The fall season is unique for our team in that all of our athletes sync up a little bit more consistently in terms of training. While they may have different durations of workouts, and the details vary between both event groups and individuals, the fall is a time when all of our athletes have the same primary goal, which is long-term aerobic development.
People may refer to this as building their base or foundation. Those terms are helpful in capturing the fact that aerobic development is fundamental to success in distance running. But a base seems to me like a stationary, immutable sort of an entity. I prefer to think of this as a time to build a bigger aerobic engine. Regardless of what you want to call it, every distance runner wants to achieve this aim.
For this week, I’m going to set aside specific types of workouts, etc. and just talk about the two main variables that can be adjusted in any training period – volume (mileage) and intensity (pace). Some people ask, “is volume or intensity more important?” Like most questions related to training, it’s not a simple either/or answer, but rather a balance. So let’s talk about how increasing volume and/or intensity can be used in building that big engine that will keep you running strong for the months ahead.
MILEAGE
I will start with the obvious way to go about the job – increasing training volume, or weekly mileage. Of course, this should be done in a gradual, progressive manner, but especially for the runner in the first few years of their career, simply increasing volume in a reasonable manner can yield excellent results in developing the aerobic system. The time under task that higher mileage running requires leads to all sorts of positive adaptations and is an easily quantifiable way to build the engine. There is, however, an upper limit for the efficacy of this approach. If mileage is increased too quickly, or induces excessive fatigue and loss of quality of running, then it may be too much too soon. Patience and consistency are far more important here than what one can do in a single week.
PACE
Any coach will tell you that not all mileage is the same. Even when it comes to steady aerobic runs, there’s a difference between running 7 and 8 minutes per mile. Once an athlete has found a “sweet spot” for their mileage, where they are able to handle the volume without excessive fatigue, another variable to adjust is quality. I don’t generally prescribe specific paces on normal distance run days, but usually over the course of the first few years of working with an athlete, we typically see that pace per mile move down, on average. It’s worth emphasizing that this is not due to specifically targeting a faster pace on what is supposed to be a very controlled run. Rather, this should occur as athletes gain fitness, and allow themselves to run a bit faster as a reflection of that increased fitness.
While there’s no “better” one of these two to target for improvement, you may want to look at your own history to see where you have more room for growth. If you have done very low mileage but done everything fast, then you may benefit from laying off the throttle on your runs, but extending them longer. If you tend to do lots and lots of long, slow runs, you may benefit more from picking up the pace a bit and reducing the volume if necessary. A little experimentation may be necessary, but it’s worth it. Finding that sweet spot of a challenging but manageable level of both volume and intensity will lead to steady, sustainable fitness gains down the road.
Chris Lundstrom is the head coach of Minnesota Distance Elite – formerly Team USA Minnesota – which includes some of the top distance runners in the USA, including Annie Frisbie, Dakotah Lindwurm, Breanna Sieracki and Joel Reichow.
