How to Determine the Best Weekly Run Training Volume For You

Written by:

Ryne Anderson

CTS Pro Ultrarunning Coach

Updated On

September 9, 2025

How much should you run each week? The appropriate run training volume is a fundamental question every athlete asks at some point. Should you run as many hours as you have available? Should you limit your running hours or miles based on the demands of your goal event? Is there a running test or data from a wearable device that can tell you the best starting point for your weekly mileage? There’s no formula for determining the best weekly training volume for your body, fitness level, and running goals. But as a running coach, I can take you through the steps I use to establish a safe and effective training volume for the athletes I work with.

An athlete I recently started working with described his approach to training as, “How much can I run without getting injured?” I countered that the better way to think about it is, “How much can you run while staying healthy?” The difference in phrasing pivots from the ultrarunner ethos of “more is better” to the tried and true principle of consistency.

Determining Factors for Safe and Sustainable Run Training Volume

Consistent training volume is the most powerful tool a runner can leverage to progress and maximize their development. However, the volume proposition is not as simple as “more is better.” Rather, there are multiple factors for determining the appropriate level of training volume you can tolerate, recover from, and adapt to:

• Current fitness level: If you’re using TrainingPeaks, Chronic Training Load (CTL) is a good way to get a rough picture of your fitness level compared to other times during your training history.

• Short term training history: The last two months

• Long term training history: This can be a season, a year, or a number of years of consistent training.
• Time available for training: Be realistic and conservative about available training time. You want this value to be something repeatable week after week, not a stretch goal you can only occasionally reach.

Each athlete has their own training history, short-term and long-term, that dictates their level of sustainable training volume. Additionally, they have a time budget to fit in their training. You must first review the training history to determine the appropriate amount of training volume.

It’s also important to consider how much training volume is recommended or required to prepare for specific goal events. This article, for instance, talks about the concept of a “minimum maximum”, which means the minimum number of weeks an athlete must be able to commit to a maximum number of training hours. For instance, even for ultramarathons, most athletes can train 6-10 hours per week for most of the year. But at a specific phase of training, an athlete may need to commit to a block of longer weeks (e.g., 14-18 hours) to specifically prepare for their event. 

Basic Training Terminology Used in This Article

For the sake of this article, weekly volume will be discussed in hours. A training block refers to a 2-4 week period during which the weekly volume remains relatively consistent from week to week. Consistent volume is defined as the standard deviation from the mean volume being less than 20%.

Short Term Training History

The first step in determining how many hours you can handle is to review your training history over the last two months. Recent volume dictates the starting point. In the previous two months, try to find a consistent stretch of 3-4 weeks of weekly volume with a standard deviation of less than 20%. The next step is to determine if that training volume is truly representative of sustainable training. 

Three questions to ask:

• Was your subjective feedback on workouts consistently positive? 
• Were you recovering well after each week of training, inclusive of hard workouts and long runs? 
• Was the frequency of runs per week to week consistent?

If the answers to those questions are yes, then the average volume in that 3-4 week period is a representative and accurate starting point.

If the answer is no to any or all of those questions, then it is likely that your recent training is not representative of a sustainable starting point. The next step is to determine why the recent level of training was not consistent and correct those behaviors. 

Life stress could have been high. There may have been too little rest and recovery throughout a block, or an inability to keep “recovery runs” truly easy. Another reason for the lack of consistency could be poor intensity distribution. For instance, performing your hardest workout when you were most fatigued. Another reason for inconsistency could have been changes in training surface or cumulative elevation gain per week.

To determine your new starting point for when recent training history indicates an unsustainable volume, take the average weekly volume over that recent 3 to 4 week span, irrespective of the standard deviation. Reduce the average by 10-20% and start the weekly volume from this new level. 

Determining the number of runs per week

It is essential to consider the frequency of runs per week in this decision matrix. At a minimum, an ultrarunner should consistently complete 4-5 runs per week. This allows for an even and sustainable distribution of run volume. If you’re not achieving a minimum frequency of 4-5 runs per week, the weekly structure needs to be adjusted to reach this level of frequency.

Considerations for running volume distribution

You shouldn’t accumulate the bulk of your weekly running volume in a single long run. That’s not a sustainable training pattern. The problem with this pattern is that the long runs may create too much load and require too much recovery time for you to be able to train productively during the rest of the week. If your long run consistently accounts for more than 50% of weekly volume, that’s too much and it’s time to adjust your weekly training pattern.

While the long run is an essential part of training for an ultra, it is not the be-all and end-all. A more sustainable approach to maintain and build volume is to maintain a consistent level of run frequency per week and distribute the volume more evenly between all those runs. A reasonable starting point is to keep the long run between 25 to 40% of weekly volume. There is nuance to this rule as training goals change throughout a block, and there will be times in the build for a run that accounts for more than 40% of weekly volume. However, the 25-40% rule serves as a good foundation for establishing consistent training. 

Remember that the long run makes up a small percentage of training volume over time. Nevertheless, ultrarunners get fixated on the question of How Long Should Your Longest Run Be Before An Ultramarathon? When chasing those arbitrary targets, they can sacrifice quality and consistent training, while also losing sight of the big picture and consistent training.

Long Term Training History

After using short term training history to figure out the starting point for weekly volume, it’s time to look at long term training history and ask the same three questions from above.

• Was feedback consistently positive?
• Were you recovering well after long runs or hard workouts? 
• Was the frequency of runs consistent from week to week?

Find the highest level of sustainable volume and work backwards to the starting point. The gap between these two will determine your volume ramp. The rule of not increasing volume by more than 10-15% per week is a good starting point, but it often leads to a conservative ramp rate, especially for experienced runners. If a 10% increase does not result in an increase of more than one hour per week from one week to the next, then adding one hour is typically sustainable.

A key to making any sort of volume ramp sustainable is to distribute the volume increase across multiple runs. Increasing the weekly volume ramp solely towards the long run is a common mistake, and it can create too much stress from that single run and interrupt the flow of recovery. 

The example below illustrates a sustainable volume increase from 8 hours to 9 hours by distributing that 1 hour increase across 3 runs.

When to Increase Weekly Volume

Once you have reached your highest sustainable volume from a previous training cycle, it is best to stay at that level of volume for 4-8 weeks. Remember that consistency overrides the ultrarunner’s favorite desire that “more is better.”

We circle back to our three favorite questions again.

• Is feedback consistently positive?
• Are you recovering well after long runs or hard workouts? 
• Is the frequency of runs consistent from week to week?

If the answer is yes to each of these questions, then you can increase the average level of weekly volume by 10%. After you have increased weekly average volume to a higher total than you achieved in the past, you need to train at this level for an extended period for the body to adapt. Eight to twelve weeks at this new level of volume is a safe period before making the subsequent 10% increase in volume.

Takeaway: Simple Always Wins

Consistent training that focuses on the basics will always win over sexy or trendy training strategies that aim for big gains or leverage the latest flashy workout. To achieve consistency, you must train at a level of volume you have sustained in the past and take a big-picture approach to building volume from there.