99.9999% of training plans are written in miles. We talk about our weeks in terms of how many miles we ran. 50 mile weeks, 100 mile weeks, Beloved Uncle Pete's plans are written with how many miles we can and should run.

One massively overlooked aspect of training plans is the amount of total time you ran in a week. Especially for newer runners or runners who have slower overall paces for the majority of their training runs.

July 25, 2014 I was on a plane reading an issue of Running Times (RIP, you great magazine, you) and at the corner of an otherwise large article on Mo Farah, was a snippet of his weekly training load, given in time. I copied it into my notebook. (Note: I am relatively certain it was Mo, but thinking back, I originally thought it was Meb, even though I wrote MO FARAH in big capital letters.)

Here's a redo of my original sketch where you can see days and times.

Mo's week consisted of:

• Monday - AM: 60, PM: 36 = 96 min
• Tuesday - AM: 105 (Q1), PM: 30 = 141 min
• Wednesday - AM: 72 PM: 30 = 102 min
• Thursday - AM: 66 PM: 30 = 102 min
• Friday - AM: 108 (Q1), PM: 24 = 132 min
• Saturday - AM: 66, PM: 36 = 102 min
• Sunday - AM: 153 (Q2), PM 0 = 153 min

Q1: Warm Up - 60 minute tempo - Cool Down Q2: 27 miles @ 5:40 pace.

TOTAL WEEK: 828 minutes = 13:48 ~ 132 miles @ 6:15 average pace

(The mileage will be plus/minus based on specific efforts for the easy run days - but it was an educated guess).

We would report that week at 136 miles, not 13hr 48min.

But - if we are a runner looking at the amount of miles we should be running - we might see 136 and think "okay, I can handle that volume"

You might be able to handle the miles - but how different is the time that it takes you to run those miles?

To give an example - I took seven different average pace times, 6:00 min/mile up to 12:00 min/mile and figured out the approximate time it would take to run 50 and 100 mile weeks.

If you look at a 6:00 min/mile runner on 100 miles as compared to a 12:00 min/mile runner on 50 miles - it's the same amount of time (as expected since 6:00 min/mile is twice as fast as 12:00 min/mile).

But, if you close the pace gap - the differences in total time can still be significant. 9:00 min/mile runner on 100 miles is looking at five hours of total running more than a 6:00 min/mile runner. On a 50 mile week the two differ by 2:30.

It's a simplistic chart, but it should give you a small indication of the total time it takes runners to complete the same distances.

I see this a lot for brand new runners following training plans. If a new runner is running a 13:00 min/mile and has a six mile midweek run, that's 1:18. That's a lot for a new runner's midweek runs - and then you get into four hour long runs and we've got another topic for another post.

A runner can run more miles, but that increase should coincide with your overall pace increase as well. If your mileage increase means you are consistently running 2 hour runs during the week, you may want to wait until your speed increases and your pace decreases so you can lower the overall time of your runs.

If it means you can't fit it into your schedule, you may have to reassess, or split into doubles, for instance.

If your mileage is increasing, are you increasing the overall amount of time ran? Is it staying the same?

If you are a runner that is strapped for time and may only have a specific amount of time you can workout daily, a good thing to remember is that as you continue to improve, you should be able to cover more miles in the same amount of time.

You don't have to write your training plans in time. Rather it's a metric to keep in mind when you look at your data for the weeks and months leading into a race. I do write a lot of plans with time, and I write specific workouts with time as well (should write another post on that).

Just a/some thought(s) to start off this Wednesday.