Quality vs. Quantity - Summer Edition

Let's have a pro and con for quality of miles vs quantity of miles in the summer.

QUANTITY:
PRO:
Minimally invasive training mentally and physically.
Lower chance of overtraining.
Prepares for the volume and duration of the school year.
CON:
Missing the middle steps between 6:30-7:30 pace summer miles and 5:00-5:30 pace Fall workouts.
Less effective at developing aerobic capacity.

QUALITY:
PRO:
Makes transitioning to Fall workouts more natural
Allows for bigger workouts in the Fall, and an improved ability to recovery from them.
CON:
Chance of burnout if taken too intensely.
Higher chance of injury.


Obviously neither extreme is correct. Don't run 25 miles a week at 5:45 pace, but don't run 140 miles a week at 8:00. The 2-3 quality days per 8-10 days I was talking about are days with a regular run, maybe 8-10 miles, a few steps faster than the usual 6:45-7:15 clip, working down to 6:00 or so for the last half hour. I really think the benefit is huge of having a run like this every week. They are completely aerobic, the way our tempo runs SHOULD have been over the summer and during the year last year. As I've said to Nick a few times this year, no one should ever DNF a tempo run (which I've stupidly done my fair share of times). If you do, it's not a tempo run. Tempo running is pushing up and improving your aerobic limit, maximum aerobic output, threshold, whatever you want to call it. To do that, we run at or just below that limit. Running just below that limit, we're still completely aerobic, meaning you should never ever feel a drop of lactic acid build up when running "tempo pace." The benefit of this kind of training throughout July and August is better preparation for full on tempo runs and tempo /cruise intervals, which are the 8k paced stuff like 5xmile, 3x2000, 5-8x1200 type workouts, as well as developing your aerobic engine over the course of months and years. Those of us looking toward the marathon in a few years (which is basically all of us based on who's been posting) should be very interested in this. Uptempo running is pretty close to marathon/half marathon pace, which I think Corey mentioned in his post. I think HM pace is the ideal middle ground pace where you can stay minimally invasive, while still increasing the bounds on your maximum aerobic output. OK someone else take over.


That, and running a lot on hills a few times a week. This will be another post once I'm home. We did no hills in September October or November last year, and I think we, or at least I, paid the price by sucking monkey nuts at Mt. Greylock last year.

Goals

I really like Blaney's idea.

Training Goals:
My goal this season is to run at least 1000 miles from the time I move in till september. That works out to be about 85 mile weeks for 3 weeks followed by a down weeks of 55. The plan leaves me with about 30 extra miles to play around with. Within each week, I my goal is to include 2 or 3 of these: an up-tempo, fartlek, tempo or HM paced work with a focus on increasing the time spent at the faster pace. Twice a week my goal is to include hill bounds, plyometrics, explosive med-ball tosses, and general and hamstring strength stuff.

Overall Goals:
Destroy the excuse, "I'm much better at track"
Second 7
I don't know what I want for a time goal yet.

Team (insert goal here) by cross

Jerzy I think you should probably be worried more about team pass weigh in by cross then 100 pushups. But if you do get to 100 pushups that would probably make you the strongest person on the team. I tried to see how many pushups I could do just now without stopping and I got to 50 and now its hard to type.

I think having goals by cross country is a pretty good idea, seeing as we all have goals while we are in season it makes sense to me to set good goals ( besides not being obese hutch) for the start of cross. In trying to think of what goal to set that would be a good thing many things come to mind weight goals, mileage goals, strength goals, not injured etc... Its hard to say what would be the best. For me any weight goal would be accomplished by running enough so that seems unnecessary. I don't really feel the need to have more then normal upper body strength either. What I really want to do is be able to dunk a basketball by the end of the summer but I feel like that is not really feasible for me. Long story short is I think it would be interesting to see everyones goals for the summer just to see where everyones heads are at and to see different perspectives on summer training.

There are 15 weeks from now to september first which is 105 days.

Just to stick with the 100 number thing my goal:

Run or Crosstrain for 100 out of those 105 days.

There now Jerzy, Hutch and I all have goals lets see some others

Blanes

Starting running again

I just got back from my best run of the summer- a 9 mile jog around Brookline with some former teammates. I'm finally starting to remember how to run. The first week back running is always horrible for me; my legs ache, my breathing is heavy, and I have to battle to not get passed by middle-aged hobby runners. It's amazing to me that in a month I'll be running 3 times as much as I did last week, and I'll mostly likely feel better doing it.
On another note, like Hutch, I'm also hopping on a train this summer- Train 100 by Cross. However, it's not the 100 Pounds by Cross Train (I'm shooting for 85- only 7 pretzels and 3 peanut butter crackers per day), it's the 100 Pushups in a Row by the First Day of Practice Train. Can I do it?
p.s. I know it probably doesn't help with running