A little challenge

I enjoy a good challenge and enjoy pushing myself.  I've been trying to put in more miles this winter than I ever have, and I've been lucky so far; I've had no true injuries besides my one injury scare, and I haven't gotten a bad cold or sickness.  When it comes down to it, a runner's mileage is limited by one of two things: time or biomechanics. When I made my tentative mileage plan leading up to the marathon, I planned for a 145 mile week (my previous high week was 131).  As the semester began, I realized I had been very, very optimistic about how much time I'd be able to put in, and I altered the plans.  Which left me to find another challenge.

Recently, Dave wrote a post about the role of doubles in training, which spurned a little debate about how useful or useless doubles are.  My upbringing has taught me to always include several doubles per week.  However, I've recently had a somewhat change of heart.  Even with my higher mileage this winter, for the last few weeks I've limited my double days to an easy few miles in the afternoon after a hard workout in the morning. I doubted my ability to run that long multiple times a week without breaking down, but so far it's seemed to work. This brought me to a (possibly silly) idea: do my highest mileage week of the year so far in singles.  I would attempt to do ~120 miles in 7 awesome/awful runs.  Biomechanically, I felt like I was ready, and at this point in the season, I could keep pushing if I felt great or back off if things started to go south.

Starting the week, I knew a couple of things had to happen to survive.  First, I had to keep pace in check. I wouldn't get much benefit from slogging every run, but at the same time, pushing the pace on each run would break me down.  Second, I couldn't expect to do too much in terms of workouts.  Between the cold and snow and having to probably run a couple runs on the treadmill, I was fine with this. 

The week started with a long run on Sunday of 26 miles.  So far for the season, my highest had been 22, so it was a little jump.  When it comes to marathon training, though, I believe that at least one run should be done at the full distance at some point before the race, as long as it's done far enough in advance.  I also try to limit food and water during the run to teach the body to "dig deep".  When I run a marathon, I drink at every station that I can, but it's hard to predict what could happen on the course.  I try to prepare by going through worse conditions in training.  During this particular run, I had one water stop after 7 miles and ran the distance in just under 7:00 pace.  Unfortunately, this left me somewhat depleted still for my 13 miles the next morning, but I made it, and I ran 39 miles in under 23 hours.

Tuesday and Thursday ended up being fairly cold in the mornings, so I decided to do a few miles outside before the gym opened then do some tempo runs on the treadmill.  Tuesday became a 9 mile progression starting at 5:56 pace and working down to 5:15, while Thursday was an 8 mile steady-state at ~5:51 pace, for a total of 18 miles each day.  These were tough enough to "feel it", but not so tough as to feel broken or overly tired.  My remaining runs on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday ended up being 15 or 16 mile easy runs, for a total of 121 miles for the week.

It was an experiment, to say the least, but I did learn a few things.  First, I felt a little more motivated to run in the mornings.  When I double, I sometimes have trouble pushing myself to get up to run since my previous run ended around 12 hours ago.  This week, though, I generally had 21-22 hours between runs, and mentally this was enough of a break to start the next run.  Second, I found that I had a little bit less appetite.  This kind of made sense.  I'm usually really hungry after a run, and it seems the metabolism stays elevated for some time after a run, so one run a day meant one "afterburn" instead of two, despite the high mileage.  Third, however, I found that it is still possible to gain weight with that much mileage...somehow.  In terms of time and fatigue, I didn't find myself overly exerted or spending more time than if I had done the equivalent mileage with doubles.

This week was a useful week.  Physically, it helped me to gain a stronger base as I continue to push towards the marathon, which is seven weeks away.  Mentally, it dispelled my previous train of thought that high mileage needs to include doubles.  Will I continue to run only singles?  Not sure yet.  But for now, it's Sunday, which means ONE long run.