What is Better, Distance or Frequency?

I run for 30 minutes every other day with a 15 minute warm-up and a 15 minute cool-down. On the days in between I walk for 60 minutes.

I eventually want to be able to run 6-7 days per week.

What would my next step be, run longer on the days I run or start running on more days?


Answer by Dominique:


Hi there,
Thanks for your running training question. It's an interesting one. And I am not sure there is one correct answer. You can do both, depending on what you want to achieve, I think. Just see if the below helps a little in making up your mind:

Running training is usually best done in a hard/easy-pattern, i.e. one day hard, next day easy to recover.

What I like about your current exercise program is that you exactly follow that hard/easy approach. You run one day, walk the next.

Whatever you do (first start running longer, or first start running more days), it is good to keep on working within that hard/easy pattern.

One approach is the following:
Start running on your walking days, but do not make these 60-minute-runs immediately. Maybe walk 50 minutes and run 10. Once you are comfortable with these run/walks then you can add a bit of running to the run/walk-days or add a bit of running time to your run-days.

It depends a lot on your goals as well. If you just want to be fit and healthy, but do not have any racing goals, then you would probably work on running more days first.

If, however, you wish to run a half or a full marathon at some point, then it might be beneficial to start working on incorporating a long run into your schedule, running more on the run-days and keep the walks as they are to recover.

I would advise you to read the following articles on my site as well:

Increasing Mileage Safely

Base Running



I hope this helps.
Best of luck with your running.
Kind regards,
Dominique