MILES ARE KING

Based on yesterday’s post and Mike's comments, I thought I’d briefly recap my training from last winter for the throngs of new readers, those of you that read so many blogs you can’t remember one from the next, and most of all, just to jog my own memory.

Starting last November I made a concerted effort to follow the principles outlined in Ron Daws’ book; Running Your Best. Daws is an advocate of Lydiard’s training. During the initial stages of base building, Daws recommends evenly distributing your effort over the course of the week. For example; if you were running 70 mpw, you’d run 10 miles each day. At this point you forget all about hard/easy days and long runs. Once you reach the maximum mileage you’d like to maintain, hold it there for a week or two to make sure you can handle it – again, evenly distributing your effort. After you’ve done that, you can begin mixing in some hard/easy days, adding a long run, etc.

This worked great for me as I ran more miles than ever for the months of December – March, including taking my weekly all-time high from 85 to 100. This led to two of my fastest races in the last 10 years; a 29:15 8k in March and a 1:17:57 20K in April. These times were run off of just easy base miles and hills. By comparison, I spent the previous summer doing lots of speed work (and not many miles) and closed my season by running 39:02 for 10K. Following Daws’ program, less than 6 months later I’d hold that same pace for 20k.

Naturally, when I mentioned running faster during my training runs in yesterday’s post, Mike was all over it. I didn’t take the time to mention that I still plan on building my mileage back up prior to Chicago. Miles are still king. However, coming off of an injury, I need to be a little cautious. I won’t be following the 10% “rule” or anything like that, but I won’t be going from 32 to 100 in four weeks either.

My main reason for deciding to drop the pace is because, unlike last November, I don’t have the luxury of 8 months till my next marathon. Chicago is just over 3 months away – and approaching quickly.

You can call these runs whatever you want; easy, general aerobic, getting-the-miles-in, etc. I did a little math to see if my training paces are in-line with other runners. Say I currently do these runs at 8:00-8:15 pace. If I drop them to 7:30-7:45, it’d be (based on percentages) like a 2:40 marathoner running 6:40-6:55 or a 4:00 marathoner running 10:05-10:25. Heck, McMillan says a 3:00 marathoner should be running 7:23-7:53 for their easy days, so my times don’t seem out-of-whack.

I had one goal for last night and that was to be in bed by 9 PM. I missed, but only by about 10 minutes. It’s tough going to bed that early when your neighbors are out riding their bike, washing their car, walking the dog, etc. However, if I’m going to build my mileage back up it means getting up by at least 5 AM – and 7 hours of sleep is not going to cut it. Last night I got about 30-45 minutes more sleep than I had been getting and it felt great. This morning I ran 3.5 miles out/up in 27:30 and 3.5 miles back/down in 25:55. Throw in a mile with the dog for a total of 8. That gives me 56 for the week with 1 day left.

Today’s quote of the day is not from our Duncan, but I can see him saying it.

Someone once came up to Duncan MacDonald and said: “I saw you on television and read about you in the newspapers. How do you do it?” MacDonald answered: “I don’t watch television and I don’t read the papers.”