There is no point in doing workouts until you get to 60 miles per week

Just curious, why would you say something like that? Certainly it's possible to go out and just run mileage. In old books by Joe Henderson you can read up on the training of people who did just that in the old days. Amby Burfoot and Ed Winrow were among the runners profiled there.

Every run is a workout. Since when has "I'm going for a workout" ever meant anything else?

incorrect

Agreed. Weird how some people use "workout" to mean one particular kind of training session.

On the contrary, there is no point doing 60 miles a week until you can hit some half decent workouts!

Exactly. As a child at 15, barely 100 pounds, the game changer was my 3 mile morning workouts. Within weeks I became a giant killer, regularly beating the older, bigger and stronger competition.

From then on, you could say my most important workouts were my morning runs. At every level, it was those early morning runs -- between 5:30 and 8 am -- cold, dark or rainy -- that made the difference.

So 5000m is not long distance? Lagat ran 12:54.

Baseball is fun. So at least you've got something going for you.

The late great Ed Whitlock ran 210 age graded Marathons doing nothing but mileage.

This is a silly take and did not need to be posted. You may call every run a workout, but that vast majority of runners use the term workout to describe intervals, tempo runs, fartleks and other sessions with an elevated level of effort. It’s really no point in derailing the thread so you play a semantic game that adds nothing.

I know you’re accomplished but ask yourself: how did your post contribute to the thread?

I disagree with the OP, but I see his point.

Jumping straight into workouts is essentially opting for a short-term gain at the expense of maximal long-term development, given that harder workouts will delay your ability to increase mileage.

However, for most people, running is a hobby. Therefore, they compromise somewhat, so that they can do the things in running that they enjoy. Workouts are fun; they get people motivated to get out the door, and they provide a necessary structure for most people.

My question to the OP is: why 60mpw?

If everyone agrees that 100 mpw is necessary to reach one's full potential from 5k-marathon, then 60mpw for workouts seems quite arbitrary.

I'm pretty sure Americans are the the only people in the world that refer to every run (even just a recovery jog) as workouts.

The only runs that are considered workouts anywhere else are runs with intensity thrown in.

In fact, in Australia, we never even called these runs "workouts", but rather "sessions". It's only been since the introduction of Strava - and the Americanisation of running - have people started to refer to sessions as workouts.

It’s not an American thing, it’s a Malmo thing. We call them runs, too