My annual mileage is going to end up down about 10% from the past couple years. Here’s my annual totals since I started running:
- 2013 – 1,817 miles
- 2014 – 2,017 miles
- 2015 – 1,723 miles
- 2016 – 1,761 miles
- 2017 – 1,739 miles
- 2018 – 2,112 miles
- 2019 – 2,461 miles
- 2020 – 2,483 miles
- 2021 – 2,500 miles
- 2022 – 2,250 miles
There’s no particular reason why my mileage is down this year. I don’t plan out or target a certain number of miles. My annual totals end up being just a function of my daily/weekly training loads. Overall, I attribute most of the drop to the timing of my races. April and June were relatively low mileage months as I recovered from 100 mile efforts. I then took a bit of a break from serious training after Grindstone in September.
Generally speaking, I like the 2200-2500 mile area for myself right now. This basically shakes out as 40 mile weeks with races adding in a little extra to my overall volume. My body can definitely handle higher mileage weeks. It’s typically the mental side of running 60-70 mile weeks that I can’t really handle. Well, I can handle it, I just don’t want to handle it which is probably the same thing.
The “I Don’t Want To” lead to the 2015-2017 drop-off from my first couple of years. I had built my body up to being able to handle ultra distances and didn’t need to keep banging out back-to-back long runs each weekend. Bother. I wasn’t out chasing podiums and good enough was good enough.
I jumped above 2,000 annual miles in 2018 when I upped my normal mid-week run from 5 miles to 7-8 miles. There wasn’t any overarching reason for the change. Just something I felt like doing. An extra 25-30 minutes a run sounds like a lot, but it wasn’t very noticeable for me. And once you get a couple months into any new endeavor, it’s just your new normal.
Looking at my 2023 race calendar, I’ll have a bit more break between my races so my guess is I’ll be back up to the 2,500 mile area. That’s just a guess though. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?