Are 80 mpw runners with 16-20 mi LR "perma-trained" for the marathon?

No, no, that fills in the gaps a bit. That would be difficult to train through. Props to you, and best of luck in your future training/races.

Thanks man. I've learned to be patient, and running really slow when traveling does work.

It's actually amazing what an hour at 10 min/mi (6 miles..) does to your endurance. It's 4 min/mi slower than my 5k pace, yet it has its place. What I struggle with now if fitting higher intensity stuff.

What I mean by patience is that for guys like me building mileage towards 80 is a multi year process. By now 50 is very doable, 60 is pushing it, but in the past I was getting hurt at 30-40. I started age 27, so been at it for 8 years. Talk about slow progress!

Best of luck to you too.

You are smart to slow things down. I always did my "easy" pace at 7:30-8:30, but would grind to a halt when consistently above 50 miles/week. Now I am jogging 10-minute miles (@130 HR), and feeling refreshed on the same mileage. 20-mile long runs are no longer super-stressful. I am hoping to build up to consistent 60mpw by next spring. I still include one fartlek day and throw strides in once or twice a week.

Perma-rathon wrote:

Thanks man. I've learned to be patient, and running really slow when traveling does work.

It's actually amazing what an hour at 10 min/mi (6 miles..) does to your endurance. It's 4 min/mi slower than my 5k pace, yet it has its place. What I struggle with now if fitting higher intensity stuff.

What I mean by patience is that for guys like me building mileage towards 80 is a multi year process. By now 50 is very doable, 60 is pushing it, but in the past I was getting hurt at 30-40. I started age 27, so been at it for 8 years. Talk about slow progress!

Best of luck to you too.

Perma-rathon wrote:

For example this week I flew 5 times, 3 cities in 2 continents. That's not a lot of sleep,

Have you heard of Skype, or does this have something to do with inflating your billables?

👍

Age is probably a factor. John Kellogg thought a good approach for masters runners was to stay closer to peak fitness year round so that they could get into racing shape in about 6 weeks. I've had good results from long buildups, but I also had better than expected results when I only had six weeks to train (and one to taper) for my first attempt at a half marathon.

Perma-rathon wrote:

I am one of these runners who really needs to step up his training (particularly mpw) for the marathon, from 40-45 mpw to a more decent ~ 60 mpw. Eventually I'd like a bigger base hence my question...

If you run 80 miles per week, with a 20-25% max long run (so 16-20 mi) once a week or even every two weeks, aren't you essentially perma-trained for a decent marathon? Not personal best, but say within 5 to 15 min of it?

Could you litteraly jump in a marathon with maybe a few days taper and do somewhat decent?

Sorry for the newb question. For most of us a marathon is the culmination of a big training block so interested to hear your thoughts.

I ran 80mpw for five years and then backed it down to 70mpw when my first son was born (due to time limitations) and held that mileage for 25 years. I always felt that I could run a marathon in the 2:35 range on one week notice, and once ran two 2:35 marathons one week apart. Now whether that was good or not is another question. My PR was 2:27 and maybe it would have been better if I had done more specific training.

Perma-rathon wrote:

Thanks man. I've learned to be patient, and running really slow when traveling does work.

It's actually amazing what an hour at 10 min/mi (6 miles..) does to your endurance. It's 4 min/mi slower than my 5k pace, yet it has its place. What I struggle with now if fitting higher intensity stuff.

What I mean by patience is that for guys like me building mileage towards 80 is a multi year process. By now 50 is very doable, 60 is pushing it, but in the past I was getting hurt at 30-40. I started age 27, so been at it for 8 years. Talk about slow progress!

Best of luck to you too.

Your 60-65 in 9 hours a week is similar to the 90-100 a week of a faster runner. Might be better to base volume goals on time per week rather than miles. Recovery day to day, week to week is more dependant on the time you spend training than the mileage.

I've never hear of perma-trained, but I disagree with the OPs hypothesis.

I run right around 80mpw for most of the year, LR anywhere from 12-22 miles. Generally that puts me in about 2:45 marathon shape.

If I take 12-16 weeks to train for the marathon though, My PR is 2:28. I've run under 2:30 twice and under 2:35 3 times.

I tested this out in my early 30s. My work schedule dictated that I could rarely get a good workout in and I felt like I could never really put in a solid block of dedicated training. So for about 3 years I basically ran 70 mile weeks with hard long run of 20 where I built up to close to marathon race pace. Off of this I hopped in several marathons and ran 2:26-2:30 in all. My pr was 2:24.32. I think the year round mileage and long run get you 90% of the way. The last 1-2 min requires the higher intensity stuff.

Perms is perms wrote:

I've never hear of perma-trained, but I disagree with the OPs hypothesis.

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It's perma-brained, not trained.

Personally, I can be "perma-trained" as you call it for sub-marathon distances. It requires 60-80 miles/week, 2 workouts of pretty high intensity but moderate total volume, and a "long run" of about 14 miles at a steady clip. But there's no shortcut for me when it comes to the marathon. I've tried.

It sounds what the OP is suggesting is that it's better to be undertrained than overtrained. That's certainly true, within reason. Training is also easier when you deliberately undertrain. There are fewer mistakes that you can make. But the fact that it's possible to overtrain and screw up does not mean that one should give up and deliberately undertrain.

None of which is to suggest that you shouldn't compromise your training based on other constraints in life. But if you do, don't try to fool yourself into thinking what you're doing is optimal.

It depends what "decent" is.

80mpw without marathon specific would be good for an easy 2:55 for anyone under 50 IMO.

