3 Easy Ways to Run Higher Mileage

[Music] how many miles are you going to run this week it's a really great question that a lot of runners ask each other because our weekly mileage is one of those common metrics for looking at how much work you're doing on a weekly basis and my college cross country coach somewhat jokingly used to answer mileage as the answer to almost any running problem or question that you might have now of course he's sort of joking but the lesson here is that mileage does tend to fix a lot of our problems if we can run high mileage we are going to be less susceptible to injuries because we're actually stronger both in our muscles our connective tissues but also we're aerobically stronger we're capable of faster workouts we're probably going to be faster runners and if i knew nothing about several different runners but i knew how much mileage they were running over the course of the week i would have a really good indication of who the faster runners were so in this video what i want to do is give you three tangible easy ways to run more mileage so if you're the type of runner who's typically running 15 20 maybe 30 miles per week you're in good company a lot of runners are running mileage levels around 20 to 30 miles per week but i know that if you are able to increase those miles gradually and safely over time you will become a much better runner so let's get started let's talk about three easy ways to gradually allow yourself to run higher and higher volume so you can get a lot faster alright our first concept is called baseline mileage you have to know your baseline mileage because that really predicts how quickly you can increase your mileage from week to week so let's just say you're a runner whose baseline mileage is about 20 to 25 miles per week now baseline mileage is simply the amount of miles that you are very comfortable running per week so if it's about 20 to 25 that means that that's a great mileage level for you you're feeling good at that mileage level anything less and it kind of feels like you're tapering or it feels like you're in a recovery week or you're just not running as much as you normally do but if you run much more than 25 miles per week that's when you're starting to become more fatigued you're starting to experience a little bit more soreness your injury risk increases so that baseline mileage is your sweet spot and it's different for every single runner out there some runners are comfortable running 20 miles a week some runners are comfortable running 40 or even 60 miles a week look back on your training logs and see where you're comfortable where are you feeling like you're running is very easy what mileage levels make you sore and tired and fatigued and then where is that sweet spot step one is knowing your baseline mileage because that indicates when you can be much more aggressive than the old 10 percent rule and when you have to be more conservative so let's go back to our hypothetical runner they're comfortable running 20 to 25 miles a week this is their baseline so if they're just coming back from some time off they can increase their mileage much more quickly up to 20 to 25 miles per week than that old 10 rule which says you shouldn't increase your mileage by more than 10 from week to week so you can increase much more aggressively up until your baseline but then once you get beyond it let's be more conservative let's ignore that 10 percent rule and instead increase our mileage much more gradually than that because after all beyond 25 miles this runner is a little bit more uncomfortable they're a little bit more sore and this volume of running is more challenging to them so know your baseline be more aggressive leading up to it but more conservative when you're increasing your mileage beyond that baseline level now the second concept is to not actually increase your mileage every week and that's one of the things that we learn from that 10 rule which has become very popular over the last 10 or 15 years we all think well if i'm increasing my mileage by percent per week than i'm being safe right well that ten percent can amount to a lot of mileage if your weekly mileage is fairly high and the rule indicates that you can increase your volume every single week but it does take the body more time than just seven days to adapt to this new workload that you've just put it under you are just you're experiencing more miles your body is is struggling to recover from those miles to adapt to those miles and to adjust to this higher volume that you have just experienced so let's increase our mileage about every two weeks this gives you much more time to adapt to the higher volume and it really does reduce your injury risk so that those higher mileage levels not only become manageable and doable but they start to feel comfortable so your old baseline mileage will start getting higher and higher and higher as you gradually increase that mileage over time but it all starts with very gradual increases and let's only do that every two weeks now if we know our baseline mileage and we're being aggressive going up to it but then more conservative once we're beyond our baseline mileage if we're only increasing our mileage every two weeks the next step is to once in a while take a recovery week where your mileage actually decreases this is like a two steps forward one step back approach where yes we are going to be gradually strategically and methodically running more and more and more but sometimes we have to take a step back and rest and that's what a