Four rules for setting up your weekly mileage, follow these guidelines for smarter training

Your weekly mileage total is an important number to keep track of to ensure you’re managing volume to improve performance while preventing injuries. Perhaps just as important, however, is the way you spread that total number out over your training week. Follow these four guidelines to schedule your mileage evenly to maximize your training week.

Spread the love

Many runners tend to front-load or back-load their training weeks, running the majority of their kilometers on the weekends or over the course of two or three days. For example, they may do a long tempo on Saturday, their long run on Sunday and another recovery run on Monday, then cut back on their mileage as the work week picks up.

While it makes sense you want to save non-work days for your longest runs, remember that you have seven days in a week across which you can (and should) spread your mileage. Doing so will dramatically reduce your injury risk, and will allow you to perform better in your key workouts. And if seven days isn’t enough, don’t be afraid to try a 10-day training week to give your body more time to recover between big runs and workouts.

Build around your key workouts

If you’re looking to improve performance, it’s important that you consistently hit your key workouts each week, including your long run, a faster workout (like intervals or a fartlek) and a longer workout like a tempo run. When planning out your training week, schedule these runs first and plan your recovery runs around them to ensure you don’t miss them.

Keep your hard days hard

When planning out your training week, don’t forget the other aspects of your training that might influence when you fit in those key workouts we mentioned earlier, like your strength sessions, mobility work and whatever else you do to keep yourself strong and healthy. As much as possible, plan to do your strength workouts on the same day as your hard workouts, so that you can keep your recovery days easy to give your body the best possible chance to rest before your next big day. At the very least, don’t plan to do a heavy gym workout the day before one of your key workouts, so you don’t have sore or tired muscles heading into your important sessions. Again, if you’re having trouble fitting everything into seven days, don’t be afraid to spread your training out over 10 days instead.

Give yourself a rest day

While some may run seven days a week, most runners benefit from a full day off. Having one planned rest day in your schedule gives your body a chance to absorb the week’s training, gives you a mental break to help you stay engaged in your training and can prevent overtraining and injuries.

posted Tuesday February 15th
by Brittany Hambleton