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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Screw Weekly Mileage

I'm done talking about weekly mileage. I'm even taking a hiatus from posting on Dailymile. And not because I don't like Dailymile. But their leaderboards just look at total mileage in a week, and if you filter, then running only mileage, in comparing to your network of friends. And I actually had a pretty high mile week in my opinion. But it doesn't tell the story. And frankly, looking at mileage totals, thinking about what's "normal" for people with my similar goals, and comparing to others is giving me a confidence crisis that I just don't need.

In the time I trained this week, an 8 minute miler could do 82 miles, about double the miles I completed, but I'm not that speedy by far and the amount of time for me to do that many miles is not going to work with my other priorities. Plus my strength training time is valuable for my ultramarathon trailrunning.

Instead... Time on feet, how I felt, and amazing running peeps is a far better focus that I should have for last week and here on out. Why does it always come down to comparing miles or judging our training value by miles? I know I've done that, just like EVERY. OTHER. RUNNER.

Week of May 19-26, 2013

  • Time on Feet: 11 hours of training.
  • How I Felt: Built up my confidence for Bighorn 50K in 3 weeks.
  • Amazing Running Peeps: 9 friends! Ran with Amanda, Mike, Greg, Amy, Catherine, Sheryl, Lesley, Robin, Melissa.
  • Worked out 6 of 7 days this week.

Monday: 0:00. Rest day.

Tuesday: 0:45. In humid weather at Lifetime Fitness Run Club, organized by Mike and getting to run the whole time with Amanda.

Wednesday: 2:10. 
AM: 1 hour strength training. Lots of heavy lifting.
PM: 1 hr, 10 min trail run in the evening. Fast trail miles at an NTX Runners group run hosted by Greg. Got to see Mike two days in a row, and run with Amy and Catherine too! Downed tree branches and mud made it a hard run.

Thursday: 1:15. NTX Runners hill workout I'm hosting. Got to run with Sheryl for the first 5 hill repeats. I had 15 repeats total. That's a lotta hill.

Friday: 1:00. Strength training in the morning. Moderate weight, moving through all the movements of each muscle group to loosen up tight muscles from Wednesday's heavy lifting.

Saturday: 3:10. Loooonnnng run. Hot and humid. A couple miles alone. Then a group of 20 for the NTX Runners Saturday group run. Loved getting to run long with Lesley, Robin, and Melissa.

Sunday: 2:40. Another long run. This was supposed to be a trail run with friends, but it got rained out. Started humid, then I got rain dumped on me heavily for about a mile, then remained at 93-99% humidity. Downed tree branches from the storm.

So how did your week go if using the same focus? How much time was invested? How did you feel? How many people did you connect with? Tell me about your week!

2 comments:

  1. I feel ya. I'm doing less miles (but about the same time on feet) because I've slowed down on the average day so I feel like I'm slacking. But I'll have some good tests next month to see how my strategy works out.

    Last week was awesome because I got to run again, and start approaching normal training load (8 hours! :D). It was nice to run with the hubs again.

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  2. I can totally relate. I ran for over 2,100 miles last year, I was so focused on getting miles and in the end wound up with an injury after getting carried away and it hindered me all winter. Now that I'm 100% healthy again, I stopped focusing on miles and now its all about how many days do I workout rather its running, weights, calisthenics, walking with my wife or whatever. I now try to have a balanced week of workouts every week and I feel so much better and seem like I get more out of my workouts. Oh and I stopped looking at that leaderboard a long time ago :)

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