Junk Miles. Fact or Fiction?

I never heard the term “junk miles” until my final years at Trinity. It was mentioned in passing and I somewhat dismissed it. Then I heard it again and tried figuring out why people were saying that they didn’t want to do a bunch of “junk miles”. After thinking about it time and time again I’ve come to the conclusion that “junk miles” don’t exist.

A lot of people who derisively call any slower running junk miles are under the impression that running much slower than race pace will diminish their speed. Others simply want an excuse to not train as much as they should.

OK, so let me explain why I don’t think “junk miles” exist. Starting out at Trinity I basically had the same training schedule freshman, sophomore, and the first half of junior year. I was running the same amount of mileage, roughly averaging mid to high 50’s throughout those years. Yes, I went to DIII Outdoor Track Nationals, but as cool as that was, getting dead last and almost dead last for the first two years was far from cool. In fact, it was downright embarrassing. I decided to get more knowledgeable about the sport, with the help of Jer, and I increased my mileage in the process. So slowly I started to build. The building didn’t come from longer workouts or much longer long runs. It came from easy runs, which pace wise ranged from 7:40-8:30 depending on how I felt on that day. I started to do a lot more easy doubles throughout the week and by the spring of my junior year I had a couple of 70 mile weeks and my average went up to about mid 60’s. What happened that spring? I went from a 10:54 steeple PR from my sophomore year to a 10:28 my junior year. This led to a third place finish at DIII Outdoor Nationals, much better than my past two track trips. So over the summer and the following year I continued to slowly creep up the mileage to averaging mid 70's with these additional regular runs, which led to an even more successful senior year.

The “junk mileage” I was doing after graduation (averaging in the mid 80’s) led to a 36 second PR in the 5k from my senior year (17:09 indoor track) to this past year (16:33 outdoor track). Also realize that I’m not referring solely to longer races. I PR’d by 2 seconds in a 1500m which was set my sophomore year at the highly competitive Pomona meet. While setting my new PR, I raced completely solo, without having done any specific workouts. My old college PR was set with traditional mile workouts, my new one was set without running a single 400 faster than 78. Longer aerobic workouts, higher overall mileage, and easy junk miles in between made the difference.

What Jer and I believe is that training one system doesn’t “untrain” other systems. Is doing a huge amount of jogging with no workouts a good idea? Nope. Will this cause you to lose your speed? Definitely. But adding an extra volume of easy running to a balanced diet of aerobic workouts and controlled speed work won’t hurt your speed. And if anything, running easy runs a little slower than you think you need to allows for more capacity to recover so you’re able to adapt to the stress you put on your body during those workouts.

Every mile has its purpose, and if that purpose is to go slow to help in the recovery and adaptation process, then it should be called anything but junk.

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