i’m currently working on running a consistent weekly mileage of 16 miles this year and hopefully making my way up to 20-25 by the beginning of next year.
so far … it’s been going mostly good. a couple of weeks ago following a 5k race (i hit a pr of 23:57 at a 7:43 mile pace!) i started experiencing some very mild symptoms of runners knee / patella-femoral syndrome (more so on my right knee, towards the medial underside of the patella) but it seems to be subsiding / not getting worse over time. i’ve been trying to loosen up my quads a bit with rollers to see if that helps but i’ll keep an eye on it
my current training schedule is:
| sunday | long run (8 miles) |
| monday | recovery / easy run (2 miles) |
| tuesday | recovery / strength training (lower body) (3 miles) |
| wednesday | easy run combined with a workout like strides or tempo |
| thursday | recovery / strength training (upper body) (3 miles) |
| friday | easy run combined with a workout like stride or tempo |
| saturday | rest / recovery. no strength training to prepare legs for long run the following day |
this schedule is basically identical to the boilermaker 15k training program that i’ve been following for the last 3 years (very inconsistently). in my first two boilermakers i ran with my wife and we did about an avg 12min pace and finished in just under two hours. this year in july i ran by myself and finished in 1:28 at a 9:31 mile pace.
the key thing about this training schedule is that it follows a mostly low intensity, 80/20 philosophy where at least 80% of the runs are easy runs and at most 20% is high intensity. with 16 miles per week, 20% is about 3 miles and that’s how much time i try to spend in higher intensity running distributed between tuesday and thursday. outside of that, i try (but not always successfully…) to stick to an easy pace of 10-11min mile.
there’s a couple of tweaks i’d like to start making to my running moving forward to hopefully reduce any risk of injury and improve my overall enjoyment of running
- adopt RPE (rate of perceived exertion) as primary measure during my runs instead of glancing at my watch first to gauge effort based on pace or heart rate. i run on hills often and sometimes focusing on pace causes me to go much faster than i should for easy days
- pick a couple of specific and recurring workouts for my run workout days on tuesday and thursday. right now it’s a bit make up as i go and i’d like to just remove that decision making on the day of