Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Badger Miles

Tegenkamp explained the concept of "badger miles" in a recent interview :
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Badger Miles Explained
Everyone seems to have a hard time with this issue; why, I don’t know. Everyone has their own way of counting miles, and at Wisconsin, we count everything at 7:00 per mile pace. There is a funny twist to it, in that we round to the nearest 5 minutes (e.g., 8 miles is 56 minutes at 7:00 pace, but gets rounded to 60 minutes, no rounding down). Even though we count everything at 7:00 pace, that does not mean that I go out and run that pace. Very rarely will I run 7:00 pace--I would not get very good doing that. Usually my runs are done somewhere between 5:40 and 6:20 per mile. That includes easy runs, which are more toward 6:20 pace. The only time I might go slower is after a hard race or on my way back after a break. I usually build into runs, starting out slow and ending faster, gives my legs time to warm-up. I almost always run on some sort of trail and make loops, and there is only one place for us to check out splits in the city, so it is easier to just have a fixed system for counting miles. Here is a Badger miles chart. I hope this chart is the answer that everyone as been looking for-- the secret to our training!

Miles Minutes
0-----------below 25
3-----------25
4-----------30
5-----------35
6-----------45
7-----------50
8-----------60
9-----------65
10----------70
11----------80
12----------85
13----------90 (this is our only break--should be 95)
14----------100 (1:40)
15----------105 (1:45)
16----------115 (1:55)
17----------120 (2:00)

A little extra: we figure for about every 60 miles during base training, you can add 10 miles to your total. That changes during the seasons because workouts are a more accurate account of mileage

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Notice that they don't even start counting miles until after 25 minutes of running and they don't consider anything slower than 7:00/mile. I know that this is a top ranked D1 college program, but it is interesting to see what their definition of "running" is.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Tends to make since. 0-25 min, it takes the body time to get warmed up. I keep telling the guys that they need to get past the 30 min point to reap the benefits of running. Pace will depend on the runner, it takes me about 30-35 mins to get my body warmed up. We used something like that in College at UWL, but we did not call it Badger miles. Interesting and it is no longer secret.