If you talk to experienced runners long enough, you’ll probably hear someone talk about running “junk miles”. Junk miles are miles in a runner’s training schedule where the goal is just to complete the miles, not to run intervals, or do hill repeats, or do a long run, or hit a specific pace.
They’re miles for the sake of adding mileage to a runner’s week.
I’ve been working hard training for this half marathon, but my favorite runs are the runs where I’m not trying to do intervals, or achieve a certain pace, or go a new long distance.
My favorite runs are the ones where I’m just out there keeping my body used to the idea of running often. Maybe I’m pushing the jogging stroller, or maybe I have a long run scheduled for the next day, but for whatever reason I’m not trying to do anything other than run those 3 or 4 miles.
For me, they’re not junk miles. They’re the realization of a dream I once had of being able to run 3 miles without stopping and enjoy it. Those miles are the reason I worked so hard during Couch to 5k, so I could someday just lace up and go out for a casual 3 mile run. So that running 3 miles could BE casual.
Sometimes I wish I had taken a little more time to enjoy just running regularly, without pushing myself to run faster or longer, but just relishing the ability to get out there and run at all.
Every time I go out there and just run as fast or as slow as I feel like running, I am realizing that dream I had when I started Couch to 5k and took up running in the first place. Maybe we should call them bonus miles. Or dream miles. Or wow-this-is-awesome-i-love-running miles.
They’re not junk. They’re the reason for all the effort to begin with.
I’ve also heard them called recovery miles, I like that better, but I still feel like it’s not doing them justice since they’re the raison d’etre for my running to begin with!