 All right, so today we're going to talk about why time spent running is an important factor to consider when you're building your fitness Short-term, but especially long-term. It's not just about the intensity you're running at It's not just about the types of workouts you do. It's very much about how much time do you actually spend running? Each day each week each month each year and I would even argue that this might actually be the most important factor When it comes to your long-term fitness gains, let's get into it So the other day I was out for a run as I am all the time And I was thinking about, you know, it was just an easy run. I was just running really really easy It was almost kind of boring. I was on the road and I was just sort of thinking about how many steps I'm taking, you know in a day in a week in a year And I was sort of doing some calculations and I realized that over say a 10-year period You know, some people say it takes 10,000 hours to become really good at something or you know It takes 10 years then I guess for an elite level athlete to reach his or her potential So I was just thinking about it and I realized There are millions Millions and millions upon millions of steps Involved in that 10-year process for me and there I was out just for an easy run a lot of a lot of steps basically and I realized how These are the steps that matter, you know, I mean like sure you'll do workouts You'll do specific tempo runs and intro sessions on the track work on specific things But in the grand scheme of things The bread and butter so to speak as they say off An endurance type training regimen is all of those easy miles easy kilometers It also of course includes higher paces and faster paces and even even anaerobic type work It also it's also included in time spent running But if you think about it if you head out for a hard session You can only do so much and you certainly can't do another hard session tomorrow again Right, you can't do hard sessions every day. The body just can't recover from that So if you only did hard work, you'd end up with a very low overall volume You wouldn't really acquire as many steps in a year As if you made those steps really easy Of course, if you only do easy work then you sort of miss out on that top end Those top end adaptions that you get from faster paced work So that's important for sure, but the main stay of your running diet your your your main training and your main Training benefits and training effects actually comes from spending as much time as possible running because you know your body adapts To whatever you ask it to adapt to so if you sit on the couch all day every day You basically get adapted to just sitting on the couch That's what you're telling your body that it needs to be adapted to so essentially as a runner at least an endurance runner Meaning essentially anything that lasts more than a couple of minutes It is aerobic in nature and that essentially means that it's all about the aerobic energy system Which uses oxygen to metabolize fuels if you're talking about sprinting less than a minute Well, then we're into that anaerobic type training and it's not the sprinters need to focus more on that But anyone running for a distance is longer than two minutes So certainly 5k 10k half marathon marathon ultra marathon runners typically what we call Endurance athletes includes rowers and it includes cross-country skiing and swimming even all of these athletes need to Develop their aerobic system and those aerobic adaptions are things like the size and density of mitochondria inside the muscle cells It's things like capillaries the blood vessels in the muscles fat adaption being able to burn Fat over carbohydrate at higher and higher intensities There is this is the general development of the cardiovascular system in the heart those are some of those typical Adaptions that happen as a result of endurance aerobic training and these adaptions are essentially a function of time Spent running meaning the more time the more minutes the more steps you take as a runner the more these particular adaptions will develop so it is in your interest to then Run as much as possible and as I said you can't do that if the intensity is too high Which is why the bread and butter the staples of a runner's? Regimen should be all of those easy Kilometers and miles because you'll be able to do more of them Of course at any given time in your career or in your day or in your week or in your month or whatever in any given training cycle There's a limit to how much work you can tolerate right from a systemic point of view in terms of your endocrine system and your Recovery abilities, but also in terms of your musculoskeletal system right your legs your bones your tendons your muscles How much impact can they tolerate in a given amount of time so? For a fairly new runner running 30 kilometers a week might be their upper You know limit even if it's all done easy whereas a more advanced runner be it might be able to do 150 miles In that same week, and so it is very individual and relative But essentially if there is one sentence that I feel personally is very true Across the board it is the more Running you can do the better Okay, and this is why? Only 10 to 20 percent of any a leaf runners Regimen is higher intensity running 80 percent of it is is fairly easy and of course there for rent There's a range of easy They're super easy recovery runs and then there's sort of higher and aerobic runs where you're working pretty hard But it's certainly still aerobic and certainly comfortable right and so whether or not you're a beginner or a more intermediate or an advanced runner I urge you to consider time as a more important metric if you will then Kilometers or miles Right an elite athlete might cover 100 miles in 10 hours in a week whereas 10 hours for a beginner might just be half of that right 80 kilometers and in a sense they're both getting a Similar development of their aerobic system because of the time spent running So if you're looking at that long term and long term remember it could be just as little as three to six months Really even in three to six months you get a great bang for your buck by developing your aerobic system It's really the most important system that you need to focus on But especially if you're looking at that really long term like I am ten years type of time frame You want to accumulate miles you definitely want to accumulate hours you want to accumulate Steps as I mentioned in the intro over those ten years and the more you can do The better it is and I personally don't believe in such a thing as junk miles Unless you're walking, you know if you're if you're just walking Then you're not gonna be able to get your heart rate up to that point where you're stimulating those aerobic Adaptions well enough you need to get up to a certain level of typically You know something like I don't know 60% of your max heart rate It's sort of the lower end of that aerobic spectrum and then sort of goes all the way up to the lactic threshold Which is typically around you know 80 to 90 percent of your max heart rate so That's a long that's a big range so you can have a lot of fun in there and run fast some days and slower other days And vary the paces and vary the terrain for sure you should But it's all within that easy range and it'll allows you to accumulate time and especially if you're doing long runs etc It's really more about time than kilometers per se. All right. That's it. Let me know in the comments Do you consider this have you considered this in your training before are you running by time or are you running by? 25 kilometers or Miles make sure you subscribe of course if you haven't done so already check out some of my other videos on Similar topics like this. I'll put a link to a video somewhere here and you can check it out Hope you're having an awesome day. Thanks for watching. Bye