When Should You Consider Doubles

Audio Transcript

Anastasia: Hi there! It’s Anastasia from South Africa. First off, I’d like to just say thanks for the amazing podcast. They’re very informative and hugely helpful. Then of course I have a question for you, and that question is about doubling up on runs during the week. Basically you’re running twice a day.

To give you some background, I’m sort of a marathon distance runner at the moment, building up to ultra-distance. My first ultra-marathon is going to be a 56k in April. My average weekly mileage tends to be around 100 kilometers or I’d say 60 or so miles per week. It’s challenging for me to put all of that into single workouts a day.

My question is, when a runner is considering upping her workouts to twice a day, or to running twice a day, what sort of structure is there to follow or what guidelines in order to get the maximum benefit from residential runs?

Should they all be done at easy pace? Should you only double up on days that you’re doing easy workouts? Can you add an extra run on quality workout days? Is there some sort of guideline as to how to go about doubling up in order to really get the most benefit out of that and what does it look like?

Then the second part is,how do you go about splitting the mileage that you’re doing? If I wanted to hit say 18 kilometers or 20 kilometers a day, should I be looking at an 8, 10 split or a 10, 8 split or it should be 10, 10, 12, 8, that kind of thing?

I’d really appreciate if you could give me some insight on that.

Thank you so much.

Claire: Thanks Anastasia. That is a very popular question. How do you run doubles and why and what are they for, and how do you incorporate them into your running training plan?

Well, elite run doubles all the time and that’s simply because they work. Running twice a day boosts your aerobic development.

It also keeps you in a state of glycogen depletion which science shows increases your fat oxidation and your enzyme activity, and all of those go up when you’re running twice a day, because your energy systems and your metabolism is being stimulated twice a day. It will essentially make you fitter, faster if done right.

Another important pro of running doubles is it can allow more efficient recovery and make your runs easier. Running eight miles a day or 10 kilometers a day is much harder on the body than cutting that in half, and splitting it into two runs. Especially since you get to rest and refuel in between.

Everytime you go out there for running, even if it’s something very easy like a recovery run, you’re moving the blood which carries oxygen and nutrients to your muscles. If you’re doing that twice a day, you’re getting recovery and the benefits of running twice a day to your muscles.

Of course there are some cons to running. All of the things that I just said do have a negative side to them. Beginner runners might want to shy away from doubles until they’ve built up quite an aerobic base.

The reason is, more experienced runners will get the most benefit from doubles because they actually need more stimulation to get the same effect.

If you’ve been running for three to five years at a fairly intense level, those 8 to 10 mile easy runs just aren’t stimulating your entire body the way they would have, had you just started out.

For beginner runners, an 8 to 10 mile run is a really big deal, so trying to double up can be just too taxing on the body if you don’t have a big aerobic base.

When we look at our runs, which runs give the most benefit? The runs that last between 60 to 90 minutes – that window provides most of the benefits of running.

For example, if you were to run for two hours, if you were to break that up into two, one hour runs instead of doing it all at once, you would be getting more benefit by breaking that run in half.

Now, I’m not talking about breaking your long run in half because the long run all by itself provides enormous benefits for long distance. Mental benefits are hugely important so you need to keep your long run all together.

If you can get two runs in with the 60 to 90 minute window instead of one 120-minute run, that will be better for training during the week, with the exception of the one long run that you do.

Conversely, if you have a run scheduled that’s only 60 minutes long, and you break that up into two 30- minute runs, that’s not giving you the most benefit versus a longer 60-minute run.

If you’re not at the level where 30 to 40 minutes is very easy, you probably should not try to incorporate doubling because it’s going to hamper your recovery.

It’s simply too hard for your level to incorporate doubling at that point, but once you get to the point where 30 to 40 minutes of running at whatever speed is just no big deal, you might want to consider it, especially if it does fit into your lifestyle.

How do you do it? Well, Anastasia, you said the main reason for your doubling is to fit it into your lifestyle, not so much to add mileage. That’s one thing to consider is why are you adding a second run a day. If you’re doing it to add mileage, that’s a different goal than if you’re doing it to fit your lifestyle.

How you start doing that is about the same.

