How much is enough? How many kilometers are recommended for me to run in every week in order for me to perform better from my last race? If you are not logging on the distance you have ran for the past week and instead prefer the number of hours, you could ask yourself, what is the number of hours I should run in a week in order to perform better in my road races?

You could only answer this question if you are methodical and thorough in maintaining your runner’s dairy. It should be a Runner’s Diary with Integrity (I hope you know what I mean). Based from your weekly total number of kilometers or hours that you ran, you could analyze if the past mileage for the week had given you more strength, power, and stamina for the next week’s running workout. It means that you could compare between your body feelings from finishing an 80 km per week from 90 km per week or 100 km per week. You should be able to know how it feels to finish an 80, 90, 100, or 110 km per week run.

Am I talking from Mars? In my preparation for a 100K Mountain Trail Run in May next year, as early as now, I am trying to find out if I can still improve my running performance with my prevailing age of 58 years old by “steadily” increasing my weekly mileage with a minimum of 100 kilometers per week. And try to find out how much more can my body endure and sustain by adding more kilometers to my baseline of 100 kilometers.

Two weeks ago, I was able to run 100 kilometers and I felt good. With all the raining since last Monday, I was able to run a total of 26 kilometers and decided to make Wednesday as my rest day. We will see if I can still maintain or sustain to finish a total mileage of 100 kilometers for this week. However, with the continuous rains brought about the tail-end of Super Typhoon “Juan”, I was able to run a total of 70 kilometers to include my run in yesterday’s Mt Mayon 21K Trail Run.

By the way, my average pace for the past weeks was 5:40 minutes per kilometer in my Easy Runs; 5:05 minutes per kilometer in my Tempo Runs and my average Interval training time for my 400-meter lap runs is 1:36 minutes. This is what I call “Intensity Training with Higher Mileage”!

So far, my body is adapting to the stress and I could recover well while adopting the Easy-Hard Principle of training with at least one hour of sleep during daytime and another 7-8 hours during night time. I have at least 2 massage sessions every week.  Nutrition is well-maintained making sure that I eat my replenishment food at least 30 minutes after every workout. I maintain a 40-40-20 diet and drink lots of water.

I will keep you posted with regards as to how much will I be able to maximize my weekly mileage and what is the feeling what is like to be running such mileage.

You can visit my http://www.dailymile.com account for the details.