Have you actually seen Ritz's or Chris training? Yeah Ritz had been doing marathon training for a couple of years. And he wasn't running great track races and not very good marathons (for a 27:30 type runner). And I have no idea what Solinsky has been doing but a 13:12 guy (something like 15s faster than Rupps pr when it happened) running is going to be a sub 27:30 guy. With 2+ more years of training you would expect him to be faster with any training program. Sub 27 is still big jump.And comparing 30 mpw to 80mpw is joke. There are elite guys who supposedly ran less than 80mpw. Obviously I don't have complete logs but guys like Lagat, Webb, Spivey, Padilla, Marsh suggest you can have a really good career as a track runner with less than 100mpw. I hestiate to call it low mileage.
Threshold guy wrote:
What do these two have in common?
Both Ritz and Chris were doing marathon training w/5km specific training. Both ran in the 8:40's in high school and both do threshold/progression runs quite frequently.
Both have been at it for years and have experienced an unexpected breakthrough at a random meet, both big meets but they had absolutely no pressure on them. Ritz because he was in a race with Kenenisa Bekele & Chris because of Galens Hype.
It kills me that some kids keep going out there and run quarters fast while only doing 30-80 mile weeks.
Just my $0.02