Add some marathon specific tempos and IMO you are talking 2:30-2:40 for masters under 45, under 2:30 under 35.

Perms is perms wrote:

I've never hear of perma-trained, but I disagree with the OPs hypothesis.

I run right around 80mpw for most of the year, LR anywhere from 12-22 miles. Generally that puts me in about 2:45 marathon shape.

If I take 12-16 weeks to train for the marathon though, My PR is 2:28. I've run under 2:30 twice and under 2:35 3 times.

You're not disagreeing with my hypothesis. You're corroborating it fully...the idea of perma-trained is that you are in a permanent state of strong finish (i.e. not bonk, and not just jog either within X minutes of your PR).

In the post I said 5-15' range, in your case, your perma-trained state allowed you to be within 10 min of a decent marathon, within 15 mins of a strong marathon and 17' away from your absolute best.

Do understand: most people who run 20-40 mpw (very recreating marathoners) are NOT ANYWHERE near these times. A 20 mpw 4-hour marathoner might not be able to finish at all without specific dedicated block, and a 40mpw 3 hour marathoner might crawl to a 3:30, walking a lot, and be sore for days if not training more specifically.

In your case, you could show strong showing with very little shift in training. That's all I was asking!

800 dude wrote:

Personally, I can be "perma-trained" as you call it for sub-marathon distances. It requires 60-80 miles/week, 2 workouts of pretty high intensity but moderate total volume, and a "long run" of about 14 miles at a steady clip. But there's no shortcut for me when it comes to the marathon. I've tried.

It sounds what the OP is suggesting is that it's better to be undertrained than overtrained. That's certainly true, within reason. Training is also easier when you deliberately undertrain. There are fewer mistakes that you can make. But the fact that it's possible to overtrain and screw up does not mean that one should give up and deliberately undertrain.

None of which is to suggest that you shouldn't compromise your training based on other constraints in life. But if you do, don't try to fool yourself into thinking what you're doing is optimal.

Your read of my sub-consicous question is absolutely spot-on. I didn't realize people wouldn't understand why I even asked such ridiculous question (being somewhat but not ideally trained). In my case, as many others, the ideal training is difficult. I've devoted a 3-4 month of building base to 60 mpw, week in and out, before starting to train for a marathon after having run 3 on 20, 30, and 45 mpw respectively. But that training was recently derailed by tons of travel and work 6-8 weeks away from goal race, so I backed off for 2 weeks down to 50 mi with no workout other than a slow 2 hour long run (14.5 mi). I wondered how much I lost from peak fitness, and what to with the last 5 weeks I now have.

Hence my daydream of a sub-optimal yet strong permanent state of training that once reached, can be maintained (it's easier to stay at a given level when life stress occur than trying to increase mileage or intensity while life stress is also increasing...that's whenI break down physically).

You all have me curious about this theory as I was pondering the same question recently. My mileage has increased this year and I could see myself averaging 60-70 mpw over the course of the next few years.

Were you all former collegiates or did you build up to consistent mileage in the 60-70 mpw range?

I have life demands - tiring job, two young kids, a lot of pitching in at home. I typically run 85-90 mpw during my marathon cycles, then back off afterward and take blocks of down time. Life gets stressful when you're basically using every available window of time to go out for a run.

I'm considering running the next marathon on around 60-65 mpw. If I do that, I'm going to focus on higher quality miles - longer tempos, more repeats, more quality within my long runs.

Yes, if you can run 80 mpw 52 weeks a year with a 16-20 LR, you'll be able to pop a decent marathon with a couple of taper weeks. But why would you train year-round like that?

Isn't OP's problem more that he can't consistently get the miles in? If I had that scenario, I'd pinpoint 2-3 quality workouts a week that I must get in, and then be fine with shorter or no recovery runs on days when my schedule goes awry.

The Collapse Point Theory can relate to other distances outside of the marathon, but what it really tells a runner is what point of a marathon they will "break down" if they try to run a pace equivalent to their shorter distance PBs. That is, say a 35min 10K runner only trains 45 miles per week for a marathon (average) the 10 weeks leading up to to a marathon. If that runner goes out at 2:40-2:45 pace, then the collapse point theory says that they will fall off pace somewhere between the 18th and 19th mile marker. The idea being that if you are under-trained, and would like a decent race, i.e. not kill yourself the last 6 miles, then one either needs to up the mileage or go out at an appropriate pace for ones fitness and mileage base.

18342772 wrote:

Interesting--to me--thing I'm reminded of by this discussion: A few months back I stumbled on a copy of the 1975 Marathon Handbook, that Runners World used to publish. It's got training advice in it based on Ken Young's "collapse point" theory, which dictates that you need to average a third of the race distance per day in order to cover it without breaking down. I'm not sure how that extrapolates to a 5K--one mile a day?--or longer ultras, but with marathons, that would be about 9 miles per day, or 63 miles per week. They suggest allocating that mileage as prescribed in Tom Osler's The Conditioning of Distance Runners--basically one long run, two medium long runs of half that, then four very short efforts. It ends up looking a bit like a more polarized version of Lydiard's marathon conditioning schedules.

Hey mang,

I've always thought the same thing myself. I always have those really good long runs in the middle of my training where I feel like things are coming together, and I'm ready to pop a good marathon. Then, like you, with about 6 weeks to go, I start to get flat with anticipation. Maybe I try to force the pace a little more, but I have been under the ethos that I should just train like a marathoner for a longer period of time and just enter a marathon when I feel like things are clicking rather than try to meet the expectation of some artificial date. It is a little more organic to race when things are going well.