Reply to Running Advice - Prioritize Volume Over All?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sorry in advance this is long but I'm just getting overwhelmed by instagram feeding me running advice reels. I am a not serious not elite recreational runner. Just to start out here. I'm not breaking any records. My average outdoor pace is like 11:30. So, just to start the conversation where it belongs haha. I'm a 39 year old woman with three small kids who weighed 50 pounds more three years ago and am still overweight. Again, just to establish what kind of person you're giving advice to.

I spent the 1-2 years losing weight on the peloton. Changed my life! I ran a local 10k that year too just to see if I could do it and have run it every year since. The first year I was at 1:08, the second 1:04. This year I was at 1:05 which was disappointing because I had been doing a LOT of speed work and training on tracks to try to beat an hour but the race itself was on a hot and extremely humid day and the whole pack had higher times than previous years so it was what it was.

I have my eyes set on breaking an hour next summer though. Historically I have done more cycling than running during the year and then ramped up running in June/July for the early August race, but with almost no road running because I had a belief that I had bad feet. And I do have flat feet. But I signed up for a half marathon in October to keep me motivated and have been doing a lot more road running the last few weeks to try to get more exposure to the elements and hills/etc and my feet have been alright. I think weight loss and good shoes are doing the heavy lifting here.

Anyway, my primary focus the last few weeks has been adding volume, but I'm slow! Basically I want to use this year to substantially improve my overall running ability, rather than try to rush progress in the weeks before the race next summer. And trying to sign up for things in the interim to help nudge me along. So my goal is to get to 25 miles this week but since I'm slow this takes a lot of TIME. And then I read online I should be aiming for 7-8 hours of running total. This week I did a long run on Sunday (10.5 miles road/trail, 2:20), a hard outdoor run on Tuesday (5miles, 58min). I intended that run to be a mix of easy and moderate but it was hot out so my HR was pretty high the whole time. Yesterday I did an easy climate controlled zone 2 treadmill run (4miles, just under an hour) intentionally trying to make it EASY  to keep zone 2. It felt like, embarrassingly slow. But it also felt manageable even though it was another hour of running. So I'm looking at today and tomorrow and just trying to think.

Do I need to prioritize a speed day? Or should I focus on this zone 2 strategy where it feels really manageable to add volume, but is going to take a lot of time.

Additionally, my husband tore his ACL in June which has meant I have to do a not insubstantial amount of yardwork on the weekend including mowing our lawn with a push mower on a challenging large hill. This seems perhaps unrelated but our yard is really challenging to mow and so while I have been trying to have a 'rest' day on Saturday, it frequently involves this lawn mow which is honestly just not a true rest day. I think mowing my lawn is not insignificantly harder than my hour long zone 2 frankly.

Anyway I don't even know what I'm asking. I feel bombarded by running advice videos on social media that I didn't even sign up for its like the internet just sees me logging more miles so is filling my feed with reinforcing concepts which is scary from the big brother perspective but also kind of messing with my head. My current focus was just 'add volume'. I spent the summer working on speed and feel like volume is where I should have started. Does this seem right? Sorry if this is all over the place. And thanks in advance for any thoughts/advice![/quote]

Your first paragraph made me smile!

I haven’t been a decent runner in years, but I do remember that I surprised myself on a 10k race by finishing in my fastest time after having run far less than is usually recommended before a race. I did, however, do regular weight training (which I wasn’t doing previously). I don’t know if this is the proper approach though! I just know that it worked for me.

Have you also checked out your running form to make sure it’s not slowing you down? That is what happened to me over time. I just could not go faster on a run unless I was full on sprinting, so no middle ground pace and I could either shuffle or sprint (although I felt like I was working very hard when shuffling, as if I was  maximizing the movements/biomechanics of my body). I stopped running entirely, bought barefoot shoes to walk around in, and could finally feel my hamstrings for the first time in years. I had a profoundly impactful realization that because my hamstrings were both weak and really tight, my running form had devolved as a result. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos on form, walked around in our backyard for months, trying out different versions of basically the high knees warm up but also trying to imitate the forms I saw on YouTube, and slowly but surely relearned/taught my body how to run properly. I also started doing active hamstring and hip flexor stretches to decrease the tightness that was, in conjunction with my weakness, holding up my leg from properly raising up high enough.  My cadence count went way up, I ran faster when I started again, I finally understood what it feels like to fully activate your hamstrings while running (for me I have to say “pull up high with hamstring, small V (the angle at the back of my knee), swing knee, drop leg”), and my knee that has been hurting for a decade no longer hurts. I also feel very dumb for not studying my form years ago. I had taken my form for granted when I was young so it didn’t used to need intentional adjusting and accountability. Form matters an extra amount if you gained weight from your normal weight, which also happened to me in my form devolving era.

Anyways, sorry to write so much on this. I just wanted to share my anecdotal running improvement experience as a non-competitive runner in a similar life stage to yours! 
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