We have commonly attempted to try to hit a certain amount of miles to determine our success as runners when training for any distance of a race. I’ve had that thought too, thinking at times needing to hit 40 miles/week for a full or hitting 25 miles/week for a half is going to be indicative of hitting a personal best. As much as this is a simple way of achieving our goals, sometimes it overlooks many of the other aspects of training and it might be good to try out a new training process when planning for your next race.
Counting miles is easy. We can map out routes and increase mileage easier. What counting miles unfortunately does is ignore the quality of total running distance, on paper. Running 6 miles on a training day can constitute significant differences in the total amount of foot strikes per session and accumulated of “ground and pound” forces on the body; this can matter greatly whether you’re feeling fatigued or fresh. Counting miles can make you at times feel stressed, especially closer to race day; you might feel the need to hit that dreaded 20 miler, 2-4 weeks before race day. These factors can affect your recovery and stress cycles necessary to feel race-ready.
So what do we do about this? Well, in group settings, counting miles is definitely a great way to maintain our social distancing! Running in groups can keep each other safe, accountable, and can be extremely motivating which can help you feel like you’ve accomplished miles as a team, and it is much easier to accommodate at all levels. If you’re running solo, a good start would be to count how many minutes you’ve ran over your weekly mileage and reflect on how fatigued you might have been throughout the week. Ask yourself how you felt during the week? Did you feel fresh each run? Did you feel tired deep into runs? Were you able to chat with your running partner during the run? As great as GPS watches can help guide how much time you spend into low, moderate, or high your workloads are, at times it can be inaccurate, thus it becomes difficult to completely rely on your wrist to keep track of how good it feels. This might help couple your quality of runs with your total time on your feet and keep your runs more fresh and fun on both ends.
Stay strong,
Evan
References
1) Pacquette M, Napier C, Willy R, and Stellingwerff T. Moving beyond weekly “distance” – Optimizing quantification of training load in Runners. Journal of Orthopedic & Sports Physical Therapy. 2020; 1-20.
2) Saw AE, Main LC, Gastin PB. Monitoring the athlete response: Subjective self-reported measures trump commonly used objective measures: A systematic review. British journal of sports medicine. 2016; 50: 281-291.