OK, buckle up, it's going to be a long post!
Before discussing mileage more, it's better to explain summer/winter first and general base fitness. End of the day, have years of base fitness built up is the fundemental thing here. I'm constantly coming 2nd and 3rd to guys I can smash in sessions but over tough courses especially cross country they just have this edge on me, they have all been running for 10 years more than me. Never underestimate the strength and determination that can come from having years and years of a solid base of fitness.
Winter - Should use this as your higher mileage time, longer session types etc. Winter is when you want to be building your base. So your long run be longer, more miles on your steady runs and your sessions should be the likes of 1k/1mile reps, hills, tough tempos and fartleks. You will also be running XC rather than road and certainly not track.
Summer - More speed and quality work. Less miles. This si where you turn that hard graft winter base into speed and improve yourself physically. Longer run shorter in favour of speeding it up a bit and your sessions should alternate a bit more, it's good to keep long rep sessions in but you want to be doing speed work also 200's/400's, hill sprints as well as drills and circuits working on your form. Strides after your runs to keep the pop in your legs and factoring in tapers properly so you peak for the races you are targetting.
I know above doesn't really apply to all, most people target few races and wouldn't really split their season so much like this but it's a good fundemental value I am trying to explain from a point of view of a higher mileage guy if that makes sense.
Mileage - Some will tell you otherwise but mileage is so important. For 5K up guys, it is insanely important. I know 35min 10K guys who are good, running 30 miles a week and think guys running 80 miles a week are wasting their time. But I mean these guys are matching people in sessions but then running 4 mins quicker over 10k. Consistent and quality structured mileage is vastly important, the world leaders you see over 5k are running over 100 miles a week, that takes a lot of building towards but consistent mileage is as important as that weekly speed session. The more you do something the more your body naturally adapts and develops to allow you to do it with more efficiency. Ask any decent runner from the 80's (when running in the UK was insane!) and they were all running big miles, it was standard.... Do not make getting to 50 miles a week your goal though, see base fitness, that all comes with increasing your base fitness, increasing your capabilities and all of this takes time. You need to be adding in the tempos, speed sessions and adding the mileage all in nice balance. For complete newcomers to running, I would advise geting to say 20 mile weeks off of 3/4 runs per week then making one of those runs a session and then building from that, so 4 runs a week, one of which is a session, once you manage this, 25 mile week, simply add a mile to each of your easy runs and maintain the session and then move onto 5 runs per week and drop that extra mile. There is no strict rules, can be done so many ways depending on the runner and their lifestyle/work/abilities/focus..... Anyone give me a shout if you want to structure something, happy to help.
I realise I am blabbering, I could write triple this and still be covering far too many things in a oner and confusing you so it's easier to answer specifics if you have questions as it's always more relevant to individuals then. I will give you a more in depth typical week from the last one from my training so you can see, feel free to ask away I love to help when I can:
Monday AM-60mins S&C, lunges, squats, calf raises, leg press.
Monday PM- 9m easy w/ 6x 150m strides = 59mins
Tuesday AM- 4m easy recovery = 31mins
Tuesday PM-8x800 w/2mins recovery, 9.3m total
Wednesday AM-off
Wednesday PM- 10miles easy = 66mins
Thursday AM- 4m easy recovery = 31mins
Thursday PM- 12x300m w/1min recovery then 1mile@4:50pace = 7.5m total.
Friday AM- S&C lats, shoulders, calf raises, core work
Friday PM- 6m easy = 41mins
Saturday AM- 5m tempo,aim was 5k under 16:40=DONE. 9.25m total.
Saturday PM- 5.75m recovery in 41mins
Sunday AM- 15m easy in 1hr41mins
Sunday PM- Core work with med ball and eliptical band. Lunges and drills.
Every evening is at least 25mins on the foam roller and using The Stick to sort out my calves. I got a sports massage on that Sunday PM also. This was a week in May 2014 after I had a terrible 5000m on the track and ran 16:08 on the Sunday before this week started.
Just ask away if anything, apologies for the length of this. I can do an example winter week if you want as well and happy to help anyone with weekly plans.
