Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Doubling and Tripling Performance Incentives

From Running Times online

Doubling and Tripling Performance Incentives

A sensible approach to increasing mileage, recovery and adaptation

By Steve Magness

As featured in the Web Only issue of Running Times Magazine

When I first started coaching high school runners, they spent all summer building a base of long single runs, but when the school year started those long single runs were gone and they had to split that mileage evenly into two runs per day because of the school schedule. For example, instead of running 8 miles all at once in the morning at practice, they had to split it into a morning and afternoon run of 4 miles. As a coach, I was initially worried that my runners might not be able to maintain or increase their endurance with such short 4-mile runs. It turns out that my fears were misplaced; athletes not only maintained their endurance, but also increased it. In investigating the effects of running twice per day, it turns out that our old adage, “Get in as many miles as you can in one run before you start adding a second run,” might be wrong.

Read on here.

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