I used to run shorter trail race events and 30mpw was a great week for me at that time. The first marathon I tried to train seriously for I maxed out at around 45-50 mpw. At that volume I was on the point of injury/getting sick and generally had to take (was forced to take) a down week of 30-35mpw every 2-3 weeks simply out of extreme muscle soreness. The result was a sub-3 at low altitude after ~4months of training. Thirteen months later I trained for another best performance and was able to handle 50mpw easily, but couldn't do much more than 75mpw before feeling like I was treading on injury/physical breakdown. Again on volume alone the result was a 2:50 at low altitude after 4.5months of training. I figure I'm strong enough now to do similar mileage and build speed and tempo workouts into my training. It will be tougher to improve my time so I may stretch the build-up to 5-6months to compensate. For context, I'm a mid-thirties runner without collegiate experience. Anyway, you can do it - as many of the other posters have pointed out, it takes time, consistency, and the vigilance to stay free of injury.
Sub_3_chaser wrote:
About increasing the mileage, last year i was trying to do that (wanted to do 60mpw), but I ended up being injured within a month so that was the reason I tried to focus on low but high quality mileage this year. What measures should I take to ensure that I wont get injured if I up the mileage to 60mpw from around mid 30s that I did for this one. Will it be enough if I get to it progressively (for example, start around 30 in December, and increase it about 3 per week, and when I reach around 45 to start my marathon preparation, which will peak around 60mpw)? Or shall I do some other routines too (running drills, flexibility routines, stretching/yoga, etc..)?