Volume control
Another recycled kludge of related articles aimed at a dying breed of runner: that weirdo who runs every day by default and doesn't look for mental-health-based excuses to wimp shit up
The following material was originally separated into five articles published by Competitor Running in 2011 and republished by its minimally rebranded successor, Podium Runner, in 2018 and 2019. Podium Runner was thankfully euthanized a few years ago, and the operators of its minimally rebranded successor, Outside Run, declined to import any of my musty contributions into their dilapidated empire of racist, cheater-glorifying, slob-oriented, dishonest, counterfactual, whiny, and most importantly unhelpful bullshit. So, this site is now the only place you can (easily) find this guidance, which as I look at it now probably never should have been published as it was—I weas really in a passive-voice mode when I produced this fluff—yet earned me around a grand in total, close to $3.4 million in 2024 dollars.
How Long (And Far) Should You Run?
If there is one topic that predominates in any discussion of distance-running training, be it at the elite or the neophyte level, it is the question of how much to run. The intricacies of speed work, debates about what really constitutes a tempo run, and banter about the ideal length and pace of long runs are never far from the core of such conversations, but in my experience, arguments over “ideal” mileage easily reign supreme over all of these put together.
The thing that people need to immediately recognize about this question is that the answer needs to be tailored to individual runners. This is true even of runners of equal demonstrated ability and identical goals. If two similarly experienced runners who have each run 5K in 20:00 using similar, modest training and both decide to up their mileage and train for their first marathon with a goal of 3:20:00, this in no way implies that they should undertake identical training loads. It is impossible to tell how much mileage either of them will tolerate and still thrive, or how quickly either should ramp up to whatever training load ultimately proves effective (and this is a fluid ceiling in any case; what is maximally effective this year may prove paltry in subsequent years).
All of the caveats, hedging, and qualifiers in the preceding paragraph underscore the fact that while certain training principles can be deemed universal, at the level of training-plan detail, coaches and athletes must take care not to rigidly emulate someone else’s training. They shouldn’t count on following a published plan to the letter being the most effective strategy for reaching their goals. This becomes increasingly important to keep in mind as the goal race distance increases, because in general, longer races entail heavier training loads and thus greater and greater excursions into the training-volume unknown.
Two runners of significantly different abilities training at the same mileage are not really doing the same training at all, for one is effectively putting in a lot more work than the other. A 2:30:00 marathoner running 70 miles a week might average 7:00 per mile in a typical week, meaning that he is putting in a little more than eight hours of running in a seven-day stretch. A 4:00:00 marathoner, on the other hand, is likely to average about a 10:00 pace, so a 70-mile week would require close to twelve hours of running.
Our putative 2:30:00 runner, averaging 7:00 pace, would log 100 miles if beating feet for that amount of time, a state of affairs that may well lead this talented athlete to break down, and almost certainly will in the absence of a gradual build-up. In my experience, this is something that is virtually never taken into account, even when a slower runner has enlisted the guidance of a coach, and has been the downfall of, to give one example, many a hopeful Boston Marathon qualifier.
I don’t want to mislead anyone into thinking that intentionally seeking his or her personal upper limit and flitting around at that level is the main idea here. At some point, many people will actively seek out their absolute limits—not just in terms of volume, but in terms of intensity, racing frequency, and all sorts of other parameters that can bring runners to a standstill if limits are breached too often or for too long.
In the end, most folks are more comfortable knowing they tried a given scheme and found they couldn’t handle it than they would be wondering just how much more they could have done. But the idea for most people is to train at something as close to an optimal level as possible without flirting with disaster. Only when people are at least reasonably familiar with what they can likely handle at any given time, and with the main factors determining this limit, can they be confident of approaching this optimum.
How Many Miles Can You Handle?
The important thing to keep in mind about training volume is that the level a given runner can handle is a fluid quantity. That is, a runner who remains healthy most of the time can very reasonably expect to be able to effectively train more and more as the years pass. (My use of “effectively” here implies that handling the training means not merely surviving it, but becoming stronger over time and thus benefiting from the workload.) I’ve seen this happen even during periods of performance stagnation; in fact, an increase in workload is commonly accompanied by lackluster racing, sometimes with steps backward, after which adaptation is achieved and a performance breakthrough occurs.
