Written By Steve Jackson
That’s how long I’ve been running and a good estimate of the miles covered. That’s a lot of years, some wear & tear, and occasional tears along the way. So much of the advice I give out comes from the experience I’ve gained over the time and miles; a good deal of it from the blunders and slipups I’ve suffered.
I know a number of you are itching to start your next cycle of training for a fall marathon, 5K, or any distance race; now seems like a good time to explore some of my past errors in training that I hope you can avoid.
1. Increasing Mileage Too Quickly
Most runners know this is often a cause of soreness and injury and ask what the best way to do this, especially if you want to run a longer race and/or improve on endurance from previous races. Well, there are two ways that I’ve used:
1. The standard 10 % Rule, that is don’t increase your mileage by more than 10% in any given week. If you are lucky enough to be young, or somewhat new to running, you could go a little higher say 20%. If you are older, injury prone or are already at a higher weekly mileage, then you may want a little less than 10%.
2. As I got into my 60’s and was no longer running 7 days a week (yes some of us knuckleheads did this back in the day) and had dropped to 4 or 5 days a week, I would add a 5th or 6th day of easy running. Examples: If you are currently running 3 days a week for a total of 17 miles try adding a day of an easy 3 miles bringing the total week to 20. If you are currently running 4 days a week for a total of 25 miles try adding an easy day of 4 miles and add 1 mile to an existing day for a total of 30 miles.
2. Running Too Fast Too Often
What exactly do I mean by this? Well, simply put, it’s running all your daily runs at a pace that doesn’t allow for recovery. Most of ours runs should be at the famous conversation pace, we should be able to chat with our running partners throughout the run without the needs for taking large gasps between words or sentences. If on a solo run, can you keep up a conversation with the voices in your head, or maybe better, can you sing the Happy Birthday – you know we do this on occasion.
There is a time and place for speed, tempo, pick-ups, surges, etc. just not every run.
When ramping up training consider your first few weeks have a combination of 5 easy effort days, 1 moderate effort day, and 1 hard effort day. Remember 1 or 2 of those easy effort days can be a no run day. The moderate effort could be a longer run at easy pace or it could be some type of quicker pace run like a tempo or track work or even hill repeats. As your fitness increases a couple of the week could be a combination of 4 easy, 2 moderate and 1 hard day. Again, the hard and moderate effort could be a mix of longer runs, tempo, track, etc.
3. Not Taking Enough Time For Recovery
I think this is one of the major reasons I experienced a number of injuries in the last few years. Our bodies get stronger and faster during our rest periods after workouts, not during the workout itself. We need full days and easy runs (slower than you think) between hard or long workouts. Often, and one of the things I’m trying to incorporate into my training plans, is a recovery week during a 15–20 week training session is necessary. This recovery week may just be cutting back on a track workout or mileage on the long run. Not only do our bodies need this recovery, so does our mind. Training hard every day with a specific goal in mind is hard on our psyche as well as our body.
Also, an extended downtime after the long training cycle and races are done is needed as well. The great thing about our sport is it is year-round; we can find races and runs anytime time of year. But we do need a break, to recover, to relax, to heal, to plan what’s next!
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