Weekly Mileage: the 10% Rule

Today wasn't a run day. Today was a get-a-bunch-of-work-done day. But I was thinking about running.

I was looking at my weekly mileage, trying to be smart about things. The 10% Rule says you're not supposed to increase your mileage more than 10% week-to-week. This is usually where I screw up and try to do too much too soon.

I've been doing my day-on-day-off 5k thing for a few weeks, and while I haven't truly built up a solid base, it's probably the most consistent I've been.

If you look at my week-by-week from Nike+, it's really been only the last 2 weeks that I've done about 9 miles; the weeks before that I did 6 or less. If I rapidly jump up, I have a higher risk of getting hurt, so in order to keep myself from being a complete jackanus I've figured out what the recommended weekly mileage increase would be over the next couple weeks, leading upto the beginning of the Higdon half-marathon plan (going by 10%). It looks something like this:

 ⇒ 11
   12
   13
   14.5
   16
   17.5

I've added this to the calendar so I'll make sure to not go beyond this each week—even tho I'm adding a progression of longer and longer runs in preparation for the 10k in Los Gatos.

Makes sense, right? Dorky, but it makes sense. Hopefully I'm being smart (and not just nerdy), and this'll help me keep training smoothly.

My "long" this week is 6 on Saturday, so I'll do 3 miles Tuesday and 2 miles on Thursday to make 11 for the week. Next week I'm slated for another 6 miler with a 12 mile week allotment, so M-W-F I'll divvy up the remaining 6 miles.

We'll see how it goes.