More Miles?

Ian Stewart wants more British runners running more miles; former high calibre athletes say modern runners don't do enough miles and mayber some of the club runners don't do enough miles - although there are probably quite a few who want or intend to do just that. So how do you get the mileage up? The easiest way is to do more runs - run twice a day from Monday to Thursday but you can't just jump up to that. The usual viewpoint is that you don't increase your miles by more than 25% in a month. To get into twice a day the formula is "Twice a day on two days for two weeks, twice a day on three days for three weeks and then up to four" Few folk do twice a day Monday to Friday because most folk are racing on Saturdays and don't want a lot the day before the race.

It was also standard to do 20 miles on a Sunday - wherever you lived in the world, not just Britain - the two hours on a Sunday was standard. If you are currently only doing 90 miniutes on a Sunday and your legs will take it, then work up to two hours. The long Sunday run does three things - it helps get the kinks out of the legs after a hard race on the Saturday, it puts some bulk into the training and if you are running with a friend or two, the conversation helps set up the next week's training.

If you are already doing two hours on a Sunday and you still want to increase miles, then you can go up in steps and stairs - remember that an extra ten miles a week is only eight or nine minutes on each run during the week. You can go from 40 to 50 to 60, back to 50, then 60 to 70, back to 60 then 70. Or two weeks at 50, two weeks at 60, one week at 50, two weeks at 60, two weeks at 70, a week at 60 then back to 70.

There was a vogue at one time after Arthur Lydiard's book "Run to the Top" came out in 1964 for runners to do 100 miles a week and for a long time it was the standard to measure training by. The way it was made up was 20 miles on a Sunday, 10 miles on Monday, 15 on Tuesday, 18 on Wednesday, 12 on Thursday, 15 on Friday and 10 on Saturday. When we were doing it we started the week on Sunday and aimed to have done 40 miles by the time we finished on the Tuesday night.

So there are some ways to get the mileage up but you don't really want to be increasing miles right bang in the middle of the racing season. There is the story about the runner from Monkland Harriers who was a World Junior Cross Country Champion and a sub 2:15 marathon runner and ran very badly in an international and said to the team manager afertwards "I don't what went long, I just did my usual 120 miles this week."