Cook and Valby's training vs Tuohy's mileage

wear and tear

Look, the fact is that Tuohy can consume a field with fireballs from her eyes and bolts of lightning from her arse. These are facts.

Tuohy's 70 miles is for cross country, that is how she was able to power those hills while Valby's legs buckle, the other top women at NC State also run 70 miles. Chmiel and Bush has been steadily improving due to their mileage.

People like to exaggerate things, They don't run 70 miles weekly, they go down to 40 on some weeks which is just 5 miles more than Valby and without cross training. They also lower their mileage during track season.

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Well, we have one other data point for the college men.

Today's (11/26) The Running Effect podcast interviewed Charles Hicks. Interview was done within the last 24 hours and focused H his NCAA xc win and the months leading up to it.

Hicks mentioned he did not have a job or even an internship last summer. He went back home to Florida and just trained. To the tune of 105 mile weeks that lasted through October. Had a 7-day max of 113 miles.

Charles even mentioned he does make a point to keep up with other runners and specifically mentioned Alex Maier and the mileage he was putting in. Now we know how much.

The Coffee Club podcast that previewed the NCAA xc meet a week or so ago also alluded to the high mileage college guys are putting in now. McDonald/Beamish/Hoare acknowledged that the top runners from the power schools like NAU and Stanford are essentially training as hard as professionals. Morgan even volunteered that, give the shape he's in right now, he probably would have been in that chase pack behind Hicks-Young-Bosley if he could have jumped into the race.

Not every good college or pro runner can consistently log 100-mile weeks. Just being able to run that mileage -- at any pace -- is, in itself, a real talent that not everyone can develop.

I don't believe the low mileage, Valby run pretty high mileage and cross trains a ton. Valby and Solinsky have different answers, how come you and your coach have different answers?

Tuohy can do Valby and Cook's training without getting injured.

Valby and Cook can't do Tuohy's training without getting injured.

We will see how Valby progresses, indoors was when she injured herself.

How do you know that? You know what their training is? You just said what they said was s a lie, so how do you know what they are doing?

Maybe one is referring to Badger Miles.

And when did KT injure herself?

This is so true, and these days most of the top xc guys are putting in serious miles and are also in insane shape. Hicks/Young/Bosley are all capable of sub 27:30 on that day. Teams as a whole are all doing high mileage. Bosley was running just as much if not more than Maier. The Harvard and Stanford guys were doing ~100 a week consistently. Same goes for BYU, Wake Forest and OK state.

Why are no top men succeeding on 25mpw and some cross training? Running fans will believe anything.

Tuohy injured herself at the end of her high school career, Valby and Cook also injured themselves in high school while running less than Tuohy.

Men are not as prone to injuries, especially not bone-related injuries like stress fractures. The male fields are also deeper making it less likely that someone with triathlon-style training would succeed. As far as I know an older very good athlete who became better by incorporating a lot of alternative training, because less injuries, is Eilish McColgan.

But as has been pointed out above, at the highest level and especially in shorter distances than half marathon, efficiency, mental toughness at race tempo and kick are very important and probably the decisive factors not aerobic conditioning that can be done quite well with alternative training. That seems another reason why the faster men can not thrive on a lot of alternative training, because the factors specific to running are more important. Otherwise there would have long since been male world class runners doing huge training loads on bikes or so (up to the amounts of triathletes) and beat the "mere runners". But there aren't.

True, being able to run very high mileage is a different kind of talent than being naturally fast. Not all can run high mileage.

McColgan being light as a feather helps her dodge injuries. That is why you see distance runners performing better and having breakout performances when they are in their lightest weight.

McColgan was plagued by injuries all the time. She has been at her best in the last 2 years at the age of 30!

That was, to my understanding, why she quit steeple and later did more alternative training. (Light as a feather can also mean dangerously low weight with higher risk of stress fractions.)