Running: The Case for Minutes over Miles

First off I'd like to say that throughout my high school and collegiate cross country/track & field career I'd always tracked the amount of "work" I'd done by tracking my miles. I knew of no other way and it made sense in terms of the distances I was racing. I had no reason to question it. As far as I knew at the time this was the way that "everyone" was doing it.

It was not until I started working with the women's cross country/track & field team at WVU that I was introduced to tracking the amount of "work" an athlete was doing by minutes. Obviously I sought out answers. Why would someone choose to track minutes instead of miles? Coach Cleary took the time to explain the method behind the madness, so to speak. He explained that oftentimes when an athlete is covering a prescribed amount of miles for their runs it leads to the athlete running the same route, and in running the route the athlete inevitably sets a personal best. If the athlete happens to feel good on a given day, she may decide to try to better that record. The point of the run though is to recover in order to set the athlete up for the upcoming workout. Now the athlete has neither run slow enough to recover nor run fast enough in order to create a training stimulus, thus just leaving the athlete more fatigued going in to the next workout which in turn erodes the quality of that workout. Instead have the athletes run by minutes, it removes one's ego from the equation. The temptation to chase ghosts is no longer relavent. No matter how fast or slow they run they're going to be running for X amount of minutes.

The second reason one should consider running minutes over miles, especially when coaching in a team setting, is that it is an equalizer for athletes of different ability levels. For instance, Runner A is an 17:00 - 5k runner and can comfortably cover her 7 mile run in 52:30 (7:30 min/mile). Runner B is an 18:45 - 5k runner and can comfortably cover her 7 mile run in 56:00 (8:00 min/mile). Now as a coach why would you have an athlete that is not quite as fit run for a longer period of time, thus leaving the less fit runner more fatigued for the upcoming workout. Instead have those athletes run for minutes. Based upon their ability levels, the relative effort that our respective athletes are running is the same and they're running for the same amount of time. They've now put in the same amount of "work".

Lastly, one needs to consider variations in terrain. Having moved to Colorado a few years ago it afforded my partner and I the opportunity to drive to the mountains and get some real trail running in. What we came to find out is that it's best to focus on effort, as depending on the technicallity and incline/decline of the trail there are going to be huge swings in pace. On a trail we've run for 2 hours and only covered 10 miles, whereas if we were to run 10 miles in Denver it would take about 80 minutes.

It is based upon this rationale that I have since converted to minutes over miles and I've never looked back. Now if you're someone who just can't part with the idea of tracking weekly mileage, then what I suggest is using Jerry Schumacher's (coach of the Bowerman Track Club) method of tracking mileage (aka Badger Miles). From my understanding he assigns each gender a pace by which you calculate their mileage. For example, for his men the assigned pace is 7:00 min/mile. If he were to assign his men's team 70 minutes he counts it as 10 miles, regardless of what the pace they actually ran or what their GPS might say. For his women, the assigned pace is 8:00 min/mile, thus they would need to run 80 minutes in order to cover 10 miles. By using this system it allows one to equate a mileage value to a certain amount of time run even though the pace may vary depending on the athlete and the day.