The never ending debate - singles or doubles?

Source?

Maybe individual preference. It doesn't seem worth it to me to only lace up and shower afterwards for a 25 minute run and then another run for 25 minutes. Might as well do it and be done with it and have the rest of the day to do whatever else you need to get done. But if you've got all the time in the world, go ahead and run a mile every hour if you want.

Kawauchi ran the 2:08 in Japanese-style flats, so probably was capable of a 2:06 in today's shoes -- pretty wild on low-ish mileage. I think given his incessant racing (1-2 marathons a month + shorter stuff), doing a traditional big mileage block would be too much.

He did wear the super shoes for his 2:07, which was past his peak.

To me double it helps a lot Two very important things 1) Recovery 2) Total mileage that is connected with better general endurance and better fatigue resistance. This is the way for example Kipchoge does . If you look at his training program , they use to add usually 3 times a week an extra easy run 50/60 minutes sometime can be very slow and is something that helps to clean the legs from hard workout. Better than any massage . And also add those 40 / 45 km to the weekly mileage but the main thing is to help a quicker recover for the next session. And this it works also for amateur runners . Normally they do only single run but sure if somebody has the time , and the will to do double 3 or 4 times a week always as recovery runs ( forget special block a la Canova or Double threshold sessions a la Ingebrigtsen) would have great results.

Another single session runner in history I like to highlight in the single/ double debate is Michael Mysioki. In the -90s he dominated the American road race cirkus . His normal training week was told to be : M 6-8 x 800 m @ 2:06-2:08 Tu; 60 min easy We: 1 hour @ 3;10 min/ km Th: 60 min easy Fr; 60 min easy Sa ; 2 hours easy Su; day off. He won many famous road races and took an Olympic bronze medal at 10000 m . His only marathon ( as I remember it ) a 2:10. He had at a time the world record half marathon at 61min .

I don't think it's a debate. Not anymore. Doubles are the clear winner, the debate is just when to start them. Malmo advocates as early as possible, even at low mileage. I assume low mileage doubles are more beneficial for 1500 to 10k and marathoners would start doubling at higher mileage.

I do think, especially for inexperienced runners, doubles can help you run in the faster range of your easy runs if you believe that is important to improvement. My average pace for an easy 3, 4 double is always going to be faster than 7 continuous

The only benefit I can see for doubles is that there can be a speed session and an endurance/recovery session the same day. For full-time athletes this can be a big benefit if they can rest and recover well. For those of us working full time, we might not have the time for 1 long session on a workday, so splitting things up might be necessary to get the volume we need.

Shouldn't we instead give more weight to the guy who beat malmo in that half marathon mentioned above?

No.

Had Musioki trained like me he would have run at least a minute or two faster.
Had I trained like him I would have been at least 2 minutes slower. I had missed nearly a year of training due to plantar fasciitis. A bad tear. Musioki had years of uninterrupted training. I had four months. Even so, my heel would take another two years before it was 100 percent.

Nice try, Son.

To make a serious comment on what you here wrote malmo, don't you think you can learn something out of this? I mean he ran continous fast very good top results on singles and low mileage for years and you with your doubles were often injured and sometimes inbetween ran very good top results.I don't think he had run at least one- two minutes faster with doubles as you guess. But what we for sure know is that Mysyoki was a great elite runner on just singles and low mileage.🙏🖐🇸🇪🧙‍♂️Coach J.S

Yes, perhaps it was the racing constantly that got him fast. I don't think 70-80 min runs is that unique. A lot of guys, especially in Japan, are running that without Yuki's results. Heck, I run 80-90 mins most days and am nowhere near that level.

Idiot. I wasn't often injured. I had one injury that was caused by jamming my foot in a frozen rut while training for world cross country. Stay in your lane. You don't know wtf you're talking about.

Mike Musioki had a long uninterrupted steak of high level racing. Yet he was only able to beat me by 7 seconds after just 4 months of training.

You failed at logic and knowledge of the facts.

Ahaha! Maybe you should try to stay away from being rude,don't you think?.I think most normal people here agree with me in that advice.....😉

You, and even I, don't know for sure how fast Mysyoki had been on doubles and we will never know, we can just make an experienced and qualified guess.And you wrote yourself that Mysyoki had several of years with uninterrupted training away from injuries.

We created a special thread for you because of your persistent vandalism. You should respect our generosity and stay there -- where facts don't matter and its all about you.

I dabbled with it and saw no improvement from splitting my runs into doubles. It also cut into my recovery.

Haha that's great.

As a 17/18 5K runner I tried adding a 4-5 mile jog in the evenings and all it did was cut into my recovery and tire my legs further. I honestly saw no improvement in my times.