mileage

Running is going fairly well these days. I got about 62 miles in last week and I am on pace for about 70 this week. I went 15 last Sunday which is the longest I have gone in a while. It is kind of exciting to be training seriously again. It really has been such a long time since I put any serious mileage in. I am not sure why. I guess I always knew that mileage was the secret for me to go to a higher level. When I made my first breakthrough from 36:20 10 K to a 34 min 10 K it was because of a summer of 70 mile weeks. I eventually got down to 32's because of many 80-100 mile weeks. After I finished running seriously in the 80's I never really approached that kind of mileage again. Of course it isn't particularly easy to consistently run "higher" mileage. The difficult part is not getting injured. The higher the mileage the greater the chance of breaking down, of straining a muscle, getting a stress fracture or many other of many possible running injuries. My strategy is to run all my non-speedwork workouts quite slowly. Actually it isn't really my choice. I am so exhausted because of running as much as I am, that my runs are naturally slow. Anyway, so far so good. If I can put 10 weeks of 70 mpw I will be in pretty good shape I think.