Training by Time Instead of Distance
Monday, June 1, 2009 at 3:00AM I wrote the following to a coaching client recently and thought it would make a great blog post. I also store goodies like this in my "coach's tips" section of my coaching softwares that clients get access to. (Workoutlog.com)
He asked if his workout should be by time or distance. This is what I told him:
Time vs. distance is one of the most important things to know about in training. Here goes -
You want to almost always workout by time. You do a workout by time and effort level, distance being a result - like a side-effect.
You can nearly kill yourself trying to go X miles in hills or wind one day, then cover the same distance another day or in another location with almost no effort. You cannot reliably compare workouts going by distance.
Pros rarely workout by distance. This is something that separates them from the amateurs. They say "I'm going on a 3 hour run... bye!" However far they run, that's how far they run.
Going by time greatly simplifies and improves your workouts. It also makes them portable. When the workout says "hard for 1 hour", go hard for an hour. What you want is a few hours of hard and a lot of hours of easy by the end of the week. It really doesn't matter how far you went. If you trained for a week in hills, that's going to be a lot shorter distance than if you did it on flats. But the hills were harder! So unless you go by time and effort level, your workouts will get all screwed up because of hills and wind.
Another thing to remember is when a workout says to go easy, go easy no matter what the conditions are. If you're in hills or riding into the wind, just gear down and take it easy. You have to develop the guts and self-confidence to not go hard when some chump is passing you on an easy workout. That is probably the most difficult thing and will wreck your training. You are the better athlete for holding back, saving your hard workout for your hard workout.
The distance in those workouts is mostly for me to get an idea of how much load I'm giving you if all things were equal, which they aren't in the real world.
Reader Comments (3)
You are a smart man. I have a hard time keeping my pace in check on my easy days, especially if I get passed by a girl. But the easy days are why I love running (training). I just think to myself "that beeyotch's coach didn't tell her to go easy today". That helps. And it's also very zen.
I have just realized how fruitful going by time instead of distance is this year. I've had this great book, How to Train for and Run your Best Marathon (ISBN: 0-671-79727-1) over 2yrs and have just disciplined myself to work with the schedules. IT IS AMAZING. Not only in seeing your progress, but in how you feel in continually sticking with a planned timed schedule. Loving it. I can't express how great this type of workout / training is.
I want to tell anyone who is training to stop procrastinating and give in to the timed, not distance workouts! It's definitely worth a try anyway. Great short description on the concept man.
Thank you for the great advice.