Sunday, October 12, 2008

Week 12 recap

I only ran three times rather than four this week (8 miles on Tuesday, 6 miles on Wednesday, 16 miles on Saturday), and it's a beautiful day for a run, but I have regretfully concluded that the recovery time will be more valuable than a lovely five-mile run, arghhhhh!

I will swim later instead - it was reading Misty's advice to take two days off from running after the long run that reminded me I should be more cautious and less inflexible vis-a-vis the schedule and notions of total weekly mileage! I will swim later instead, and I will wait to run again till Tuesday.

Week 12 total: 30 miles

I am finding myself very hungry for more miles - I think that I must take the long view, I would like to keep my mileage in the region of 25-30 on a permanent basis (8 easy/flat, 6 hard/hilly, 4 easy, 12 long - or another approach is to build up frequency first, and try a five-day schedule in which two of the runs are only 3-4 miles), if I do that for the next 8-10 months then I could do a significantly higher-mileage fall marathon training program next year without a big risk of injury. Anyway, I should just wait and see - but certainly I am feeling the opposite of burned-out on running, I wish I could be having a lot more of it, however common sense recommends parsimony!

3 comments:

Danielle in Iowa in Ireland said...

I think two days off after a long run is a little bit of overkill! One day off always worked fine for me!

Becca said...

I always did one day off as well--and I ran six days a week each time I trained for a marathon, but I was not using a system at all (beyond running a lot and adding 2 miles/week to my long run). Now I run 5 days a week--or 6--whenever I can lifewise. But I do a lot less mileage, and I go by time instead of mileage anyway. Hmm, this is all hardly relevant or interesting, except to say that I have been running basically for 25 years and have no problem with 5/6 days/week.

ShirleyPerly said...

If you feel you need an extra day off after a long run, I think it's wise to do so. Sometimes runs after a long run are meant to be recovery runs, though, and cross-training can be substituted to get a similar benefit.