Opportunity cost of 100 mile weeks

An opinion wrote:

Running 100 MPW in your early 20s to chase that lifetime PR is priceless.

Running 100 MPW in your early 40s to brag about winning your local turkey trot is sad.

It's not about bragging. Once you have a job, a family, and responsibilities, you find that there are less things in your life that are within your control, particularly your time. Running is something that is 100 percent within my control. I can challenge myself to objectively improve without worrying about things like whether my kid is going to have a fit and blow things up at the last minute, or a judge is going to issue an asinine opinion or the boss is going to make me battle to the death over some stupid discovery dispute that won't mean a darn thing in the big picture of the case.

If I had my druthers, it would probably be golf instead. But I can't golf at 4 in the morning. I can't golf for free. And golf doesn't keep me trim and healthy.

So running it is.

As an aging runner I budget mileage as additional health insurance.

Currently about 50. Building back my base after popping out two kids. But before I had two kids I was running 70-90. So not quite 100. But being a not-very-fast female, I would argue the amount of time I spent running those 70-90 miles was more than a lot of men running 100.

And my arguments are solid whether I was running 40 or 100, as they don't specifically pertain to me, but runners in general.

The problem with this model is that 99% of the time, a person running 100 mpw wouldn't be working that extra little time they spend running over 30-40 mpw. Do you really think someone working a 9-5 job and running 100 mpw would actually end up working overtime every week instead if they bumped their mileage down?

You would just sleep in slightly more or find yourself not managing your time as well instead. If you would rather run 30 mpw instead of 100 mpw because of "lost income" by having less time to work in your day, that's really not the case and instead it's just an excuse to be lazy and not find time to make it work around the rest of your life. There are some cases when you have a family and a job that eats up almost every minute of your life, but most of the time people are just being lazy when they say they don't have time to run more...you can always make time for something you really want to do.

The Dingo^3 wrote:

One thing you're forgetting to factor in is recovery.

You likely:

A) need more sleep when running 100 MPW vs. 40

and

B) need more 'inactive' time.

You don't need more sleep when running 100mpw. You need more motivation and commitment. Jujst ask HRE, who ran 100+mpw on five hour sleep.

This. I didn't bother reading all of the OPs analysis but right off the bat the OP assumes that every minute you are running you could be making an hourly wage. A lot of us our probably paid with a salary or are already fully employed. Sure there may be some sacrifice in earning potential but calculating lost wages for each mile run involves complex calculus.

Here is a really interesting sub construct within this scenario: Is it healthier to run 40 miles per week or 100 miles per week?

Discuss.

You’re treating the costs of running as linear, but the benefits aren’t linear. Going from 0 miles per week to 40 miles has a pretty big effect on cardiovascular health as well as endorphins, obesity risk, and overall happiness. Going from 40 to 100 increases these benefits but not as much. There has to be a point where the benefit of one extra mile just doesn’t add up to the cost of one more mile.

One cost you’re not considering - at some point, running such high mileage probably saves a lot of money by turning in early and relaxing at home instead of going out and spending money. Also, injury risk and therefore medical costs are probably different for a person running 40 and 100 miles per week. Just my two cents.

Actual Econ 101 wrote:

you can always make time for something you really want to do.

Word.

As a professional economist who has tought Econ 101 many times over at a university and an overweight middle age hobby-jogger, I think the question is well postulated.

One can argue some of the assumptions above or take into account other considerations (as many people have here) but the issue is legitimate.

I only run 3x per week some 20-25 miles. I would like to run 5-6x per week and improve my halfmarathon/marathon times but work 50-hour + weeks and travel frequently on the job.

In other words, the opportunity cost of my time is extremely high (I do not want to put a money value on it as it would be only illustrative and would not capture how I value my time internally). I prefer to spend the remaining time with my kid and my wife and by resting. I love running but after running 3x per week, I prefer to spend the marginal time differently.

Why do you assume you can continue to earn $25 per hour after the work day is over? Are you talking about the opportunity of a second/moonlight job? Like, I work my regular job and then run after work, but I could get another job in the evenings? That's absurd.

if you run 100 mpw you don't have much of a life or family or sleep....one or more of those things is going to be suboptimal

This is a great question.

40mpw vs 100 mpw

A couple of thoughts:

A runner who should do 100 mpw is probably running a lot faster than the 40 mpw runner.

Way to many runners run 80-100 mpw without getting the right return on investment ( faster results) for it.

If you just slogging through these 100 miles per week, they don't not make you a better or faster runner on it's own.

Forest Gump again wrote:

Way to many runners run 80-100 mpw without getting the right return on investment ( faster results) for it.

If you just slogging through these 100 miles per week, they don't not make you a better or faster runner on it's own.

Not really. High mileage at an easy alone will make you faster even without adding intensity. Very few runners ever try 80-100 mpw, not "way too many."

Life wrote:

Cottonshirt, do you know that life exists outside of running? (asking for a friend)

"Marathon is life"