Runners love talking about weekly mileage, and for good reason. Your mileage—or total running volume—plays a big part in your success as a runner. Personally, every single breakthrough performance I’ve had occurred after a period of high-mileage running.
But like any skill, it takes patience and hard work to build over time, and that hard work is often viewed through the prism of total weekly volume.
An interesting recent study by Strava showed that those marathoners who qualified for the Boston Marathon ran more miles with more frequency. Here, the lesson is clear: if you want to run faster, it’s a good idea to run more. But while so many runners love discussing mileage, there also needs to be an important conversation around the actual structure of that mileage:
– How many hard speed workouts are run per week?
– How are those workouts spaced throughout the week?
– When does the long run happen (and how does it progress)?
– When are rest days planned, in relation to other runs?
The answers to these questions will begin to inform the structure of your training. Let’s now discuss how those mileage…
