It is not 180 miles a week with 2x30-40k tempos at 4:35 mile pace followed by two days of intervals. Why would someone suggest a runner doing 100 miles a week should be a marathoner?
Yeah, Harvard guys run everything at 6:00 which burns a lot of runners out and leads to middling/no improvement for most of their runners but also serves as an incredible aerobic base for those who can tolerate it
Hot take but graham blanks would be even better if he chilled out on his easy days.
It is not 180 miles a week with 2x30-40k tempos at 4:35 mile pace followed by two days of intervals. Why would someone suggest a runner doing 100 miles a week should be a marathoner?
Kelvin and Cam are outliers even for marathon runners. But yeah if the point is 100mpw at sea level should be considered lower mileage for a marathoner, I’d agree. 120-130 at altitude is more standard among Africans and top American athletes. That being said Blanks is in college and 100 is high for guys not training for the half/full. Most of the best ever at 5-10K ran 80-100mpw albeit at high altitude. Blanks won’t have to change much mileage-wise at the next level unless he goes quickly to the roads a la Mantz
Maybe I'm judging him differently because he goes to Harvard but he said on the podcast he runs 100 miles a week on 6 days with 1 double. That's 16+ miles a day.
Am I missing something? Anyone else thought this was really high?
If you told me the NCAA XC champ was running 100 miles a week I wouldn't be surprised, but the way he's doing it indicates even more volume than the actual mileage totals.
16 mile workout todays sounded common. 3 mile warm-up, 3 mile cooldown. Then a 10 mile workout. That is a lot of volume.
Then he laughed when Rojo said he might be good at the marathon.
Any other college kids train like this. We never did more than 5-6 miles of anything hard.
No. I am surprised people actually believe Valby really only runs 30 miles a week and / or she is totally clean
With the imbalance that Valby has in her stride, I don’t think running any more than she does is an option for her. Including the cross training, she trains as hard, or harder, than anyone else.
13:17, his 5k pr, into a VDOT calculator puts easy pace at 5:38-6:13. So he is chilling on his easy days. Anything slower is junk miles.
easy paces in calculators are not to be taken literally. Some of them appear ridiculously fast. The idea of running 100 miles a week and all of it at 5:38 is ridiculous for the majority of people. I saw Graham does his easy days at 6 flat, but this I'd argue is an anomaly within similar level rnuners. Maybe some people can handle it, but you don't need to run that fast to get the easy benefits, that's the whole point of it.
It only seems ridiculously fast to people who have no concept of what training to run fast looks like.
Coffee Club guys discussed this and thought it was interesting as well that they seemingly built mileage only if they could run everything fast at Harvard. I tend to think running at a "hard" easy run pace on non-workout days is pretty overrated, and something you are likely to only get away with at a young age. Not sure it's the smartest thing to do if you want a long, post-college career. But I'm definitely not doubting that it works in the short-term, or that it's highly effective for some guys.
Thinking about a long post college career is not an option as these are all aged runners already who are behind the curve. If you can handle (recover quickly) running faster on easy days you increase your base fitness quickly. Btw, if you are exhausted the day after a workout, is it really that much more beneficial to run some junk miles vs not running at all? I think most runners rarely work on endurance unless it's running... there other less damaging activities to achieve that. So do it via running if you can handle it, or cross train more if you can't. Either way, if you can't significantly increase your base fitness you won't have breakthroughs.
Remember that he also does recovery runs at 7-7:30 pace (hr was 127 for his 5k recovery run with the reporter from the Harvard Crimson on a bike). Easy runs at 6 flat are in fact easy for him. If he can run at least a 27:30 10k (he beat a 27:20 10k runner at NCAA xc), he's running 4:25 pace for 10k, and dropping about 1/3 of that pace to 6 minute miles, which is easy. A 37:12 10k runner (6:00/M) would run 8:00/M easy pace with almost the exact percentage slowdown.
Fascinating to me that nobody ever talks about the effect of the shoes on training and milage. 100 miles is not what 100 miles was 8 years ago. Its way way easier, and do 100 miles with treshold-effort in workouts instead of pushing them, its fairly easy. People do more and more often in the Nordics now. Its really not hard with supershoes. Its not. Its boring, thats the hard part.
13:17, his 5k pr, into a VDOT calculator puts easy pace at 5:38-6:13. So he is chilling on his easy days. Anything slower is junk miles.
easy paces in calculators are not to be taken literally. Some of them appear ridiculously fast. The idea of running 100 miles a week and all of it at 5:38 is ridiculous for the majority of people. I saw Graham does his easy days at 6 flat, but this I'd argue is an anomaly within similar level rnuners. Maybe some people can handle it, but you don't need to run that fast to get the easy benefits, that's the whole point of it.
Majority of the people aren’t running sub 13:30 5ks… if you adjust for altitude a lot of the elite guys are doing this. A lot also through in a second session with slower running. It is that 14:30 kid on the team who gets fried doing this.
To me the shocking part is the lack of doubles. Most people struggle to run like 90mins every day. They need to break it up 30/60. Now as people have pointed out maybe the new shoes and recovery techniques help.
Maybe I'm judging him differently because he goes to Harvard but he said on the podcast he runs 100 miles a week on 6 days with 1 double. That's 16+ miles a day.
Am I missing something? Anyone else thought this was really high?
If you told me the NCAA XC champ was running 100 miles a week I wouldn't be surprised, but the way he's doing it indicates even more volume than the actual mileage totals.
16 mile workout todays sounded common. 3 mile warm-up, 3 mile cooldown. Then a 10 mile workout. That is a lot of volume.
Then he laughed when Rojo said he might be good at the marathon.
Any other college kids train like this. We never did more than 5-6 miles of anything hard.
So he does one double and 16 miles a day which means 5 days he's doing a 16 mile workout or a 16 mile run?
Different people respond differently to different stimuli. For some, higher mileage works and is what their body responds to best. For some, this doesn’t work as well, but may respond better to higher intensity intervals. This is why a good coach is so crucial, to be able to assess each individual athlete and know what will get the most out of them. Seems to have nailed the formula for this guy.
we routinely touched 80 MPW in XC and in the spring getting ready for the NAIA marathon I topped out at 121 in my biggest week. These were with 5 doubles a week, but Id say I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case with an NCAA XC champ. If I could do it as a pretty average collegiate runner Id say he could do it.