Has high mileage ever made you slower?

Before bumping up to 30-35mpw I ran a 16:07. Post-bump, I fell back and started averaging low 18's. Couldn't maintain quality in my workouts. I'm nota high mileage guy.

Yes it did. BUT it was because i went about it in a foolish way. Sacrificing workouts and runs that teach your body to run faster and carry your weight more efficiently for long, slow mileage, made me a long slow runner. I am a huge advocate for high mileage, but if you don't build up to it in a way where you cant workout efficiently, then you are doing more harm than good. 80 miles per week with 2 solid workouts and a great long run is wayyyy better than 120 miles a week of just running for a weekly total.

I think Kellog once said that you are running too many miles if you start to feel plodding and your ground contact time seems long.

You could ask Steve Cram about that. He went from 80mpw to 100-120 for one year and went back because it wasn't successful. There are all kinds of examples like Magness, MacDougall, and others that end up in major injury problems and are slower because the mileage doesn't allow consistent training.

What also frequently happens is that people get obsessed by high mileage to the point that they cut/eliminate workouts just to get their mileage in, and that makes them slower.

Proper mileage gains should be incredibly slow and take a long time. A high schooler should spend 4 years bumping his mileage by 10 miles a year, or 5 in the summer and 5 in the winter. Unless your a 45 year old with time running out on the clock, aim for slow mileage gains. As said before, endurance greatness requires endurance. Be patient.

I ran 35 miles a week last cross country season as a freshman. Then did 60 miles a week over the summer and did a 6 mile tempo run as my first workout of the season and averaged a faster pace during this workout than my 8k pr from freshman year. Just saying.

blitzkrieg wrote:

Have you ever increased your mileage a lot and it produced worse racing results? Why did that happen?

Well, you need to quantify what you mean by "a lot" and when you started racing worse after increasing mileage.

Increasing mileage will often lead to a temporary slowing of racing times or workouts. But, you shouldn't really be worrying about performing well at these things when you are increasing mileage anyway. Over time, after you adapt to the increased mileage, your times will start to get faster. At least that's the case with most people. There are some outliers who just don't respond. But, for most people, you just have to be patient

LowrepsHighweight wrote:

Before bumping up to 30-35mpw I ran a 16:07. Post-bump, I fell back and started averaging low 18's. Couldn't maintain quality in my workouts. I'm nota high mileage guy.

That is not high mileage. That's barely 5 miles a day.

Too much slow running made has ruined a season for me.

If you increase a stress (mileage), it's going to take your body a while to recover from the stress, and even longer for it to super-compensate. In the meantime, yea, you're going to be slower. But in the end, that extra aerobic capacity should translate to faster times, especially as the distance increases.

Increasing mileage 'a lot', sounds like you did too much and the stress was too great for your body to recover from. Bump it up slower next time. Most of us can't handle big leaps in mileage. Also, mileage is best increased outside of the season, when you're working on your base, and in the absence of hard workouts.

It is well documented in countless scientific studies that slogging mile after mile is not going to make you faster.

What's going to make you faster is a nice lifting regime and crossfit style sprint repeats.

I have another thread on letsrun about this with plenty of valuable information. Use the search function.

Xfitguy_the_real_one_1 wrote:

It is well documented in countless scientific studies that slogging mile after mile is not going to make you faster.

What's going to make you faster is a nice lifting regime and crossfit style sprint repeats.

I have another thread on letsrun about this with plenty of valuable information. Use the search function.

Yes, like this. Here are the 5k times of the top finishers in this year's Crossfit games (among those who have a recorded 5k).

Matt Chan's 23:43

Kyle Kasperbauer's 19:11

Jason Khalipa's 23:20

The fact of the matter is that those "studies" are incredibly naive. First, they are invariably short term. Endurance athletes have known for a long time that focusing on the anaerobic pathways will get you some short term gain. The problem is that you'll rapidly plateau. Making long term gains in any event that lasts more than a minute or two requires developing the aerobic engine. And that takes years. Secondly, the HIIT studies usually focus on VO2 max, but that is out of date as well. VO2 max is a poor predictor of endurance ability. The lactate threshold is much better (bracketing the fact that the lactate threshold itself is a bit of myth).

47% of 2012 Olympic T&F finalists used cross-fit for the majority of their training. Salazar doesn't even allow his athletes to run. Ryan Hall had to drop out the Marathon because he only did this http://tinyurl.com/8oqc6kl

blitzkrieg wrote:

Have you ever increased your mileage a lot and it produced worse racing results? Why did that happen?

Many people have got injured by running more than they could tolerate which, at least in the short term, definitely makes you slower.

Xfttguy3 wrote:

Ryan Hall had to drop out the Marathon because he only did this

Ryan Hall indeed stated that he would incorporate more crosstraining in the future, because his scrawny frame had become to fragile.

LowrepsHighweight wrote:

Before bumping up to 30-35mpw I ran a 16:07. Post-bump, I fell back and started averaging low 18's. Couldn't maintain quality in my workouts. I'm nota high mileage guy.

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You forgot to mention that anyone who runs only 3035 mpw will never run a quality 10k or higher

This is not to say someone who has 3 months of higher mileage decides to run 3 weeks of 35 mpw or has run 15 years of 60+ mpw runs easy 30 mpw.

This is saying the 30-35 mpw person who never deviates

Had a few different things happen to me with base mileage.

Year 1: As a beginner...20 to 45 mpw - 20:40 5K down to 18:55 5K

Year 2: 50-60mpw with a few weeks at 70mpw - 18:55 to 17:40 5K

Year 3: Ten week block at 70mpw this summer - only managed 17:30 even after a good taper. AWFUL. I did not neglect a single element of training either.

Saw the biggest gains at 60 mpw. This included long runs of 15-16 miles, 5 mile tempos, Intervals, Hills, Hard 200-400 meter repeats.

When I got to 75 mpw, I was almost too tired to run more than 12 miles for a long run. I spent too much time trotting around to hit a number....but I was convinced (through many people on this board) that I was doing things right.

I'm starting to wonder about the whole Lydiard/base mileage plan and whether it's just better (for me, at least) to find a year-round training plan that allows you to hit every facet of training consistently and with a lot of energy.

Costill would agree with your findings.

Xfitguy_the_real_one_1 wrote:

It is well documented in countless scientific studies that slogging mile after mile is not going to make you faster.

What's going to make you faster is a nice lifting regime and crossfit style sprint repeats.

I have another thread on letsrun about this with plenty of valuable information. Use the search function.

So, what are your lift bests?

GoodTimes wrote:

Costill would agree with your findings.

Interesting stuff. I just looked up a few threads re: Costill and diminished returns after 70mpw.