Bernard Lagat 70 MPW. What could he do with more mileage?

What Could Be? wrote:

Just read via an older twitter post that Lagat does 70-75 MPW. It's a widely known fact that Coach Li doesn't implement high mileage, but one can only wonder what could Lagat have run if he was doing the mileage of Mo Farah? He would more than likely have a shorter career, but what could he achieved? Just curious of some of the times across the board you guys think he could run.

Also keep in mind he doesn't train at altitude but in Tuebingen with Arne Gabius (5000m runner) and others. Tuebingens elevation is 341m (= 1119 ft).

I think Lagat has truly maximized his talent throughout his career. I highly doubt he could have run any faster. If he had started the 5000 at a younger age his pr might be a few seconds faster but beyond that I think he got everything out of himself. Also he does not count slow miles and short runs in his weekly totals so he is probably closer to 80. Some guys just respond differently to different training. Just because Cam Levins trains one way does not mean we all should and just because Kip trains one way does not mean we all should. By the way coach Li is not as low mileage as most people think. I have heard Abdi say he averages around 110 miles a week and Lawi was around 80-100 mpw after just one year of competitive running.

The Quenton Cassidamius wrote:

I think Lagat has truly maximized his talent throughout his career. I highly doubt he could have run any faster. If he had started the 5000 at a younger age his pr might be a few seconds faster but beyond that I think he got everything out of himself. Also he does not count slow miles and short runs in his weekly totals so he is probably closer to 80. Some guys just respond differently to different training. Just because Cam Levins trains one way does not mean we all should and just because Kip trains one way does not mean we all should. By the way coach Li is not as low mileage as most people think. I have heard Abdi say he averages around 110 miles a week and Lawi was around 80-100 mpw after just one year of competitive running.

Coach Li doesn't coach Abdi, I've heard it from his own mouth. And it is a well known fact that Lawi was doing no more than 55 MPW. I do agree that everyone is different, however I find it hard to ignore the evidence between the correlation of mileage and performance 5k and up.

With more mileage he probably would have been a 5000m runner when he was younger and a 10k-marathon guy now. I'm not sure he would have actually accomplished more. Nowadays he's essentially running on decades of high-quality low-mileage which is as good as a few years of high mileage.

According to this article Lawi runs 80-100 miles a week.

It says Liang "hardened his body to" 80-100 mpw but what does that actually mean? 80-100 miles every week, or was that his peak?

If you think that there was never a significant period of time in Lagat's life when he was running more than 70 then you're an idiot. How much was he running at Washington State? In Kenya? 8 - 10 years ago when he was in his prime? He's in his late 30's and he's been running his whole life. It makes perfect sense that he doesn't have to put in the same kind of base in order to handle his workouts these days.

lol oh my god yes yes please give some advice to Bernard Lagat on how to run faster. hilarious!

He could have been a World Champion.

He could have been one of the fastest 1500m runners ever.

You do what what works for you. Look at his career long, injury free and full of medals what else could you want, Olympic gold would what have been nice, but you need a little bit of luck also...

In my experience, I've found that anything too much over 80 a week didn't aid in my training for the 1500 and mile. Bernard Lagat has had his greatest success at 1500m, and he primarily trained for that event. I don't see reason to believe why he would need much more mileage as a 1500m runner. However, different things work for different people, one of my old training partners was running around 100mpw for mile training during higher volume months.

I think he could get hurt, overtrained, and not get enough quality out of his hard days because he's tired from trying to run X number of miles just for the sake of running X number of miles.

Just chiming in to preemptively state that coach d's forthcoming post will be douchey in nature.

Carry on.

he runs 100 mpw during base.

I think you just answered your own question. Lagat probably would be working as a "consultant" at Nike right now because his career would be over if he had been running the mileage of Mo Farah.

Umm, yeah he could have been the fastest ever...He sucks being the 2nd fastest ever...with his measly 3:26.34...c'mon man

He ran f*cking 3:26.2 or something in the 1500M. I'm pretty sure he maxed.

High Mileage acts like more of a placebo effect for most runners. Especially you Cameron Levins' jockstrap suckers.

Just because you pointed out 1-2 elites at the college level that do 100+ a week does not mean that 100+ is the only way to break into the 13 minute range.