Ask The Coach: How Many Miles Should I Run in a Week?
The answer to the question, how many miles should I run in a week to improve endurance, increase speed while avoiding injury, is the same as the answer to most of life's problems, "it depends."
“It Depends”
There seems to be a push online to run more and more miles. There are challenges to reach 100 miles in a month, 150, 200, and more! 2020 miles in 2020! While running a lot of miles is an accomplishment in itself, requires a lot of discipline and mental strength, it's essential to step back and ask yourself why you want or need to run that many miles.
For some, it may be a goal to stay motivated to train in these odd times when canceled races and running group meetups are no longer on the calendar. That's great!
It is helpful to set clear goals for yourself within the day, week, and month and then work to execute a plan to achieve that outcome.
What Is Your Goal?
The first step to figuring out how many miles you should run each week is to determine your goal. Is it to train for a specific distance, to run a particular pace, for fat loss, cardio health, mental clarity, or just for fun? The answer to this question will help you determine how much you need to run because different outcomes require a different stimulus.
If you are training for a marathon, your mileage needs are much higher than someone who wants to maintain good cardiovascular health.
Why Is This Your Goal?
It's beneficial to dig a little deeper and figure out why it is your goal. To fit in with your social media friends, to lose twenty pounds, to be part of a community, to prove to yourself that you can do hard things, to stay healthy, or set a positive example for your kids? There are no right or wrong answers, but the more meaningful your purpose, the more it aligns with your values, the more likely you are to stick it out when the going gets tough. Spoiler alert: any goal worth getting will undoubtedly be challenging at some point.
Is Your Goal Safe?
Once you decide on a goal and determine the reason you want to achieve it, then think about your experience level and current fitness status. Does your mile goal for the day, week, or month align with your current fitness level? A sharp increase in mileage (distance) or intensity (pace) over your current fitness level can lead to injury, over-training, or reduced performance.
When planning your mileage goals, make slow increases at a time to allow your body (muscles, joints, ligaments, etc.) time to adapt to the new workload. How much your body can handle is highly individual, depending on age, experience, nutrition, sleep, stress, among other factors.
Slowly add in additional miles, then rest and see how you feel. Learn to listen to the feedback that your body provides to determine when you've reached your current threshold. Note that your limit can change as life circumstances, goals, and abilities change and evolve.
I am not suggesting you can't (or shouldn't) run a higher number of miles, only that you need to build over time gradually. Don't be in a hurry.
Watch Out for Over Training and Under Recovering
Heavy legs, extreme hunger, elevated heart-rate, crankiness, trouble sleeping despite feeling exhausted, heavy reliance on caffeine for energy, increased resting heart-rate, and weakening immune system (getting sick more often) are all signs of over training or under recovering. When you experience these symptoms over several days or longer, it's a clear sign from your body that you need to reduce mileage or perhaps increase calories, as under fueling can inhibit proper recovery.
More is Not Always Better
An important lesson for a runner to learn, before their body teaches them the hard way, is that more miles are not always inherently better.
Reasons why it may be more appropriate to run fewer miles:
If your body has not yet adapted to higher mileage (injury-risk). It doesn't mean you can't run high mileage, just that you have to build up to it slowly over time.
If you have a lot of stress in your life. Life stress can inhibit recovery from exercise, and if you are not recovering, you don't improve. If you keep adding more miles without allowing your body to recover, it likely will eventually lead to injury.
If running is not conducive to your outcome goals, such a gaining a lot of muscle or body re-composition. Make sure the hard work you are doing matches the outcome you desire.
If you are not performing resistance training exercises and not consuming adequate protein when in a calorie deficit. If you are running a lot of miles without performing muscle preserving exercises while consuming low calorie and insufficient protein intake, it can lead to muscle loss. Muscle loss lowers metabolism and makes weight loss more difficult to sustain.
Less is Not Always More
While I made the point that more is not always better, I am not suggesting that fewer miles are universally a more appropriate goal. If you have performance, distance, or pace goals, this requires an increase in the workload. Your body responds to the demands placed upon it. If you don't give your body a reason or need to improve, it will remain the same. The same running workouts, over the same route, pace, and distance over time, won't increase your performance or abilities. In this case, you need to run more miles or add more intensity to reach your goals. The most effective way to do this is to add mileage or speed slowly over time.
How Many Miles Should I Run in a Week?
Run as much as you need and that you can recover from, to reach the outcome you desire, but not a mile more. Whether that is ten miles a week or fifty depends on the individual, your experience, age, goals, recovery status, nutrition, sleep habits, hydration, stress levels, lifestyle, and of course, personal preferences.
The fun is in figuring out what that number is for you.
To be a well-balanced runner, you must run enough miles to meet your goals, perform strength training exercises to preserve or build muscle, fuel adequately to support your activity, and rest according to the needs of your body.
Questions? I’d love to help.
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