You've been running for a while and now you finally decided to actually get your act together and plan out your weekly mileage, but you're not sure what to do and where to start. Well, I'm Jesse Funk. And on today's episode of Runner High, I'm going to show you exactly that.
Like I've talked about in countless of my videos in the Runner High series, you need to periodize your schedule. But what does that mean, in practicality? What are you actually doing? Well, often I quote, that, you need to be doing a two one or a three one schedule, which means that you increase your mileage for two weeks and then go down for one week, or you increase your mileage for three weeks, and then go down for one week.
Within this mini block, you increase your mileage by a maximum of 10% per week, and this is just a guide. If you're further along and you're running more miles 10% may be too much for you.
But as an example, let's assume you're going to do a three one periodization block, say you're running 10 miles a week to start for the very first week, week one. Then week two, you can run up to 11 miles, and if you complete the 11 mile successfully, week three, you can run 12.1 miles. And then what do you do at week four?
You have to go down. And to do that you go to 50 to 75% of whatever the mileage you just completed was. The idea being, you need to give yourself a rest, you need to give yourself a period of time where your body can recover. So, 50 to 75% of that 12.1 miles, assuming you completed successfully is six to nine miles.
The next trick here is where do you go from that rest week up back into your regular training schedule? Well, for most people, you shouldn't be able to just jump back in where you were at that top weekly mileage. So, in my example, we ended with 12.1, you should be able to start again with 12.1 after your recovery week, and then continue from there. But if that ends up being too much, say, for some reason, you end up to fatigue, a better strategy for you might be to start back in that week to mileage.
So, in my example, we went 10, 11, 12.1, you might start back at 11. It's a little bit more of a conservative strategy, but the whole goal, the whole game here in endurance sports is longevity. Because consistency over time, is what produces the greatest results. If you get injured and have to take time off, then you set yourself back and you know, where you would have been better served by having a more conservative approach to your scheduling.
A good example of how this 10% rule isn't really perfect for everybody, his legendary marathoner, Ryan Hall. At the peak of his running fitness, he was running 140 mile weeks. If he didn't use the 10% rule and max that out, then he'd be bumping up from 140 to 154 miles the next week.
It’s really just not going to be feasible at that point in his fitness in his, you know, athletic journey because he's already near, you know, peak potential physically, where extra mileage is probably going to push him towards injury and overtraining rather than it is going to help him actually get into better shape.
So, what he would do, assuming he wanted to increase mileage is he would probably take a more conservative approach, and go only maybe a couple extra miles 140 to 141, 142. At least that's my assumption from where he was. Obviously, we don't know and we don't know what his coach would decide. But that would be my personal opinion, how to approach it.
So for you, if that 10% is too much, try figuring out where the rule is for you, whether it's 5% or 8%, what that maximum is. And remember, you don't always have to do 10%. You can do a lower amount if you feel more comfortable with that. The 10% is a maximum it's a limiter to try to help you prevent injury and overtraining.
Periodization and plenty of weekly mileage actually revolves around an entire year cycle where it's divided up to new periods, which makes sense, or you're in the base period, you're building miles, just doing a lot of long slow stuff to get your base under you, then you're moving into building or you're starting to pick up speed and on later into race prep.
Obviously, I'm oversimplifying, but I'm not going to cover that all today. Be sure to hit that subscribe button, subscribe to channel where I'll talk more about periodization and overarching goals of how to plan a training schedule in the long term in another video. So, what do you want to know about running? Leave me a comment below. Let me know what do you want to know? I'll see you next time on the next episode of Runners High.