I do running and I’m hoping to get their feedback. I started running regularly back in May and I’ve been trying hard to increase at a slow, steady pace so that I don’t injure myself (which is what I did when I started running last year, and I hated it). I’ve done 7 weeks now, and everything was going great until I ran into some moderate pain after my run on Saturday.
I iced my leg on Saturday and then again a couple of times on Sunday and today I opted for my circuit training instead of running, but I decided I wanted to get a more organized plan. I was partly inspired by this article about a Richmond area woman who is running the Tour de France route. No worries, I’m not planning any extreme events because I also read this article about how extreme endurance running can actually cause trauma to your heart. My main goal–other than the sheer love of running–is to be live a long, active life so that my kids have me around for a long time. Apparently, somewhere around 20 miles / week is the optimum there, which is lower than I expected. So here’s my plan.
The red line is my actual weekly mileage total for each of the last 7 weeks. The green dotted line is what happens if I apply the pattern that Zoe Ramano used for her training: increasing by 10% a week but using every 4th week as a recovery week. (I don’t know how much she cut mileage for those weeks, I cut mine down to half of the prior week.) The blue dotted line is what I’m planning on running from now on (starting with a recovery week right now to go easy on my leg), and so it pretty much matches the green dotted line from here on out.
I keep the 10% increases going until I hit 36 miles because running 6 miles 6 times a week sounds like fun to me. I figure at some point I’ll probably modify that, maybe by picking up swimming or something for the winter months, but for now it’s just a goal to shoot for. Along the way, I’m cutting back on the total mileage per run and running more frequently during the week. The 17.11 miles I did last week were in three runs, the 17 miles I’m going to do next week will be split across 4, and I’m planning on increasing slowly to 6 days a week while keeping per-run mileage more or less constant before I start to ratchet up the miles again.
So… what do y’all think about this plan?
I’ve been told by friends of mine who run more, (or at least who’ve read more about it) that I should follow some kind of plan, but I just run based on how my body feels, and groping my way along with intuition.
I had a relay race that included an 11-mile leg, so my plan was to be comfortable running that distance. I had shin/calf problems when I tried to ramp up too quickly in the past but when I added a couple miles per week (spread over 3 or 4 runs) I did fine, until I was at 6-7 miles on the weekday runs, which seems about reasonable for me. I slowly increased my Saturday run until I was around 12 miles. Goal met. Once I got there, I decided to drop the mileage on weekday runs, opting to do speed work to increase my pace. I kept the long Saturday run at the slower pace.
And that’s where I’m at right now. I’m slowly getting faster (got a personal record 5K pace on another leg of that relay), and I try to keep it at 3-4 runs a week, with a weights workout on my days off, and a rest day on Sunday. I’m currently not running at all, because I hurt my feet cliff jumping last week and plan on getting well before pushing it some more.
I don’t know if any of that’s particularly helpful to you, but it looks like you’ve got a similar plan going, but with the end result of longer runs / more total miles which I’m not interested in myself. If your body’s like mine, I guess you’ll end up with similar results, ie: you’ll hit your goal. Personally, I’d take more than one day a week off. I’ve got an ultra-marathon neighbor who takes Thursday and Sunday off. The guy literally runs 100-mile footraces.
YMMV obviously, and in this case, literally.
Thanks, Tyler. I didn’t really start out with a plan either because I plan and set goals all the time and never meet them. It’s depressing. But, in my case, it’s important to limit myself or I’ll get over-excited and run too much and get hurt. When I’m out there running, I just always want to go farther. Always.
So, I figure the plan may be important to try and restrain my ambition.
And you’ve mentioned one of my big concerns: at some point I want to start doing more serious strength training or something, and when that happens it probably won’t fit in with running every day. Or maybe running every day (6 days a week, anyway) is just intrinsically a bad idea. I dunno.
I figure I’ll stick with the plan over the next 3-4 weeks and during that time I might revise it, based on feedback like yours. For example: I really like the idea of keeping weekday runs consistent and emphasizing a really long Saturday run. I’ve only run 10 miles once, but I really enjoyed it.
I’ve been running 15-30 miles a week for the last 4-5 years and doing races up to half-marathons. I suggest incorporating an active warmup (http://www.runnersworld.com/stretching/dynamic-warmup-runners, http://www.runnersworld.com/stretching/dynamic-routine )
and spending $20 on a foam roller, to be used before and after workouts and before bed.
Also, I’ve transitioned completely to minimalist footwear (Vibram Bikila LS, Merrel Trail Glove), and found that I have far fewer injuries and issues. However, it took a year or so to transition away from regular running shoes.
I also track pretty obsessively (GPS/Heart rate watch, Trainingpeaks.com) so I can identify patterns of over-running.