Junk miles - is there such a thing?

Yes, for example:

My first ventilatory threshold is around 147-152 bpm and marathon HR was 165 and latest HM was 164 bpm. Thus, I normally avoid 152-158 range.

And yet, just about every elite male runner (guys capable of sub 13:20) are running the majority of their miles at this pace.

Are they getting it wrong, and are all the much slower runners getting it right?

I know it's trendy now, but elites tend to do a very small amount of running in "zone 2". If we follow the definition of zone 2 being an intensity just below LT1, then for a 13 minute 5k guy, zone 2 is likely 3:10 - 3:40/km (5:05 - 5:55/mile). Very, very few elites are running anywhere close to this unless it's part of a workout (Graham Blanks might be the only one, but he doesn't upload all of his runs to Strava, so we don't see all of his actual easy days).

No elite runner is running the majority of their runs at 11:30 per mile.

That is very interesting about Viren. Obviously Lydiard knows a thing or two about distance training, and I suppose you'd say middle distance too. What I find interesting is seeing this after I was posting in the thread about Gibby/Blanks training.

Gibby stated in the podcast that one reason he tries to keep his guys running brisker paces for their mileage runs was to maintain mechanical efficiency. I have heard this repeated by Jack Daniels in a training talk where he essentially said that you should go as slow as you can without having your form breakdown. But now I do wonder about this. Does shuffling through very easy paces actually affect your mechanics if you are still getting in the adequate mechanical work through sessions and strides?

I will say that while there may not really be any "junk mileage" physiologically speaking beyond a very high point of diminishing returns, there is certainly a point where miles become what I'll call "mental junk." I think every runner will have that pace where it starts to feel like "what am I doing" and you are essentially wasting your time by running that slow. Again, from a pure physiological perspective I'm sure this is a perfectly fine pace but when factoring in other aspects of life outside of running it may be "junk." A mileage pace should be able to accommodate your goal mileage in the allotted time you dedicate to running in your day and also allow you to keep pace with friends/training partners. I would call paces that affect your ability to do that and train efficiently and happily about as
junky" as you can reasonably get.

I know that Ernst van Aaken also believed there was no such thing as running too slowly as long as you maintained your running form. But I don't know when that happens and I doubt it happens at the same pace for everyone and that maybe there are people that it just never happens to.

In his autobiography Henry Rono said that when he was just starting to run Viren spent some time training in Kenya. He'd see Viren really crawling along the roads so he, Henry, decided it was fine to do your distance work really slowly. I've run with Henry and Henry on a distance run was very different from Henry on a track. He ran slower than I normally did.

I've seen so much variation from successful runners, however that is defined, in terms of pace and effort in their distance work that I kind of think all that really matters is that you do enough of it. Ron Hill did his 20 mile runs at about seven minutes a mile and got a best marathon of 2:09:28. Ian Thompson did his 20 miles runs at about five minutes a mile and got a best marathon of 2:09:12. Really I think all that mattered was that each of them got in 20s and did not do them so hard that their next day's running was impacted negatively.

I remember a line from Lydiard, "If you are feeling tired or jaded, run slow, so slow that old ladies with their handbags are passing you".

I also remember reading that John Treacy would run so slow on his easy days, none of the other good Irish runners would run with him on those days.

Someone who runs a 4:30 mile can afford to run slow junk. The whole run slow to run fast works for the high VO2 max crowd. If you're substantially slower you might have to think about cutting out junk miles. Real slow people who have been running for years and are still running 12 minutes miles might want to cut out the junk miles and focus on higher quality at a lower volume. Just a thought.

Nice way to move the goal posts.

I know this, but I was responding to your initial comments that went something to the effect of "7:00/km is too slow for someone running a 14:50 5k" and "anything below zone 2 is junk mileage."

The gist of my argument was "no it isn't", and elites are running the majority of their mileage in zone 1.

Therefore, if running large amounts in zone 1 is producing the best performances in the world, how can you hold such a daft opinion?

Human physiology is human physiology.

Just because you move more slowly along a horizontal plane doesn't change the fact that you possess the same underlying human physiology.

And vo2 max is not the lynchpin that determines whether or not you respond to a given stimulus.

Viren also blood doped.

True. But running mechanics are something else. I don't believe you can take a really slow person and have them run fifty to seventy 12 minutes miles a week with a workout and see them improve. With people that slow they need to be running a decent pace with good mechanics on a daily basis.

I don't think drills like strides will improve the 12 minutes mile runner that much.

I don't know how many people remember Brad Schlapak who once won a national cross country championship and had the same problem finding training partners because of how slow he ran.

Do you have evidence of that? No one else has shown any.

Why wouldn't it?

You're putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps those lower intensities are a necessary first step to build the muscular skeletal strength and cardiovascular system capable of faster running.

I'm yet to see large and sustained improvements among people (beside children) who do all of their training above LT1.

People hide behind biomechanics on this site so often, but show me a study that says running slowly negatively affects running mechanics at higher speeds. There's a 1,000 Kenyans in Iten that would argue otherwise.

In my first post I mentioned people who had been running for a few years but who were still running 12 minute pace easy miles. Those people have had plenty of time to build skeletal and soft tissue strength. Yet they're still slow.

And those Kenyans don't run 12 minute miles as the bulk of their training. My point is a 12 minute mile pace is too far from good running mechanics. Those people would be better off with a run/walk program that emphasized faster running portions with better mechanics than a 12 minute pace plod.

My legs seem to think that everything is junk right now..............................

For trained athletes >50% VO2max of intensity is needed to call it a training. So theoretical this is the lower limit and below that, no training effect (or very little).

However, in practice, for over 99% of all runners, even if they run very slow, it is above 50% VO2max. So you can consider any running mile a training mile or training duration.

Jeff Schiebler, former Canadian record holder, ran for a Japanese corporate team, living and training in Japan. He said most of the Japanese runners ran too slow for him in training.

There's another factor with long, slow running. Peter Snell's graduate research indicated that if you run long enough to completely deplete slow twitch fibers, the fast twitch are recruited to help perform the work.