First of all, you want to start slowly and ease into it. Start by focusing, adding easy miles to your easy day. Let’s say you have a 10 kilometer run on your schedule, you might want to do part of that in the morning and then part of that in the afternoon.

Then after you’ve done, added some easy miles to some of your easy runs, in the next few weeks you can start adding some easy runs to your medium effort days.

We don’t do a whole lot of medium effort runs at RunnersConnect, but we do have a few steady state runs which are slower than tempo runs, that are right in that center of your ability level – not too hard and not too fast. If you have one of those on the schedule, you can add a short easy run before or after that.

Once you’re comfortable doing that, you can consider adding some to your tempo days and after a few weeks of that, you can add some to your speed days. I’m not recommending that you do a double every single day, because that’s very difficult to do unless you’re at the very competitive elite level running, hundreds of miles a week.

These are just spaces that you can add it. In the beginning like I said, go ahead and add it to your easy days and then work up to adding it to your harder days, over several weeks to months.

What order do you do those and do you do the extra run before a workout or do you do it after?

It doesn’t matter so much as far as physiologically where you add it. It’s more of personal preference, so if you’d like to add in a few kilometers in the morning, and then do your workout in the evening, that would work fine. As long as it doesn’t make you too tired.

If you do an easy run in the morning and then you just don’t have enough energy for your evening workout, you might want to flip it around and see if you can do it the other way.

I prefer when I’m doing doubles, to add some extra easy miles at the end of the day. I’ll have a hard workout of several miles in the morning and then in the evening three or four easy miles just to add to my total mileage.

How do you split? You asked about percentages. Do you do 8 in the morning and 10 in the evening? How exactly do you do it? Well, instead of trying to talk about distances, miles or kilometers, try to think about it for a minute because this can apply to every level of runners.

If you get the most benefit of a run that is 60 minutes to 90 minutes long, you want to have one of those efforts a day be in that range.

Then the second effort doesn’t necessarily have to be in that range. I’m not asking you to run two to three hours a day when you’re doubling; you don’t have to do that. You should have your good quality workout be the longer portion and then the shorter workout be the extra easy miles that you’re adding to doubles.

Maybe you’ll have an 8 to 10 mile workout with a warm up and cool down in the morning, and then three or four miles in the evening just to shake out a recovery run, very slow.

You’re going to be running twice a day, hopefully not everyday, maybe try this once or twice a week at the beginning to see how you do.

The thing to remember is that you’re stimulating your metabolism twice a day so you’re going to be hungrier and you’re going to want to fuel a little bit better. Pay attention to that and make sure that you’re not completely exhausting yourself.

The other thing you want to remember is try to keep the runs at least five hours apart and preferably seven to eight hours.

Your body needs a chance to cycle through the process of recovery before you start introducing another stimulus and running again. Don’t run at breakfast and then at lunch and then at dinner.

You want to run in the morning and in the evening and keep them far enough apart so that you’re not breaking yourself down more than building it up.

I hope that answers your question, Anastasia. It was a good one that I know lots of people have asked us about, so thanks for coming on and recording it with us.

If you would like to have your question answered by one of RunnersConnect coaches, head on over to runnersconnect.net/daily and click the record button to send your question on over to us.

Once again this episode was brought to you by Health IQ. I think we all can agree that finding life insurance to fit your needs can be a bit unfair.

You’re a runner which means you’re much fitter than the average population. You probably eat healthier, exercise way more than average, have a higher health IQ and you avoid unhealthy habits like smoking.

Research has shown that avid runners have a 41% lower risk of heart disease and a 35% lower risk of early death.

Why should you pay the same insurance rates as those who don’t take care of themselves as well?

That’s the mission of Health IQ, a life insurance company that specializes in getting the best rates and advantages for healthy people like you.

At RunnersConnect, we really love Health IQ because like us, they focus on actual scientific research and big data to support everything they do.

Health IQ has taken that research and data and spent the last few years securing better rates with top insurers for runners and other health conscious people.

If you’d like to see how much they can lower your life insurance costs, head to runnersconnect.net/healthiq and learn more, take a quiz or get a free quote.

If you haven’t already, consider heading on over to iTunes or your favorite podcast directory and subscribing or leaving a review.
Have a great run today.