Does this mileage build up seem plausible?

What was so elite about the knowledge he presented? How can I acquire some of this elite knowledge? At this point and time, I only have good to great knowledge. I just feel bad for people that are naive enough to take his bullshit for real coherent thought. Yeah tell a high school kid to do 100 miles the first week of summer and hold it there, ruin his season, that'll be fun

you tell a high school kid to get enough sleep, eat well, pay attention to core/gleut/hammy/hip strength, and run 100 mile weeks- and he'll run under 9:00 in the 2 mile.

preach on Gerry.

Exactly right! Genetics is not an explanation. Its a way of saying "I dont know". When someone gets fast, they always say "genetics". How about the years of training at high mileage?

This is a great quote. I saved it to my hard drive for future reference and inspiration. At the Boston Marathon Expo last April, someone was introducing Bill Rodgers and mentioned that he had run 130 MPW for 18 years. In reading the elite training schedules, I often wondered how they got to high mileage in the first place. Now I think I know; they just got there quickly without too much fanfare or worry about "getting hurt" and they just kept on going. Its simple but you do have to do the mileage if you want to be really competitive. There are lots of alternative theories but I bet that the strongest correlation is between mega mileage and fast times, by far. Thanks for leading the way Gerry.

High school kids by design have a propensity towards running hard, so to start running 100 miles a week from the get-go is foolhardy. If you are going to do that, then I would recommend JOGGING everything. I should know. I took the Gerry Lindgren approached and sustained a CAREER-ENDING INJURY. Just because Lindgren didn't get injured (he was much smaller and lighter than myself like most of the Kenyans) and managed to run faster than I ever did does not make him a great coach or correct. I would recommend a slower buildup, and if you do start running high mileage quickly, take a week every now and again and back off substantially to let your body adapt. Have a multi-year plan. You are not going to be a world-beater this year anyway, so there's no need to rush it to 100 miles/week.

GerrytheJogger wrote:

You label your blog "Should Be Safe". What is so unsafe about running 150-250 miles per week?

injury, gerry. injury

should be safe wrote:

I've been up to 80 in the past and felt great, not sluggish or anything and I would like to build my mileage up like so for cross country, also I will be doing a lot of prehab, flexibility work.

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Oh, and another thing. Just because you aren't planning on running 100 miles a week until the end of summer does not mean you are not running a ton. Your average for the last 7 weeks of the schedule (more than half of the buildup) as you've proposed here is 90 miles a week, no small amount and more than you've ever run.

Just for grins, why don't you kick that very last week up to 115 miles so that you will get a "1000 mile summer" on the nose. It's as arbitrary a number as the "100-mile week."

If you're run 80 before pretty easily you can hit 100 much quicker:

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Don't plan it, just run it.

Feel tired and sore? Back off.

it sounds good in theory, but you're too lazy to actually get it done...

I imagine I could maybe do that with just running long and slow, but I wanted to do LT runs and strides and some fartleks too.

I agree in that special case of high school kids. There is nothing wrong in jogging the mileage initially until you feel comfortable with putting in the high mileage. Then, you might increase the pace a bit but the emphasis initially should be on mileage. Thats a tough approach with high school kids who want to run fast all the time but thats where a good coach comes in who can explain the science behind it. I think that if you try to run high mileage at high speeds initially you are indeed asking for injuries. Take the long view.

What do I know? wrote:

High school kids by design have a propensity towards running hard, so to start running 100 miles a week from the get-go is foolhardy. If you are going to do that, then I would recommend JOGGING everything. I should know. I took the Gerry Lindgren approached and sustained a CAREER-ENDING INJURY. Just because Lindgren didn't get injured (he was much smaller and lighter than myself like most of the Kenyans) and managed to run faster than I ever did does not make him a great coach or correct. I would recommend a slower buildup, and if you do start running high mileage quickly, take a week every now and again and back off substantially to let your body adapt. Have a multi-year plan. You are not going to be a world-beater this year anyway, so there's no need to rush it to 100 miles/week.