Mury says:

If you want my two cents on mileage or speed I'll give it to you.

strutton1313 says:

What you got Mury? I will take any advice at any time. I cant run until later today, so I am a little worried about heat. So that may dictate what I do. But I would love to get your two since worth for next time im in this kind of situation.

Mury says:

A lot of it depends on your goals and the timing of them. For example, if a race is imminent then faster runs become more important. If there are no race goals in the future at all then run more of what you like to run.

However, for long term training, almost everyone runs too little too fast. If someone wanted to run a 5K on up to a marathon or ultra, just getting miles in is the key. The way to get more miles in is to keep the intensity down.

Hard workouts take a toll on the body. If you run really hard one day, it's hard to do much productive the next time. If you run so hard as to kick it up to the anaerobic range you really pay a price.

Aerobic work takes years to develop, so many people leave so much aerobic potential on the table. In contrast, you can develop and regain your speed in a much shorter time. In addition, by building a solid base you can better tune your speed when the time comes. "Easier" miles not only build up the aerobic capacity but they help the body's muscles and connective tissues adapt as well.

Another way of looking at it is you can train really hard and see massive initial improvements, but there is a greater risk of injury, and more importantly you will hit the plateau much sooner. Results become sporadic.

If your goal is for doing the best you can in the long term, I'd say run as frequently as you can, up the miles safely, and keep to a *mix* of very easy up to harder *aerobic* paces. When you feel great run a bit harder. When you feel a bit worn out, keep it to very slow recovery paces. You'll get the most bang for the buck. If you have a goal race approaching, say in 2 months, then it's time to capitalize on that base with some more tempo work initially and finally some speedier stuff more toward the end.

Way too many people fine tune too much and leave way too much aerobic development on the table.

Just my two cents. I'm not sure what your goals are so do what suits you best.

strutton1313 says:

Thanks so much that is exactly the info I needed. I am not planning on a race until January. I am running a half Marathon. I have ran the same one the two previous years but have never trained properly and have always burned out. After reading your "two cents" its probably because I was too focused on speed and not building my base. Thanks for the info. I will definatly put it to work. I missed my run this morning and cant run tonight so I plan on running in the heat so I am going to be going slow and easy. Now I know that next week I will just continue to build and increase my base. Thanks for the advice.

Mury says:

If you like to read, pick up Keith Livingstone's "Healthy Intelligent Training." It explains training principals better than any other book I've read.

Personally, I'm looking at a goal race next year myself. I've been trying to up my frequency and volume the best I can. Even started throwing in doubles now. To do that though I've really had to cut the intensity way way down. Once I make it up to my 9-10 hours a week, I'll let my paces start to catch back up. So far so good for me. Honestly I've been shocked at how much I've been able to run and how good I feel day to day. Even with keeping the intensity low my training paces have been getting faster, despite conscious efforts to hold them down. Runs that would have red-lined me 2 months ago at 180bpm I'm doing faster and around 140bpm. It does work.