For people who do low mileage , scoff at high mileage and weekly long runs:
If you wanted to, could you still do the same medium distance steady state runs that you used to to on high mileage with the same effort and recovery? Is an 8-10 miler the same run as always, or is it harder and slower now? What if you decided to do a long run , do you have the energy and fitness for it? Or, maybe you just do fartleks and tempos and don't race more than 5k because you can't?
Just wondering if low mileage is as good as high for aerobic fitness, wouldn't these longer and harder runs still be easy to do? A short taper 2 or 3 days is fair since you are doing mostly "quality".