Of course, runners have to be realistic about whether a jump in volume that results in excessive fatigue and poor competitive efforts is truly something bound to result in new reservoirs of strength or whether it is simply a matter of chronic overshoot that can only end badly. This is why it is always useful to have a second set of trusted eyes on your training, particularly when making significant changes that entail greater demands.
I cannot recall a single instance in which, all else being equal, a runner who starts modestly and diligently and wisely indulges in training increases over a period of years fails to become a faster competitor. Note the caveats: Someone who’s running 80 miles a week as a precocious high schooler may never thrive on much more than that, and someone who discovers running at age 30 and ramps up from 25 miles a week to 75 within a year may quickly find that his or her race results are wanting, assuming he or she is still upright.
But it seems to be a fact that if a runner slowly increases volume — and alas, I can’t pin a number on this, and neither can anyone else — over a period of years, remains healthy, and is careful to take some honest down time after periods of especially intense training and racing, he or she will invariably become faster. This in no way implies that improvement is unbroken by setbacks; as with most things in life, a graph of achievement level vs. time much more closely resembles a jagged “sawtooth” trending ever upward than a straight, unbroken line.
To take this from the abstract from the concrete, I’ll offer a real-life example. A 14-year-old with a modest background in sports takes up cross-country in the ninth grade. In his first season, he averages perhaps 25 miles per week and takes his 5K time from 21:00 to 19:30. Over the winter and spring his training is similar. Over the next three years, his summer training for cross-country increases steadily from about 35 miles a week before his sophomore year to about 50 to 55 before his senior year. He leaves high school with a fastest 5K of just under 16:00.
In college, he reaches a one-week high of 80 miles in his freshman year and averages close to 70 for extended periods of time. He improves at first, but is set back by a bout with iron deficiency, and by the time he is a junior, various distractions have rendered running competitively a chore and he elects midway through his junior year to not compete for the varsity team anymore.
After a couple years of casual running he finds himself with renewed motivation. Preparing for his first marathon, he increases his mileage over a period of almost a year from 60 miles a week to close to 100. He does at least half of his training on grass. He performs respectably in the marathon with a 2:39 debut, and after upping his mileage to 120 a week over the next few months he promptly incurs a metatarsal stress fracture.
Once this heals, he embarks on a quest to see how close to 2:20 he can get. He runs 2:33, 2:30, and then 2:26 over a four-year span. At 31, having endured as many setbacks as he has successes, he finds himself capable of consistent 110-mile weeks and runs 2:24. The following year, he averages over 100 miles a week with no injuries, but does not race especially well. His goal of running under 2:22 the next year, when his mileage is similarly high and his overall racing is satisfactory, goes unmet, but the year after that he, at 34, runs a slew of personal bests at other distances.
Few runners will ever reach these mileage totals, but the idea here is to illustrate how subtle year-to-year increases in volume can ultimately translate into the ability to reap benefits from training loads that would have crushed the same runner in his or her younger days. The resilience of connective tissue and the musculoskeletal system as a whole can’t be quantified, but it unquestionably becomes greater over time with consistent training.
Every runner has a different limit in terms of this (and every) sort of adaptation, but it is real. In theory, a young man of 20 who has been running quite a bit for five years ought not to be as sore from back-to-back 14-milers as he would be 15 years later. Yet speaking from my own experience, even as I approached my 40th birthday, I could easily handle training loads I could not have dreamed of accommodating two decades ago even though my speed had slipped.
The main lesson? Whatever volume you can do today may be a poor indicator of what you might be able to do in one, three, or 10 years. This is largely age-dependent, of course; if you take up running in your forties, it’s unrealistic to expect that you will progress up the volume scale as prodigiously or for as long as someone who takes up running in his teens.
But the general principle holds: Carefully and gradually boosting your training volume — and at the end of this series I’ll offer general strategies on how to best accomplish this — so as to bring it in line with your effective physiological limits virtually always yields both an “unusually” late lifetime peak and the ability to retain peak racing fitness for a greater-than-average number of years.
Regardless Of Body Type, Recovery Is Key
There are many runners who are like golf carts fitted with the engine of a Ferrari Testarossa. They have the genetic enzymatic potential to develop the oxygen-carrying capacity and end-organ (i.e., muscle) oxygen-processing capabilities to become much-better-than-average, even elite distance runners. But alas, while the engine is nonpareil, the chassis is lacking, and sometimes there isn’t a lot to do about this.
