Charlesvdw wrote:
I 've run 4 marathons on 20 mpw.
Tuesday 3 miles easy.
Thursday tempo run 5 to 8 miles.
Sunday long run between 8 and 20 miles slightly slower than marathon pace.
With this mileage I recently ran a 3:19 marathon PR on a flat course.
Note: I've tried upping my mileage or running 4times a week, but this resulted in injury.
Try running more but like wayyyy slower.
I specifically defined it nebulously because I wanted to see a variety of answers. But your points are well taken, Star.
You leave a huge gap in your two possible definitions, in my opinion.
We are talking about the group in between these two extremes.
"Typical" being an everyday runner who makes the time to consistently get out the door to run. Consistent can be loosely defined, in our example.
"Marathoner" is, as you say, a runner committed to the pursuit of the race distance consistently enough to considered for the title. I'll arbitrarily choose one marathon every 18 months as consistent for this argument.
Does this help?
douglas burke wrote:
Zero Talent is maybe not the right word an example of a non talent who excelled in the Marathon was Bill Rodgers who only ran 9:36 for 2 miles in high school, and 8:58 for 2 miles (A time many people at or near his level ran faster than in high school.), But Rodgers loved running ran 20-30 miles a day pretty much everyday and became world class. He had a poor diet frozen pizza dipped in mayonaise and chocalate chip cookies was a typical meal, he ran as he felt, but did not structure his workouts like most do today, he ran 2:08.23 on a 100-200 meter short course in Japan which would have been his best , he always ran Boston (Nickname Boston Billy) New, York and Fukuoka so the only fast course he ran to do his best was 4-6 weeks after New York, He probably would be a 2:06 runner on a Berlin Course especially with a better diet, but that is about as good as anyone could do without major talent, the guys running his times were ALL better than 9:36 for 2 miles in High School and Most people running the times he did were better in High School than Rodgers was in College, his talent was love of running to the point of running 20-30 miles a day everyday, 2-3 times a day, and not getting injured.
Say what you will about Rdogers' "talent" or lack thereof, but he had preternaturally efficient and economical running form (despite that trademark right-arm swing), with a friction coefficient and float phase that were just off the charts. He didn't seem to run on the road so much as he floated over it. If you look at race photos of Rodgers, in the vast majority of them both feet are completely off the ground. The man was truly born to run.
Unfortunately, my muscles and tendons are not up to the task. I get injured every time I run 4 times per week.
I might take run slower’s advice and increase my easy run on Tuesday to 6-8 miles.
On this board, "average" means not in the top 1%, like "I'm just an average runner with 15 min 5k PB."
Based on that, she might be right about 75 mpw.