Training to train

So this week was my first full week back into serious running. I say "serious" because, even though I only ran mileage with no structured workouts and the fastest I ran was probably 6:30 pace, I reached full mileage and what I plan to hold for the rest of this training cycle. My weeks will all look very similar to this, with core 2-3x:

Monday - 9/6
Tuesday - 90 minutes (13+)
Wednesday - 9/9
Thursday - 90 minutes (13+)
Friday - 9/6
Saturday - 10
Sunday - 2 hours (ideally 18+)

This was the base mileage schedule for XC last year and I liked it a lot. I thought I was able to balance recovery with good stamina training on the long days instead of just burying myself with mileage like I had in other cycles. Previously I had always loaded my week with doubles every day and tried to max out mileage, which put me in a perpetual overtraining hole. This schedule adds up to 104 miles, which is less than I have done the past two summers, but because the mileage is condensed into only 10 runs instead of 13 or 14 I think that it is actually better conditioning work.

I call this part of the year "pre-base training" or, as I said up top, training to train. The objective of all those relatively easy miles and unstructured work is to be able to handle the next step of training, which for me is long, hard half marathon workouts. A lot of people make the mistake of treating easy mileage as base training. While that might be true for less experienced runners who lack the lifetime base and background to handle the true stamina workouts that will be my bread and butter, it should not be the case for collegiate runners. People think that you can race well off of just easy mileage. I define racing well as racing at a high percentage of your 100% perfectly trained/peaked potential, and I do not think it is possible to race well off of just mileage. You might run well compared to past seasons, you might even PR, but I guarantee that if you spent some time doing long tempo runs and long intervals you would race better than if you ran the same amount of mileage with all of it easy.

Since I don't plan to work out until July, I have a bit of a challenge. How do I keep my training interesting and progressive but at the same time not change my mileage? Well, my answer is to acclimate to it and to push some of the runs when I feel good, especially the long run. My overall fitness goal by September is to be at the level I was at on January 1, 2013. At the end of my winter training at home I was running the same mileage schedule, doing tons of core, running long and hard workouts Tuesday and Friday and running a fast 18-19 miles on Sunday. If I can get back to that, I know I can PR in the half marathon and probably every other race that I contest on the roads.

Getting serious after a longish layoff

Now that it's June, I feel like I need to start taking running serious again. My first Big Race of this cycle will be the Philly half in mid-September. I want to start working out in early to mid-July, so if I can get a solid month of peak mileage in for all of June then I'll be on track to run well in the fall.

After this debacle of a track season, when in hindsight I was probably slightly detraining the whole time from where I was in the winter, I realize I have some work to do. If I can get back to the fitness I had on January 1 I'll be really happy. To that end, I'll try to do the mileage structure I did in the winter, getting over 100 mpw with 10 runs. I would love to get into good enough shape to hammer long runs like I was doing in December, but once the heat and humidity of Delaware summer sets in I doubt I'll be able to replicate those runs.

For the half marathon work, I really liked what I did two years ago to prepare for this race. I'll probably end doing most of the workouts alone, but I actually prefer it that way. When other people who have different goals are involved the workout can get corrupted and people tend to try and race unless there is a really good level of trust and you know the other person. For example I would be fine working out with Feeney, but he's in a different part of his training cycle and is training for a different event (Olympic distance tri) than I am. I could work out with Digennaro, but again I don't know if I want to risk buggering the workouts.

In any case I think the long LT-pace workouts that are necessary for half marathons are really good for general fitness and I believe that I'll get in good shape for any distance using those workouts, so after the half I bet I can jump in to some shorter, less taxing races and run well on the roads.