Sunday Long Run: Highlighting Volume

Learn to fall in love with weekly volume goals, not just perfectly round mileage numbers.

A really easy way to do this is to set weekly hour goals on strava, and log all of your activities there.

If you walk, hike, incline treadmill walk, or do anything else on your feet, you can just log it as a run on Strava and it will aggregate your weekly activity hours together into this bucket. In my opinion, this is *not* overstating your running volume, so long as any ‘time on feet’ you are recording is above a 100BPM average.

This is by far the easiest way to track your volume from a “time on feet” perspective.

If on the web, it will show all of your activities together, inclusive of weight lifting, cycling, etc. I urge you to track it all, no matter how minuscule you may think it is. Multiple 30 minute walks throughout the week for example can really add to your total volume, especially when they become a habit and occur week over week.

This screenshot is from Marco Altini (Strava profile LINK) (X profile LINK)

He logs everything. A walk, short bike ride, hikes, runs, bending down to tie his shoe, everything!

I urge you to scroll his profile on both sites, and understand the volume he does is probably not what you can do (or want to do)…but it is replicable on a smaller scale.

If you can get to a place where you are logging 10 hours weekly across all activities—weight training, running, walking, cycling, hiking—you will make gains. The problem/fun part is to then see how many miles total you can then fit in those 10 hours, as we talked about last week.

The crux of this is believing that going for a walk, zone 1 run, 60 minute bike ride, or hike will benefit you. Many fall into the trap that running is the only thing that benefits running. Quite the opposite is true, especially for longevity.

When this doesn’t work:

The bad news…when this approach doesn’t work.

And I don’t mean that it stops working, there just comes a time where dedicated miles, splits, speed work, tempo runs, and long runs are needed.

The overall approach of “time on feet” works for 90%+ of the year. The remaining 10% are the 5 week leading up to your race days throughout the year (assuming you’re keeping up with TOF approach year-round).

In my opinion, once you’re deep enough into the endurance genre, all you need is 5 weeks of race specific work. The rest of your year should be volume focused, incrementally growing your aerobic base as large as possible. For example, there is simply no reason to be running intervals when your next race is 5 months away.

While this may muddy the waters further, I hope it at least highlights:

1. Add as much volume as possible for 90% of the year, growing your aerobic base with zone 1-2 efforts and not overstressing your body. Few efforts should be anaerobic during this time. Rarely take multiple weeks off.

2. Become hyper specific 5 weeks from race day. You trained all that volume to be able to add more intensity and dial in closer to race day. Here is where a detailed plan should be followed that pertains to your distance/course of choice. This is the “icing on the cake” where anaerobic efforts are best utilized.

   1. The 5 weeks is once you become really good, like casually stacking 15 hour weeks with no race day in sight kind of good. Until this point, I suggest sticking with regimented training plans and learning how to train first.

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Articles This Week:

• 50 minute 10K (PAID)

• Deciphering Tech Specs and What Shoe is Best For You (PAID)

Happy Sunday!

-BTR