It's a really good thread. I think most people would define talent like you're doing, people who get really good results in an activity almost as soon as they take up that activity, ones who do really well with a particular activity despite not working as hard at being good at the activity as most others who are successful at it do, or both.
None of that was true for me but eventually I did do better than some people I knew who had more initial success than me and/or didn't spend nearly the effort at being good as I did. I thought of such people as having a talent for running and that I did not. But with the coming of message boards when I've written that I made big improvements in my racing by running 100-150 mile weeks for a few years and compensated for lack of talent that way people have told me that being able to run that much consistently was a real talent.
I don't really believe that but as we don't know exactly what talent is I can't refute it. Maybe it's true. Is having the discipline to get out the door and run seven to fourteen times a week for every week for years a talent?
For those of you that have BQ’d, what type of yearly mileage would you say you averaged during your BQ years?
I’ve personally ran two full marathons: Fall 2022- 3:38, Fall 2023- 3:42
Both marathons I severely cramped in my hamstrings. Fueling and muscle cramping is a massive hurdle for me at the marathon distance. My half marathon PB is 1:29:00 on the dot, and I ran that in Feb. 2023.
In 2022 and 2023 I hit 1400- 1500 total miles ran, thanks Garmin for tracking that.
Anyways, just curious about yearly miles ran from those of you fast BQ’ers out there!
The year of my first BQ..I was running a only 800+ mpy. I think I was about 25 mpw for that cycle. I just ran on my (minimal talent).
When I got more serious and started hitting consistent solid times (for me) I was over 2000 miles per year with a high of 2400. Of note, the years I ran my fastest marathon I put of huge numbers the year BEFORE.
For those of you that have BQ’d, what type of yearly mileage would you say you averaged during your BQ years?
I’ve personally ran two full marathons: Fall 2022- 3:38, Fall 2023- 3:42
Both marathons I severely cramped in my hamstrings. Fueling and muscle cramping is a massive hurdle for me at the marathon distance. My half marathon PB is 1:29:00 on the dot, and I ran that in Feb. 2023.
In 2022 and 2023 I hit 1400- 1500 total miles ran, thanks Garmin for tracking that.
Anyways, just curious about yearly miles ran from those of you fast BQ’ers out there!
Idk where it is but there was a study done a few years back that listed out total miles to BQ. Maybe someone knows what I'm talking about. In my first two real years of running I ran 2.1k & 3.5k. BQd at the end of year 2 twice. The 2nd time was by a healthy margin. Then spent a decade basically between 3k & 4k, which led to continued improvement.
Great job. Just curious: What changes did you make to see such improvement? A note about overall would be nice, but in 2014-2015 would be especially interesting, please.
I didn't run in high school or college, which certainly helped my progression when I was able to string together consistent training. So, 2012 was pretty much my first where running was my primary form of exercise. I struggled with various injuries for awhile, but was able to string together consistent training towards the end of 2014. Annual milage in 2014 was 3821 with a lot of the mileage on the back end of that year. Increased to 4223 in 2015, 5060 in 2016, 5264 in 2017...lots of running for mediocre results, but I enjoy it.
About a 100 minute improvement from my first to my fastest over the years:
Jan 2007: 4:48 (age 25) Carlsbad Nov 2007: 4:33 Philly Nov 2008: 4:22 NYC Fall 2011: Moved from suburbs to NYC and joined a running club Nov 2013: 3:49 NYC Nov 2014: 3:36 NYC Sep 2015: 3:22 Berlin Apr 2016: 3:19 London Mar 2017: Tore hip labrum, PT and massage to try to keep running but unable to consistently train. Nov 2017: 3:44 NYC Feb 2018: Hip Labral repair surgery Nov 2018: 3:52 NYC (food poisoning several days before - was closer to 3:30-3:35 fitness) Jun 2019: Stress Reaction; spent the summer indoor cycling 250-300 miles/week Sep 2019: 3:18 Berlin (9 weeks of running: 15, 22, 35, 50, 51, 57, 61, 53) Nov 2019: 3:09 Philly Early 2020: Multiple PRs at shorter distances Mar 2020: Covid; lungs haven't been the same since…fastest I've run since is 3:31
There have been other marathons in these years which were not PRs. My mileage sweet spot seemed to be in the 50-75 range and an average around 60 during a cycle. I have had others where I have peaked and averaged more which did not result in good races.
For those of you that have BQ’d, what type of yearly mileage would you say you averaged during your BQ years?
I’ve personally ran two full marathons: Fall 2022- 3:38, Fall 2023- 3:42
Both marathons I severely cramped in my hamstrings. Fueling and muscle cramping is a massive hurdle for me at the marathon distance. My half marathon PB is 1:29:00 on the dot, and I ran that in Feb. 2023.
In 2022 and 2023 I hit 1400- 1500 total miles ran, thanks Garmin for tracking that.
Anyways, just curious about yearly miles ran from those of you fast BQ’ers out there!
There was someone who did some research on this topic (as NERunner said), and it was on LRC a few years ago. Try the search function.
For me it was about 1000 miles per year to run 3:19 at age 45.