People in good aerobic shape look more or less the same from a distance or even up close, but every runner is put together a little differently. Between leg-length discrepancies, unfavorable lower-leg-meets-knee (or foot) configurations, and too many other human variants to name, it seems likely that for the majority of runners, running volume is ultimately limited by the sheer effects of biomechanical stress on their bodies.
One thing to note is that what may feel like a permanent blockade to running more may really be a temporary ceiling resulting not from true structural limitations, but from muscle breakdown and attendant soreness. The amount of running that had me feeling as if I’d been put through a farm combine at age 20 seemed like a modest total a decade hence. But muscle soreness and fatigue can be readily distinguished from frank injury, a clear propensity toward certain overuse injuries, and chronic problems that clearly spell a need for volume moderation.
Understanding Body Types
Obviously, this distinction takes time to clarify; someone who suffers a tibial stress fracture while running 40 miles a week on asphalt at age 25 may or may not be able to eventually maintain or increase this workload by switching surfaces some or all of the time (something that is beneficial regardless of tendency toward injury); the stress fracture may turn out to be “one of those things” that never recurs or it may herald the onset of a pattern. There’s just no way to tell in advance how well your body is likely to bear the burden of increased demands once a runner has reached a comfortable plateau and is prepared to move forward.
Body type is typically regarded as a reliable indicator of how a runner is likely to fare at higher workloads. As a rule of thumb, a 220-pound former linebacker is probably not going to be able to run as much as a diminutive, natural ectomorph who checks in at 130. This rule, however, has plenty of exceptions, for the way a runner lands and distributes his impact stresses is at least as important as how big he is. A light, quick runner with an exaggerated forefoot push-off may experience chronic calf problems at higher workloads (or when doing lots of speedwork), whereas our 220-pounder may shuffle more than stomp and therefore be able to put in a surprising amount of volume.
I have seen runners with birdlike frames who are perennially prone stress fractures as well ponderous-looking specimens who never seem to suffer the slightest twinge. Footwear and choice of running surface can go a long way toward influencing these outcomes, but the most important factor seems to be how a runner picks them up and puts them down.
Runners who are limited to workloads they find unsatisfactory by their stride mechanics have other options for furthering aerobic development, and articles about cross-training can be found all over the Internet.
Measuring Recoverability
Training itself actually results in a breaking down of bodily tissues; it’s the rebuilding phase, when muscle cells are reassembled and certain enzymes increase in concentration, in which fitness gains actually occur. It follows that no amount of training by the most durable runner will be effective training unless sufficient adaptations occur between training bouts.
Recoverability, as with the connective-tissue adaptations that occur throughout years of ever-increasing training volume, is impossible to measure directly. But there are clues pertaining to both its enhancement and its ultimate limit within any one body.
Runners may recall their earliest days in the sport, when a run that produces no detectable damage in the present left them sore for two or three days and thus hampered further training. And those who have been fit but then experienced extended layoffs know all too well that one of the biggest issues in returning to the fray is dealing with feeling beat up all the time in the beginning of the “comeback” phase. Part of getting fitter — be it going from zero to some modest level or from reasonably fit to the best shape of one’s life — is bouncing back more quickly between sessions.
But as with all physiological traits, everyone’s maximum potential recoverability is different, with the implication that some people simply can’t train as hard (or as much) as others despite being equal in every other measurable respect. This principle is underscored by the fact that distance runners have been known to take certain types of anabolic steroids (nandrolone perhaps being the most common in the past couple of decades) which do not promote bulk, but speed recovery time by promoting rapid muscle repair. These banned substances don’t make anyone faster per se; instead, they allow for harder and more effective training.
There are ways to ensure that your recoverability is close to its potential maximum, however. For one thing, running on forgiving surfaces such as grass and dirt (or even treadmills) entails less pounding and shortens recovery time. Being careful to keep glycogen stores above ground level by re-fueling as soon as possible after every run is also key, as is—at least according to some research—a high-protein diet. Finally, adequate sleep is necessary if you want to take advantage of the running you’re doing rather than simply log miles.
