Hi everybody, I am currently a college runner going into his summer training season for sophomore year and I haven't really made too much progress in the past 2 years. I've been reading around on the message board quite a bit (random threads from other people asking about training and also Wejo's "why I sucked in college" article). I've definitely gathered a lot of info from those places, but now I ask you guys to give me advice on how to have a strong summer, any opinions help!
Summer of malmo !
“Big jumps” in my opinion, typically come from being consistent over a long period of time or changing some variable of your training that was sub-optimal. Trying to force a big jump often results in burnout.
In previous summers, have you run 7 days per week for multiple weeks in a row? A lot of people wish they were faster than take 6 or 7 days off per month. Have you included some faster running, both in the form of threshold and faster than race pace training (with long recoveries)? Are you doing at least an hour per day plus a weekly long run? If you’re sitting at 30 mpw it might be a good idea to double your mileage. I’d you’re at 60ish or more, just make a modest increase and focus on doing what you’re doing better than before.
It’s hard to make really big jumps. You will get farther if you make a lot of little jumps. Then by fall it will look like a big jump.