Looking over my log this week, I realized that it was my biggest mileage week ever while school was in session. Sure, maybe the first week of classes shouldn't count, but it got me thinking: what was your biggest week ever? (Mark and Ryan please don't make us feel too lazy here). Was it during classes? My biggest week I could find was a 53 mile week I did during preseason, but I was doing doubles at that time. I ran 50 mile weeks regularly during the summer. Last week I ran 45 miles but no workouts.
Is it "safe" to run higher mileage while school's in, or does higher stress levels mean that you can't recover as quickly? What do you guys think?
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This year during Preseason, I logged a couple ~60 miles weeks, with a high of 65 the week after Aztec. This was before school began, so still doubles. I think I was pretty wiped out by it. The only thing I have logged for our Thursday afternoon practice that week was "Real fucking tired, 2.5 miles". Other than that I hit a decent 58 mile week two weeks before preseason. I think if I hadn't have been coming off a big injury there might have been some higher ones. Definitely during school it has to be lower. Your sleep in terms of both quantity and quality goes down. For me during the summer I sleep about 10-11 hours a night and in school about 7 (occasionally 5 or less). Just proportioning miles to sleep says I shouldn't run more than 45 a week during the school year.
Good job Katherine! The mileage is only one factor, I think if you're not running too hard (~2 not-too-hard workouts/week) and you're doing singles, no doubles, you should be fine doing 50-60 mpw while school's in session. If you get a good long run in, maybe 13 miles for you?, run while the rest of the team is stretching and don't take any days off (you won't need them if you run slow on your easy days) you'll be fine with higher mileage. Doubles sucks up A LOT of time and are of questionable benefit, so you should use this time to study/sleep instead.
My biggest week recorded was 121.5, but I was undercounting my mileage by at least 10% so it was probably mid-130s. Good times all the way.
Ahhh, back when I was 16 years old, I could still do stuff like this:
7/28 - 0.5 mile warmup, 12 miles, 0.5 miles cooldoown. 13 miles total.
7/29 - 0.5 warmup, 9.5 - wow lots of singles this week. 10 miles total
7/30 - 0.5 mile warmup, 8 miles, 0.5 back. 9 miles
7/31 - Bad Tempo attempt, 9.5 regardless.
8/1 - 0.5 miles, 8 miles, 0.5 cooldown, 9 for the day
8/2 - 7 in the morning, 7 at night. 14 total
8/3 - 1200 warmup, 5x100 accelerations. 9x400 (72-70-70-70-69-71-67-67-70) 3x200 all out. 800m acceleration run. 800m cooldown, added an easy 4 miles but felt dehydrated despite having endurox after the workout. 9 miles.
I think this totals out to 75.5 miles.
This was during the summer. I'll
post more thoughts on this later.
i think my biggest was 97 or so, just under 100. 60-70 seems to be the sweet spot though. i haven't gone much over that very long without injury, so maybe over time i'll be able to push that boundary back bit by bit until 100mpw is actually reasonable and beneficial.
kb- i definitely noticed you running more than usual lately, even in my scant practice appearances. i think it's good. do some striders and don't let your legs get into permatrodding mode, but by all means get some long runs in.
kway - wtf dude. why can't you do that any more?
ps
ryan - you're insane
Kangway, you aren't over the hill yet! From spring 2006 (age 23):
70.9 miles, no doubles, one of those runs was about 1 straight hour of steep uphill (Ryan's Bailey Cyn run to the toll road).
Looking back at the logs though, which I don't really do anymore bc it depresses me... that was from both my highest mileage and worst track season ever. While I mostly ran 50-70 miles, I was sick or injured every 2-3 weeks constantly, running slower and slower races until it all crashed a few weeks after the 70.9 mile week and I was out for the next 4 months.
I think, what I've learned over the past few years, is that there isn't really a rule for how much sleep you need, how many miles, etc. Like Mark says, its kidn of about finding a sweet spot and gradually trying to push the boundaries. People react to sleep deprivation, intensity, doubles, somewhat differently, so you just need to learn what works for you and what doesn't.
KB, you're lucky in that you seem to handle 50+ mile weeks just fine. So don't feel like you have to cut back bc of school, unless you start feeling the perma-tired, perma-trod state setting in.
Thanks for the warnings about permatrodding - I think you're right that my tendency is to settle into old-lady-I-could-keep-this-pace-up-for-hours mode. Fortunately I think Susan is on my case about this now so hopefully I don't get too comfy at 8:45-mile all the time.
I think the reason the 50 mile weeks worked so well for me over the summer was that the average run time (say, 70-75 minutes per day) was short enough to keep my mind sharp and not to be an epic outing each time, but long enough that I took each run seriously, tried not to take random days off, and built a lot of endurance.
So, that's why I'm trying to get back up to 45-50 miles per week right now. I really think that the level of mental and physical endurance it requires is what I am going to need if I want to do the 5k and the 10k. The challenge is not backing down from higher intensity stuff.
In hindsight I guess this makes me frustrated I didn't do more workouts this summer to test the limits. But, that's what I'll be doing in the coming weeks.
Katherine, I agree with most of the stuff already posted here, so I don't have much to add. It sounds like you have a good plan going on.
I think I know what you mean about 70-75 minute runs. In my highest week, going out and running 65-75 minutes was just such a good thing. It was over the summer and I could just head out and it'd be over before it started. These days 75 minutes of running seems like quite a bit longer, but I always thought there was some magic in summer running.
I think naps are the biggest difference for me between school and summer. Naps are such a great recovery tool. Seriously.
Mark and Megumi, I'm calling it quits on running, at least during the months of december to july. I'm trying to decide whether running a cross country season using a cycling season as base plus six to eight weeks of base running and six weeks worth of workouts will allow me to peak for a November 8k or 10k. Thoughts?
kangway, if you're planning a year ahead of time you're overthinking it. just enjoy the cycling and worry about other stuff when the time comes.
my biggest week was 83 during cross preseason, the week before the Aztec invite... to say the least I felt like shit before, during, and after the race. But I'd say the sweet zone is right where mark says, about 60 to 70, for me at least... I would say that if your feeling exceptionally tired during your runs than you're probably running too far. Just run to the point where come sunday you can trot for about 50 minutes with getting decently high mileage and 2 solid workouts.
Kangway, that's exactly what my training was last year. I got the stress fracture at the end of feb, biked until very end of june, ran july and august and was just fine come the cross country season, although my base was a bit weak. I noticed after lots of cycling that my body could much better handle 90-120 minutes of moderate exercise, but legs still had some trouble keeping up. I also noticed that when I came back to running, a lot of the normally achy or on and off injured parts of my body were actually feeling really good, just from a couple months of very light stress from cycling.
I hit two training weeks of 80 miles, once during Soph XC, the week before SCIAC's, and once around Christmas '06. Both of those times I was definitely overtraining.
I think the highest mileage I ever ran in season while taking a normal class load, which I wouldn't now consider to have been overtraining, was in the neighborhood of 55 miles. In fact, some of my best in-season training was off of only 40 miles per week.
But I always seemed to be on the lower-mileage end of the spectrum.
But if you take your largest 7 day training period, then it's 102, no?
Yeah 102 for a 7 day period, but that was a total anomaly. The two 80 mi weeks were bracketed by lots of other weeks in the 70mi range.
Also, I felt tired and sore all the time.
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