My buddy Mike at Fit36.com was recently writing about how he is redefining what his normal is.

By that he means, when he started running 2 miles was pretty much what the normal was when he would go out for a run. 2.5 or 3 miles would be a stretch for what he was capable of at the time.

But then after that it didn’t take long before he was running 5K as his norm, and then he got up to about 4 miles as what his normal run is.

Now he goes out and he can run 5 to 5.75 without too much trouble, but he doesn’t really feel that 5 miles is quite what he would define as his normal, “This is what I’m going to go out and run everyday” kind of distances.

His plan is to try and get up to that 5 miles feeling like, “This is what I’m going to do just as my default, what I’m going out for a run” to do. And then he wants to try and speed up and pick up his pace a little bit so that he can do that 5 miles in a shorter period of time.

Now he has a lot of time constraints given work and family, so he doesn’t really have time at the current pace he is running to actually get in much more than that 5 miles whenever he goes out to run.

Now given that Mike is a pretty new runner, he just started really this past Spring and his first race was Memorial Day Weekend. He is going to see a lot of improvement by following that kind of strategy where he is just going out and running every day, and just building that level of fitness and cutting down on the weight a little bit, and all around just learning to enjoy the process of running which is something that he’s tried in the past but never really been able to accomplish before. You can follow his whole journey about that over at his site on Fit36.com.

But once he’s actually in a little bit better shape, or if you’re in a similar boat where you’re trying to build up your mileage or pick up the pace a little bit, you might find that going out and running the same distance every single day, if you are a little bit more fit or if you do have a more extensive running background, isn’t actually going to see the same kind of results. And you’re going to find you’ll have plateaus a lot quicker. One way to get around that is to actually vary how much you are running everyday.

So if you do 2 miles one day and then 5 the next, and 3 the day after that, and 5 after that, this gives your body something a little bit different to work towards. You’re going to stress your muscles a little bit different each time.

You can also try varying your pace a little bit with each of those. You might find that you make some faster gains that way than you would if you were just going out and doing 5 miles at the same pace every single day.

As I’ve said, in Mike’s case he is going to see some huge gains no matter what he does just because he is such a new runner. For the next year or two he can just go out and do the same thing, and if he does stick to just doing the 5 miles he’ll eventually find that that pace is going to slowly get a little quicker over time, and the plateuas aren’t going to be that huge.

But in a couple of years he’s definitely going to want to start mixing it up a little. So I just wanted to give him this little response, some advice on what he is doing, and wish him good luck on getting down to the 5 miles as his normal run.

And if you have any experience with this, or if you’re in the same kind of boat, let me know what has worked for you and what you’re doing with your exercise program right now.

Just leave a comment below or I’ll leave a link below this video where you can go over and you can comment directly on Mike’s post and let him know what you’re doing and I’m sure that he would love to hear from you and to have a new reader.