One of the reasons I’m doing an aerobic base phase is to give myself the best chance of finally being able to lift my mileage, consistently and long term. In the past I’ve done the odd week of 100 here and there, but on the whole I’ve topped out at mid 80s, 90 at most with any consistency. At the end of 2015 I managed a few weeks above 100 and thought I had cracked it but unfortunately it came crashing down with an injured achilles.
So I’m understandably nervous about attempting to increase my mileage again but I really do feel like I will benefit from running more, IF I can actually manage to run more. In the last few weeks I’ve run 85km, 93km, 92km, 103km, 105km and 105km with the plan for this week (and the following two) sitting at 114km. So far, so good with my programmed training having me sit at a mileage for 3 weeks before stepping up again. The higher I get, the lower the % of increase will be as I am aiming to be pretty careful.
After reading through some Lydiard literature for the first time and re-reading the Pete Pfitzinger book Advanced Marathoning, I’ve decided to try and do as many bigger single runs as I can rather than doing lots of doubles. I’ve run 20km on a Tuesday for the last month but this week I ran 20 today (Thursday) as well. That will give one 2 hour run and two 1.5 hour runs by the end of the week, along with the other slightly shorter ones. I will need to do some doubles as the mileage increases, in fact I had a 6km easy double on Tuesday this week, but I’m holding off on those as much as I can.
It has to be said, I’m pretty tired in the evenings and I can feel the body trying to adjust to running more than I have anytime in the last year or more. It might actually be 2 years since I last ran 114km in a week but I’m hoping with plenty of energy intake, plenty of sleep and the pretty moderate aerobic base training, I’ll adjust without injury.
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