Why are some people here trying to justify running 60-80 mpw for a 1:30 half?

And after you look it up, tell us whether or not you have a clue what it takes to be a National Class runner (>80% Age grade) versus a just decent mid-packer (<70% Age Grade).

LOL! LOL!

If you run a legit 1:33 Half grandpa, then you will be an International Class runner, to go along with your 35-yr-old trophy wife.🙄

Why? What are you they running from?

The built in assumption is that having the ability to even run 80 miles a week isn’t an outlier ability. It is.

Also, if you did a study of ultra runners you would quickly find a large dataset high mileage runners that lacked the ability to run sub 3.

you're not running 130km a week and b) you are a massive outlier by definition. you're literally one of the best 75 year olds in the world ever. the world record appears to be 1:29.

i have repeatedly said it's not impossible there are people out there.

you're 75 and running 90km a week. good for you. you are a massive outlier.

International Class runners are at the talent level of the Emma Coburn’s, Grant Fisher’s, and Galen Rupp’s of the world, whether or not they are taking drugs to assist there performance. In order to lay down an International Class or even National Class (think Natosha Rogers level) Half-Marathon performance, the training involved is more than just some simple volume metric.

do you know what the dictionary definition of a massive outlier is?

it's a 60 year old who runs 130km a week

no matter what there time performance would be - they are the MASSIVE OUTLIER

5 thousand data points and the 130kmpw-but-can't-break-3 runner is male is so innefficient as to literally be off the charts. and yet here you are trying to find scenarios where it might be possible

sure, it might be possible, but they are outliers.

in 99% of cases if you run 130km a week for a year, you will break 3. I'm happy to stand by that statement

if you're an international class very senior master it might not be true - they are outliers, that is the point

Wrong. There are 60 yr old mid-pack 60-yr old mid packers, just like there are 40 yr-old midpackers, and a simple volume metric does not distinguish between midpacker and elite.

mid-pack 60 year old runs 130km a week lmbao. pull the other one.

definition of an outlier

No, that is what others have been trying to get through your thick head, that there are people out there covering that weekly volume on foot that are not necessarily capable, or even desirous, of breaking 1:30 in the Half. It may be slog jog/walking to you, but it is still 130km/week.

I looked at results of a 1/2 marathon from September in which my neighbor ran 1:47. I recognized two other guys' names but I don't know some of the names of the group. Regardless, none of the 55-59 year old finishers who finished between 1:35 and 1:55 have Strava. I don't know how else to point to a name.

Sub 1:30 is a solid time for a female masters runner with average talent who loves running

Unless they’re absolutely destroying their bodies, relationships, and/or career, why does it matter how much they run and their race times?

If they’re happy, family is happy, it really isn’t our concern.

I thought only kids measure their weekly training in terms of mileage as it’s a dumb way to measure and they know no better.

its like saying my max heart rate is 199, it doesn’t make you faster, slower, more or less productive.

You should be saying I spend 10 hours a week running, strength and conditioning training. Or even my average weekly pace is 5:58 a mile a week - it’s a far better representation of where your training is, mileage is just a product of your average pace and time training

I looked at another 1/2 marathon in the area. There were 60 runners aged 56. The fastest was 1:40 and the slowest was 4:21.

I don't even get the OP's point. Is it that people who are so slow shouldn't bother putting that much time into the sport? Or is it that it's supposedly dumb training.

Anyway, 80 miles/week is pretty uncommon, but tons of average runners put in 60 miles/week. 1:30 isn't slow, either.

FWIW, I was doing 70 miles/week when I first qualified for Boston, running 3:07 at the time. I eventually got into the 2:20s (with mileage in the 130s).

Why?

say I have a 'thick head'

can't read a chart.

ignores data from 20,000 runners, 5,000 of whom are over 40.

doesn't know what an outlier is.

Yes, but these people are an EXTREMELY small % of people running that much. they're either old, or have extremely bad genetics. they are **outliers**.

Let's put it another way

Take a random subset of 5,000 marathoners from relatively flat marathons who have successfully averaged 130k/80 miles a week for the previous year. I assert that fewer than of 50 (1%) them fail to break 3.

would take the other side of that bet, at even money?

here's yet another chart for you to think about while you decide if you'd bet against a 'thick-headed idiot clown'.

Open image

you'd have to be a proper muppet to take that bet but i think you may actually be the person to do it

this thread irritates me because people are acting like running is more complicated or talent-based than it actually is. it's a simple sport - if you run more you will get faster, at a recreational level.

the typical 3-hour runner averages roughly 75-80k per week in the 16 weeks before a marathon. that that is a fact. look at the chart above based on thousands of data points.

there is a bit of a plateau around 3 hours, but there is also the fact if you are running a lot more than that, you are a lot more likely to be going faster than 3 hours, that is also a fact.

you can call me an idiot, a clown, thick-headed all you want, but running is a simple sport and if people ran more, they'd run faster.

this is from the paper i mentioned earlier, and it has as good data as there has ever existed for marathon runners.

4.1 Training volume as a hallmark of marathon running
The analysis of training characteristics in this large sample of marathon runners revealed
differences in the training characteristics between runners with different finishing
times.

A key finding was that the best runners within the dataset, those with
marathon times of 120-150 min, accumulated a training volume of ~107 km·week-1,
which was ~60% higher than the training volume of runners within the next
performance group (marathon times of 150-180 min), and over three-fold higher
than those with slow marathon times (e.g., marathon time of >270 min; Figure
1, Figure 2, Figure 3).

Furthermore, there were strong, negative relationships
between marathon finishing time and markers of training volume, such as total
training distance, training time, or active days (Figure 5). The regression
analyses demonstrated that markers of training volume, including total running distance,
number of active days, or distance covered in long runs were typical features
of runners with fast marathon times.

The finding that marathon performance in a
large heterogenous group of runners is strongly associated with a high training
volume is consistent with previous literature from elite marathon runners. For
example, up to 59% of world class long distance running performance can be
predicted by total volume of training [30], and very high training volumes of 160-220
km·week-1 have been reported in elite marathon runners [18].

The current study suggests that training
volume is also a key determinant of marathon performance in recreational
runners. Combined with previous studies, these data suggest that high training
volume is a hallmark of successful marathon performance.