It is super fun when mileage is building up each week. Great things tend to happen with increased mileage. Paces gets faster, bodies start to change in ways most of us are happier about (slimmer Dad-bod for me!), and most importantly, you can eat more bad guy food than typical!

On the other hand, chances of injury may increase and that is what it was looking like for your average runner Paul entering the mid way point in July. I ended June with hitting three weeks of at least 30 miles a week which was the first time in many years achieving that mark! I felt great the first two weeks with seeing my mileage increase to hour plus runs. What also felt great was getting to eat more fried food. As a result, my physique remained a one pack so not all miracles were going to come my way.

By the time the fourth week of June came around, my shins were not as happy. I decided to back down for a couple days before logging a long run of about two hours in the beginning of July. At that point, my shins were saying it was time to break my 30 mile per week average and tone it down.

Unfortunately, it isn’t always the most fun to decrease the mileage when everything seems to be going the direction you want. For me, it is the smarter decision. In the beginning of the year, I hit over 35 miles in one week before I pushed too much into a minor stress fracture and was off my feet for over a month. Lots of lost fitness at that point too! My eating consumption unfortunately remained the same.

So, with trying to remember my injury from the beginning of the year, it was time to let the body heal with some cross training and build up the mileage in a more sustainable way. I went from 0 miles per week to 15 to 25 to 30 in about 2.5 months so I may need to increase at a slower rate.

The general rule of thumb is to increase your mileage by about 10% per week to allow your body to slowly adjust to the increased workload and impact on your feet. This focuses on small increases of about a mile or two in the beginning of your journey and it is a fantastic way to minimize the chances of an injury. After 3 weeks of increasing your mileage, taking one week to keep it the same also helps your body adjust.

What ideally my data should have looked like from 15 to 25 miles per week would have been this:

The Ideal Buildup:

• Week 1: 15
• Week 2: 16.5
• Week 3: 18.15
• Week 4: 18.15 (Letting your body adjust!)
• Week 5: 20
• Week 6: 22
• Week 7: 24.2
• Week 8: 24.2 (Ideally keeping injury free!)
• Week 9: 26.6

What actual happened was a wee bit different. Let’s look below!

The Actual Buildup:

• Week 1: 14.6
• Week 2: 17.7
• Week 3: 18.2
• Week 4: 23.7
• Week 5: 25.6

Looking at my data, I increased my running mileage on an average from about 13.25% per week from April to May. From May to June, I increased by a percentage of about 15%. As my Dad always says “the numbers don’t lie.” It looks like I increased to 25 miles per week one month earlier than recommended and I hit 30 miles way ahead of what I should have.

And I felt it! So therefore, it was time to take a big step back before it got worse. I cycled this morning for about an hour and took another 30 minute walk. It would be great to lift to build strength but my discipline can only go so far. Hopefully going back to 20 miles per week and slowly increasing will help with the base building in a more sustainable manner.

Bonus picture, here is the bike setup in our humid Texas Garage. Hopefully it leads to better heat tolerance.

Hope your July has been going great so far and you are able to heal up quick if you are battling a few kinks!