Cortisol, an hormone produced in the adrenal glands in response to stress that has a variety of “anti-recovery” effects, is found in higher levels in sleep-deprived people; this is only one of the reasons why you’re not going to recover as well if you’re not getting enough sleep. Simply put, you can log as many miles as you like, but if you’re only getting four or five hours of sleep a night, you might as well be tossing those miles down a well.
Yes, you’ll be punching the clock, putting in miles and burning calories, but you won’t be getting any more race-ready if you aren’t recovering.
Manage Your Time To Hit Running Goals
Time. This constraint puts a clamp on countless recreational running careers. Between work, family and sundry inescapable responsibilities, some people cannot realistically put in the training time they would like to; many cannot even run every day.
Nevertheless, out of all of the limitations on training volume, this one seems to be the one for which people constantly offer advice on work-arounds:
“Well, if you get up a half-hour earlier, that’s three or four miles right there.”
“Just run at night when the kids are in bed.”
“Can’t you sneak in a run on your lunch break and eat at your desk later?”
Sometimes, this well-meaning advice is applicable; at other times it merely invites problems. A lot of working Americans—not to mention stay-at-home parents of young children—are chronically on the hairy edge of sleep deprivation as it is, so the suggestion to rise earlier in order to get in a run may not be wise. This underscores the fact that there is a lot of interplay between the “functional” consideration of time and the recoverability issue. If you have to legitimately fight to make time to run, then increasing your workload most likely implies cutting into necessary rest time and thus may not be helpful to your performances at all.
Still, depending on how important training is to you, how compliant and accommodating your spouse or partner is (as a coach of adult marathoners I have found it prudent to never, ever encourage runners to cross their mates by being gone too often on weekend mornings, even when a compromise seems reasonable), and your financial resources, you may be able to employ workable strategies in this area.
If you have a treadmill in your home, for example, you can literally run while watching your child or children; a baby jogger presents a similar, less expensive option. Some of the options mentioned earlier—getting up early, running late—may in fact be useful, and these tend to be more palatable to both runners and their spouses if such habits are developed with the understanding that they’re part of a finite training cycle (e.g. a three- or four-month marathon build-up). And if you’re training for a marathon, since typically the weekend long run is the most important training run you’ll do every week, you may be able to work out a domestic compromise, if such applies.
In the end, though, many people simply run afoul of being able to put in the kind of training they read and dream about, because there are only so many ways to create breaks in a busy lifestyle. This is just reality, and in no way does it imply that running and racing cannot remain an important and enjoyable aspect of busy people’s lives, even if it means that some will forever wonder what heights they might have reached in a parallel universe offering thirty-hour days.
Goals
When I was in high school, the Internet did not exist and I had a limited sense of what the best preps in the country were doing for training. Publications such as The Runner and Boston Running News offered limited insights in this regard, although they did casually note the 100-miles-a-week-and-up regimens of world-class marathoners, something that struck me as otherworldly if not insane at the time. I built up to a high of 65 miles in a week during a summer in which I averaged about 50-55, and that was more than anyone I knew was doing. My teammates thought I was really pushing it, maybe too much.
Had I grown up in the present decade, I would have known that my training was far from unusual—modest, in fact, in comparison to many standouts. Would I have trained more or harder during the summer had I been exposed to such information in my teens? Almost certainly; I never had problems with the workload I settled on. Would this have helped? I’m inclined to say yes, but this is really open to question.
The point of this anecdote is to illustrate an important point: Just because you have the time, energy and will to train more doesn’t always mean it’s a good idea. Can and should are as distinct from one another in running as they are elsewhere.
If your focus is the marathon, then it is well worth your while to push the volume limits. Raw endurance is your greatest ally in this event, and a lot of coaches—myself among them—believe that total workload is far more important than the length of long runs when it comes to success in this event. But if your focus is on races 10km or shorter and these days the roads are riddled with 5K “specialists” thanks to the sheer glut of 5K events, you probably don’t have to put in the kind of time you hear about from marathoners or national-class track athletes.
I wish I could offer numerical guidelines here, but unfortunately that would be futile, and this is no cop-out. I have known runners who have staked out territory in the 1.5 to 2 hours per day range (about 80 to well over 100 miles a week in most cases) after only a year or two of running, and others who cannot seemingly put in an hour a day without eventual mishap no matter how prudent their approach.
