Webb interview

Dominic, a couple of people have tried to lure you into name calling and ancestor insulting, but you've debated with class. I don't understand when someone disagrees with someone it has to start off with, "You're a moron" or "What a freakin dumbass." Thanks for showing us how to disagree with class.

Clay,

I did increase my mileage to 60-70 per week for the next 3 years but still did not break 3:42. So I found that higher miles did not necessarily make better mile times. I agree that 3:42 gets you nowhere. I just did not have the ability to run 3:32 reagardless of what I did.

Sprinters improve their sprint times by runnung faster workouts.

Milers can improve their mile times by running faster workouts. If you run 8 X 400 in 60s and can improve that to 8 X 400 in 57s then your mile time will improve without your mileage going up. A stronger base may allow you to do that workout but that base may be created by running faster tempo runs as opposed to longer tempo runs.

It is easy to conceptualize and quantify an increase in mileage and associate that to better training. But the returns are not proportiate and become diminishing at some point. The question is: At what miles/week do the benefits diminish for a miler?

Depends on the runner

I would hazard a guess that the mileage gives more benefits in the mile for guys whose primary events are 5k/10k, whereas someone without quite the same pure endurance would probably benefit more from speed strength.