By J. Jenkins

On July 9th, I finished Oregon's Mt. Hood 50-Mile trail race in just over 13.5 hours—roughly 16:15 pace. Lots of people just in Lawrence have run much farther, much faster—I’m just a newbie—but there is one aspect of my experience that others might find interesting: I prepared for the race averaging less than 30 miles per week.

I prefer a low volume approach to training because it reduces injury risk and leaves time for other activities (or even inactivity!). Plus, it has worked well for me in the past: In 2012, I qualified for Boston on 30 miles per week, following a plan from Olympian Jeff Galloway’s aptly-titled book, Boston Marathon: How to Qualify.

For Mt. Hood, I chose a plan from another Galloway book, Trail Running: Basically, every 2-3 weeks I did a series of long slow runs separated by less than 4 hours. I started at a distance of 10 miles (5 in the morning, 5 in the afternoon) and over the course of about six months gradually built to 52 miles (22 in the morning, 18 in the afternoon, and 12 that night).

Such overdistance training is based on Galloway's observation that racers tend to “hit the wall” around the distance of their longest training run, regardless of weekly mileage. Overdistance training for a 50-miler may sound crazy—and in isolation probably would be—but the Galloway Method's insertion of walk breaks during long runs, and more rest weeks between long runs, simply makes longer long runs possible.

On a few of the non-long run weekends I did some faster 10-mile runs to be ready to beat the cutoff on race day. Other than that, I ran as usual, which for me is 3-4 runs per week for around 15-20 miles.

This approach may not be for everyone—I certainly wasn’t going to win any awards on less than 30 miles per week—but I was able to enter the race confident that I could finish in the time allotted without injury. Overdistance training had pushed “the wall” back beyond the finish line, even of an ultra. At the end I felt like I could have kept going—though I was quite glad not to!

(You can meet Jeff Galloway at Ad Astra Running on Saturday, August 6th: There will be a free community run/walk from the store at 7:00 am, followed by a 2-hour running school at 10:30 am (registration required) and a public book-signing/meet-and-greet at 2:00 pm.)