Avoid Mileage For Mileage’s Sake
One generalization I am comfortable making is that most people never reach or even approach whatever their personal upper volume limit might prove to be, and this includes people willing to give it a fair shake.
Increases in mileage almost invariably entail increases in run-to-run fatigue as well as a cutting back on racing, a decline in racing performance, or both. What many do not accept is that these effects are transient, and that with patience and prudence, most runners discover that they truly do adapt and reach a new fitness level eventually.
Depending on the magnitude and speed of the buildup, this can take anywhere from weeks to months. Most people simply don’t have the patience for this.
As an infrequent racer by inclination, I was never cowed by going several months in the winter or the summer (the former being mostly off-limits to racing in New England anyway, the latter being a period I generally can’t stand running hard), so it was during these times I experimented with previously unattained volume totals.
The Build-Up
What’s the best way to build up? Many have heard of the 10 percent rule, but I won’t even get into that because it’s interpreted in so many conflicting ways. Instead, I’ll say that if a runner seeks to level out at a given plateau, it is wise to try brief “excursions” into that territory rather than confine yourself to a methodical buildup.
For example, if you’re hoping to get up to averaging an hour a day and are currently at around 30-40 minutes, pick one week in which you hit or closely approach that average, then retreat to the safe familiarity of your usual workload for a couple of weeks. Then repeat the excursion. If this works, begin a more stepwise build-up, always cutting back to pre-build-up baseline one every three weeks, every four at most. In fact, be prepared to implement such cut-back weeks into your training as a matter of course, and to mix up your mileage totals in general (as Pete Pfitzinger touches on in Road Racing for Serious Runners, “training monotony,” while simplifying things marvelously for people, has proven the bane of many a distance runner).
The advantage in doing things this way is psychological: it eliminates the fear and uncertainty of the goal mileage total right off the bat. Someone who’s running a steady 30 miles a week and has settled on 50 miles a week as a goal six months out can certainly build gradually toward that load, reaching it for the first time in 180 or so days, but logging a lone 50-mile week early in the build-up can be a supreme confidence booster.
I should hasten to point out that mileage totals should never be “goals” in and of themselves; the idea is to bolster one’s training in order to ultimately race faster. But people need guidelines to follow, and most would rather work toward some pre-defined workload rather than completely wing it. Again, you can follow a published plan, plumb the wisdom of experienced running friends, or enlist a coach to help you along during the build-up process.
Volume & Intensity Control
What about two-a-days? Some believe that running once a day until it is no longer prudent is the way to go. This threshold generally lies at around 70 or 80 miles a week. I, however, believe that if someone is eventually going to be running the sort of mileage that requires some two-a-days, it is better to experiment with these before they become necessary.
So even if you’re comfortable running 50 or 60 miles a week using singles and are planning to reach 90, you would be well advised to try running twice a day a couple of times a week even at more modest totals. There’s also an argument for splitting longer days into two sessions frequently because many injuries seem to occur after runners have been on their feet for a long time, rendering day after day of longer single runs risky. I have no data to support this, but I tend to believe it.
What about intensity? During a mileage build-up, something usually has to give, so you should eschew most speedwork and take care to keep the pace modest on most days. Harder running is not strictly verboten, but recognize that your recoverability will take a temporary hit as your increase your workload, since easy days are no longer as easy as they were previously.
Run Smarter
Finally, a word of caution. Beware of the insidious tendency to run mileage for mileage’s own sake. If you’re a durable runner with ample time on your hands, you run the risk of falling into a “volume trap.”
Dedication and hardiness combine to form a double-edged sword: The same qualities that will allow you to train and race at very close to your maximum potential can also lead to romancing the training log, with an attendant reluctance to take cut-back weeks and balance off the mileage with the workouts necessary for quality racing.
Experience is really the only thing that allows runners to distinguish between the transient tiredness that accompanies any mileage buildup and the chronic staleness of an overtraining-type syndrome. And if there’s one word that applies more than any other to this chapter, it is “experience.” Pithy as it sounds, only you can ultimately determine your ideal workload range at any time. The trick—and it doesn’t come easy to driven athletic types—is being honest with yourself.
Of course, workload is only one aspect of training. Performance, not training itself, is the target, and it’s easy to forget that as you plunge deep into the territory of exploring your personal limits. Don’t let yourself become one of the forgetters.