Real Low Mileage performers.

OK, some more of these.

First, my understanding is that Henry Marsh ran 40, not 30, and it contained significant amounts of short intervals (200's), progressing to longer intervals later.

Doug Padilla ran 13:15 off about 50mpw in the 1980's. He is still on the all time top 10 list in the US for 5000, and there is nobody here posting about high mileage who could touch him (including Wejo). His intensity level was very high.

Maria Mutola, ~30 mpw, 4-5 days/week of intervals.

Seneca Lassiter ran 4:07 as a junior in HS off 20 mpw, also 1:49.9, eventally running 3:54 for the mile after higher mileage.

Bryan Berryhill ran 1:48 off 8 mi/wk. He was Oregon HS Champion 2 years in a row.

David Krummenacker won a World Indoor Championship (2003), running what appears to be 30 mi/wk, according to his journals. He is the only American ever to run 1:43 and 3:31. He did run more than 30 when at Georgia Tech.

Brandon Rock at Arkansas ran 15 mi/wk on essentially the same proggram I used at USC. Rock ran 1:44, was ranked #9 in the world by IAAF in 1995, and finished 5th at the 1995 World Championships. The training program is a trpical 400 program of an overdistance day, pace day, and speed day, with the training distances run doubled. My understanding is that the Clark sisteers (Jearl-Miles and Hazel) also run this type of training program. Jearl-Miles Clark was ranked #4 by IAAF last year.

"Mileage" is the most overly focussed thing in North American training outlooks. Rather than "doing what is required", many look to meaningless / arbitrary weekly volume quotas, which reveal nothing about training stimulii.

The tail ends up wagging the dog.

tell that to the africans...i think their dogs do the wagging.

In too many cases, the tail ends up sitting there with no dog attached, because the runners are so obsessed with weekly mileages that they don't do (or don't want to do) the real workouts.

I had thought that Marsh was more in the 50, 60, 70 mpw range.Berryhill was a 1:51-52 800 runner in highschool, but yes, according an interview several years ago, he only ran about 8 mile/week

Speed Kills wrote:

OK, some more of these.

First, my understanding is that Henry Marsh ran 40, not 30, and it contained significant amounts of short intervals (200's), progressing to longer intervals later.

Bryan Berryhill ran 1:48 off 8 mi/wk. He was Oregon HS Champion 2 years in a row.

.

Here are a couple of examples.

I knew a guy who ran at Iowa in the 70s. He kept getting injured there (but did run about 4:03 for the mile). After college he kept running for University of Chicago Track Club, but trained using a high quality/low mileage program.

A typical week might be a 10-12 miler on the weekend at 6:00 - 6:30 pace. A hard 5-6 miler with 4-5 miles at sub 5:00. An easy 6-8 miler. A fartlek with fast reps of 1-3 minutes, and a race.

At most he'd run about 5 days a week and maybe do 40 miles (typically in the 25-45 mpw range). He was not very consistent, but off this he did run in the low 14s and ran low 29s/high 28s for 10k, and 1:02/1:03 for 20k.

Also have a friend who's now a DI coach who said that he ran about 15:30 5k on just 15 miles/week (he was in his late 30s at the time; best college/post college mile time had been in the low 4:10s).

AK-47 wrote:

I had thought that Marsh was more in the 50, 60, 70 mpw range.

Berryhill was a 1:51-52 800 runner in highschool, but yes, according an interview several years ago, he only ran about 8 mile/week

Marsh was well known to be a low mileage runner, well under 50 mpw.

And Berryhill won 5 state championships in Oregon on those 8 miles/wk.

Also on the list of low mileage runners should be Said Aouita, who once held 4 world records concurrently, and has repeatedly stated that he rarely ran more than 50 mi/wk.

Off the Wall wrote:

Just out of curiousity and a sense of perspective, do any posters here know of any runners in their locales who just run 2 or 3 miles a day yet race well, i.e. not back of the pack types?

One friend recently mentioned a guy he knew in the 70's who ran sub-3 hour marathons off of 25 miles a week of training. The fellow was coaching in New England somewhere of late.

Even forgetting about the real long races, how about just local 5K-10K events?

I ran 20 miles a week and LESS in high school and yet ran 9:48 for 3200 and 15:48 for 5,000.

I once ran a road 10k after about 10 weeks off of NO running at all and ran 33:something. Training always helped me, but I seemed to have very little gain with much training.

Seneca Lassiter used to run only 20 mpw in HS and he had some good times coming out of VA.

Obea Moore ran in HS 4:27 with 15 mpw max(ya'all remember him right?).

-Soup

Bowerman had a guy whose name escapes me who ran right around 4:00 for the mile on about 25 mpw. If I think of the name I'll post it. He also coached a guy called Chris Horton to a 3:41 1500 on about 40-50 per week.

There was a British guy in the 60s called Derek Graham who had a 3:59 mile and a 13:50ish 5,000 and who trained by alternating easy 5 mile runs with 10 mile fartlek sessions. He also took a day off each week and never ran in the rain. When Joan Ullyot was training to become the oldest woman ever to run a sub 2:50 marathon, she had Lydiard coaching her. He actually had her drop her mileage from the 70-80 Ron Daws had her doing to less than 50. But she was doing this at 8,000 feet.

Again, going to the fairly old days, guys like fred Wilt and Browning Ross made Olympic teams on about five miles a day.

I'm thinking Dyrol Burleson there HRE.

obviously webb should be on there...he's not super low....but 353 in the mile off what? 40's? reached 50 at his highest or so.

Then you have Lagat...326 1500 runner...isn't the most he does aroudn 60 mpw? Or am i thinking of someone else. That nubmers relatively low for someone in his event and ability.

Gerry Lindgren

Rick Wolhuter was a 35/40 miles per week guy. Speed work and fast tempo runs.

That 25 miles a week guy of Bowerman's I posted a message on him a while ago asking for info on him. I cannot remember the name now though. He was photographed in the Sports Illustrated in the 70's that talked about running technique among Oregon sprinters and distance men. I could do some digging to get the SI out and/or search the archives here for the name.

Mike McClendon is the name of that Oregon runner. Bowerman said he always broke down on higher mileage. I should have done the research before posting.

Roger Bannister broke 4.00 on a shit track off no more than 15-20mpw.

there are tons of people who run low mileage and ridiculously fast times. ive known at least 3 guys who ran 9:30 or better in the 2 mile off of less than 30mpw. one kid in particular ran 9:12 off of 20-25mpw.

I did 31:09/66:23 10k/20k off about 45MPW.These days I run about 30MPW, aged 44, and I think I'll go sub35min 10k soon.I'm no "star" of course, but imho, 60-80MPW would not have made ME faster. To each their own. We all have different strengths.

Off the Wall wrote:

Just out of curiousity and a sense of perspective, do any posters here know of any runners in their locales who just run 2 or 3 miles a day yet race well, i.e. not back of the pack types?

One friend recently mentioned a guy he knew in the 70's who ran sub-3 hour marathons off of 25 miles a week of training. The fellow was coaching in New England somewhere of late.

Even forgetting about the real long races, how about just local 5K-10K events?