Training Time vs Mileage: Which Training Approach to Take?
Posted Feb 04 2012 12:50am
Over the last few years I have learned a lot about running. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always use the information that I have obtained but at least I am aware of it. I don’t know if it is due to me being so very stubborn or just plain stupid. I should actually take this knowledge and use it much more often than I do. An example of this is over the last month I have been giving a lot of thought to how I approach training. I wondered if how I was thinking about and trying to do my training was the correct approach for me. Specifically I wondered if I put too much importance on the mileage. Maybe I haven’t been putting enough on the actual amount of time and quality of my training.
I really started thinking about and looking into this recently with getting more interested in trial running and ultra-marathons. I have spent a fair amount of time reading up on these areas, the people who do them and who they train. From what I can see a lot of the trail runners or ultra-marathoners train based on time. You ask one of these runners what they did for their work out and they often will say they ran for X amount of hours. Not necessarily how far but how many hours they ran today or for the week. I am starting to understand this approach and see how it could benefit me and how I train. Looking back at last year I tended to try and hit a certain mileage each time out. But in most cases I was refined to whatever time period I had available to me for the workout. So in a roundabout way I was doing a hybrid of the two approaches. I bet more time than not I ended up guided more by the time than anything.
As I stated before, I know I personally have been hung up about the whole mileage thing. I would get so worked up about not doing the mileage or all of it for a work out. Many times I would still do approximately the same amount of time but not get the mileage in as planned. I can remember even in year one that from a mental perspective that just doing the mileage once allowed me to know and understand what a certain distance was. Once I had even one experience with that distance I was OK with it mentally. I knew mentally I could do it and do the mileage. But I soon learned that the physical part was more about the building up of the stamina and endurance for the distance. Sure I could do it but at what cost? So even from day one I thought it was all about the mileage and just doing what the schedule said I had to do.
My one concern is will the time spent running equate to the mileage that I need for the races I would like to do. I guess it boils down to trying to understand what my current average pace is and develop times around the distances that I should be doing for that race. I assume that if I want to try and do three miles for a run that I should shoot more for 45 minutes (15 minute miles) and do my best for that amount of time. If the mileage do is at or near what I should be hitting, great. If not, maybe I need to either focus on how to improve my run for that 45 minutes or extend the amount of time that I require for the distance. It almost sounds like a mind game in a sense. “Oh, I’m not running 3 miles today. I’m actually just running 45 minutes for my workout.” Its 6 one way or half a dozen another if you really think about it. I’ve made the decision to go more with what I see as my strength for the coming year. That strength being I seem to have a fair amount of endurance as my slower times shows. So I think I will be less concerned with the hard and fast training miles and focus more on the amount of time that I am training. I believe that if I focus more on the time factor that I will be less hung up on hitting the mileage. The more I relax and get into this new mindset I think the better my workouts will be. With that, I hope, will come the mileage, truer amount of running and as a result faster times than I historically have had. I know it maybe a stretch but I am excited to try this. I actually changed my current training plan/schedule to be time based as of today. So I’ll let everyone know how I do in the coming weeks with it. I bet I’ll do better on it, but only time will tell.
