I have been running seriously for three years. Not competitively serious — I do not race professionally — but seriously enough to have an actual training philosophy, not just a routine.

Here is how I think about it now.

The foundation is aerobic capacity

The single biggest lever for improvement as an amateur runner is building a large aerobic base. Most runners, including me for the first year, run their easy days too hard and their hard days too easy. The result is a training zone that is consistently medium-hard — fatiguing without providing the aerobic stimulus of truly hard efforts.

The shift that changed my running: slowing down easy runs by 60–90 seconds per mile and accepting short-term ego damage in exchange for long-term adaptation.

Consistency beats intensity

A 12-week training block at 50 miles per week is worth more than a 4-week block at 70 miles followed by injury. The math is straightforward, but the discipline is not.

My current approach is to hold back enough that I can maintain mileage for 16–20 week blocks without breaking down. Adaptation is a slow process. There is no workaround.

What I track and what I ignore

I track: weekly mileage, long run distance, one quality workout per week, sleep hours.

I do not track: heart rate zones obsessively, pace on every run, VO2max estimates from my watch.

The signal that matters is whether I can run the same volume next week. Everything else is secondary.

The practical structure

My current week looks roughly like:

  • Monday: rest or 20-minute shakeout
  • Tuesday: easy 8–10 miles
  • Wednesday: quality workout (tempo, intervals, or strides)
  • Thursday: easy 6–8 miles
  • Friday: easy 5–6 miles
  • Saturday: long run 14–18 miles
  • Sunday: easy recovery 5–6 miles

Total: 50–55 miles. Sustained consistently for months before adding volume.

What I have learned from getting this wrong

I spent a year running 35–40 miles a week and not improving because most of those miles were at “comfortable but not easy” pace. I felt like I was working hard. I was not working productively.

The hardest part of training correctly is accepting that easy runs are supposed to feel easy, not like a workout.