Other ways to building endurance

DontThinkJustRun

I'm headed into my 3rd year of running and while I really aspire to be 40-50 mile a week person, I just don't think it's in the cards for me. I can't seem to run back to back days (ran 4-5 days a week for 18 months and my running performance and stamina suffered greatly as well as my passion for running), so I'm stuck at 3 days week and pretty happy here. Sadly I only have at best 90 mins to run 2 of those days and that's a stretch, it usually closer to 60 mins. So that maxes me out at 6-8 miles (yes I'm slow) on those days and long runs are long runs, no problem there.

Anyway, the point of this is that I'm headed into my first marathon and I'm anticipating there will be more marathons, at the very least more 1/2s, in my future and I will want to improve my speed. From all that I've been reading it seems that miles are king, so if I can't get as many miles as would be ideal, what are some ways I can get the same effect? Right now I spin 2xs a week and I'm wondering if that would be equivalient to maybe 2, 4 mile runs or if they are just not comparable.

Thoughts?

arc918

Spin and biking is good. Elliptical is good as well (but you have to really work hard - lots of people just go through the motions on those things).

You may also find once you add in more cross training to the mix, you may be better able to handle more days of running.

Bottom line, as runners we are a "sample size of one." Just find what works best for you.