recovery week is so every four to six weeks depending on how tired you feel take a week where your overall mileage level is reduced by about 10 to 25 this is going to allow you two very important things number one to give you some physical recovery you are going to be running less hopefully your workouts are a little bit easier too in the spirit of a recovery week and then you can actually adapt to all that hard work you've been doing without that recovery week you are pushing forward almost every week you are always in the process of building that can be very physically fatiguing and point number two it can also be very mentally fatiguing to always be on to always be striving forward to be doing more to be running longer and we don't want you to burn out part of the whole burnout process isn't just the physical part of it it's the mental burnout it's you just not being enthusiastic about your training and a recovery week can give you a mental break from training so hard so that when you finally uh start the next week and you're actually ready to run higher mileage you're mentally ready for it and you probably are starting to crave running a little bit more so don't ignore the mental side of things and those recovery weeks really help you with both the physical recovery and the mental recovery of just training so hard okay strategy number four i know i said three but this is a bonus one i'm on a roll here once you've done all those things the other thing to keep in mind is that even though we've been talking about weekly mileage this entire time weekly mileage can be somewhat of a short-term short-sighted thing to focus on instead of always focusing on how many miles you're running in a seven day period let's instead think about your monthly mileage total this is a longer term way of thinking about your training and it's in that mindset shift that this really helps you because a lot of the times when we get so caught up in weekly mileage we try to hit that number that we want to in our training log but a lot of that is very forced we have to run a certain amount just over a couple days and that really does increase our injury risk so instead of thinking about a seven day window instead let's think about an entire month running is a long-term sport it takes months and years to even glimpse your potential so it does make sense to have a more longer term outlook on your training volume and on your progress i started tracking monthly mileage for myself when i was just out of college and i found it was a much better way of allowing myself to run more because i was focusing more on a longer time horizon and so it allowed me to sometimes run a little bit less and have my weekly mileage be lower but i was thinking bigger i was thinking longer term and it really is an effective strategy for helping yourself run more without it actually feeling too difficult so there we have it those are three four four different ways of allowing you to run higher mileage by making it a little bit easier knowing your baseline mileage is where it all starts let's not increase our mileage every single week let's do every two weeks let's use recovery weeks and then let's shift our thinking to not actually worrying about weekly mileage as much as we do monthly mileage this is a great approach to running higher volume it's a safer approach you're going to experience fewer injuries and a year from now you're going to be capable of running a weekly mileage total that this year you are just wondering if it's even possible i'm sure it is possible it just takes that longer term approach it requires a little bit of strategy and some conscious thought i know you can do it so put together a bunch of resources for you i have articles linked under this video that talk more about that baseline mileage concept i've linked videos talking about different mileage levels and also how to structure your training at different mileage levels so if you're running 30 miles a week 50 miles a week or even 80 miles a week you'll know a really effective way to structure that mileage over the course of the week you know taking into consideration the fact that you need to recover you need to do a long run you need to if you're running high mileage you may even need to run twice per day so those resources i think are going to be really helpful for you and if you are planning out your mileage levels say for perhaps an upcoming season you've targeted a goal race a time trial a virtual race or some other event that's interesting you right now download our season planner worksheet it's really helpful in that it tells you what kind of tune-up races are ideal for whatever goal race that you're targeting and it also sets up you know the uh gives you guidance on the number of weeks to have for your total season and also when to put those tune-up races and more so i hope you find all these resources helpful and if you are getting value from these youtube videos i'm doing a lot more recently i would love for you to subscribe to our channel hit that like button share it with some of your running friends your running team that you think would benefit from some of this guidance thanks guys

Channel: StrengthRunning

Views: 108,334

Keywords: running, marathon, cross country running, track & field, 10k, 5k, half marathon, injury prevention, strength exercises, strength training for runners, barefoot running, running mileage, running mileage increase, how to run more miles, tips for running

Id: Ui8dzyRIWR8

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020