Reality check: the professional women runners of the world
run between 110 and 120 mile weeks during their peak training. Men go even
further, sometimes upwards of 140 miles a week. (Quick math: that’s 20 miles A
DAY. Please leave this to the professionals!) Famously, Catherine Ndereba (“Catherine the Great”) maxes out in the 90
mile a week range, but this is of note only because it’s so far from the norm.
So, not surprisingly, the best in the world run a lot more
than the everyday runner. The Captain Obvious’s of the running world stand by
the notion that the only way to get better at running is to run. But others
argue that runs whose only purpose is to add to the mileage total (termed “junk
miles”) are unnecessary and increase risk of injury or burnout. Programs like
FIRST and Crossfit offer encouragement for time-pressed runners, claiming that
you can get better by only running a few days a week: stressing hard efforts on your on days, supplementing
with cross-training, and resting completely on other days.
I don’t think there’s a clear answer to this debate; I think
it completely depends on the runner. Some people can handle the mileage, some
can’t, and only carefully trying both styles will tell. And I do agree that
each run needs to have a purpose, easy recovery runs do help promote recovery,
but can also do more harm than good for some runners.
In my case, I do better running more than less. Both my
confidence in my training and race times have improved with increased mileage.
In my progression from a 4:07 to a 2:55 marathon, I have slowly and carefully
ramped up my mileage from 40 miles per week to 50 (before NYC in 2009) and then
stuck with 70 (before 2011’s Boston and Chicago, where I broke 3 hours.) Last summer I made my first attempt at
getting to 80, but wound up with classic signs of over-training (slower paces
in workouts, mentally drained) and backed off.
In training for Charlottesville, I gave it another go. I’ve
slowly added more miles and this week hit my new high: 80 miles! And, despite
some soreness from this morning’s 20 miler, I feel pretty good. Of course, our
bodies don’t divide things into 7 day weeks, and mine doesn’t know that I
consider my running weeks to start on Monday and end on Sunday. To my legs,
tomorrow won’t be the fresh start to a new week, but just another day after
today’s workout. So I’ll keep being careful and seeing how my body handles
this. The beauty of (and reason for) doing this now is that I can back off/take
time off if I push a little too far. I have plenty of time to recover before
any real attempts at the trials standard. But for the time being, I’m still
proud to reach a new high.
It's true. I'm hip enough to have a blog but am old school with my pen and paper running log. |
Dream big,
Teal
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