Run-Down Forums

[mjsbossman]

Well, the season is finally over. We ran at the NCS Championships on Saturday at Ukiah HS, and our team had a bad day, but came in 10th out of 50 teams. And starting yesterday on Sunday, me legs became very sore! Especially my quads! I can barely walk without looking like a freak. Could this be because for the last week before the race, I did very little running? I did no distance runs, and only ran 2 days, which were speed workouts. And Dan, I heard you tell someone that 2 weeks is a good amount of time to take off?

Dan, I plan on getting up to 60 or 70 miles a week for Track Season, but I will build up to it. I will probably start with 40, and add 5 miles every 2 weeks. But, for say a 60 mile week, what is the best way to do my running? If there are 6 days, should I run 3 double days a week? And if I run a double day, should it be on a hard day? An example pf two days is this: (4,10)(6) Then repeat that another 2 times to finish the week. Or is it better to run the 4 miles on teh 6 mile day? It seems like there is a best way to do this, because of the fact that you need time to store glycogen.

[Dan]

Congrats on finishing the season! 10th out of 50 is pretty good for a bad day, although that is small consolation...

You only ran 2 days the week of? I think you might have stepped over the wrong side of the taper line, into rustiness.

Two weeks is a good period of time to rest for following the season. Your approach to steadily building the mileage sounds good. For that amount of mileage, I would try to alternate between 6 and 7 day weeks (of running), with one 10 miler a week. I prefer to see the bulk of the mileage in the afternoon session; I'm hesitant to even consider morning runs part of the weekly mileage... If your goal is base work, don't worry too much how the miles break down by run and by day, just go out and pound the pavement.

Dan

[mjsbossman]

So Dan, would you consider it alright to do a 10 mile run every day, 6-7 days a week? Or would it actually be better to run 12 miles one day, 8 the next and repeat that, and make you 12 mile runs fast, and go easy on 8 mile runs. Or, if you run 10 miles every day, run fast one day, easy the next.

BTW, my coach said starting in January to do 10x400 once a week! I am soo glad, this means that I can finally be fast in the BEGGINNING of the season, which starts in mid february. This season in XC, I hadn't even started interval training before the first race!

[Dan]

I would avoid making all the runs the same distance. Alternating distance and intensity is a good idea. If you are in a phase of steadily building mileage, I wouldn't focus on the speed of the runs or adding in things like 10x400. The main reason I object to purely base building phases is that it is very difficult to incorporate a speed aspect without risk of injury.

Dan