Going from 50 mpw to 100 mpw

If that's what makes you a success then you are worse than your username rutgers xc runner makes you to be.I know Mike Roche. He's a friend of mine. He would be embarrassed for you.

How many did you count?

Actually I cannot go back and count this. I don't see anything like that. Maybe you could link to a few. But assuming there are such posts you're drawing your conclusion based on something written by people you don't know who may or may not be serious or honest about what they're posting. And when they aren't posting about their big gains three months after those initial posts you somehow know it was because they got to 90 miles a week and got hurt even though they aren't posting to say that's what happened. That's a whale of a piece of deductive reasoning but the only people likely to believe it are people who badly want to believe it.

Anyway, if the OP or someone like him works up to 80 miles a week, gets faster, decides to push on to 90 and gets hurt you know what? He can have a bit of a layoff, heal up, and try again. If he consistently gets hurt at 90 he can decide that 80 is his sweet spot. But if he arbitrarily stops at 80 he'll never know what might have happened if he'd pushed to 90 or more.

With my very long experience of running and training both on low and high mileage I can tell you there are no absolute guarantee you will improve as much as you want by doubling your weekly mileage. And if you even that told you will try to do it you should only add 10 % weekly to try stay away from overdoing and injuries.

Show me your present normal training 50 mpw with your mix of workouts and easy distance training with paces and add to that your max heartrate if you know and tell time and how you rest between interval reps and then I will tell you what to do to stay at your 50 mpw and still improve magical .... 🇸🇪🤠🇸🇪

In the summers of 77’, ‘78, ‘79, I went from 50ish to 100 using a schedule provided by Arthur Lydiard.

For those that are familiar, it goes: M = 10, T = 15, W = 12, Th = 18, F = 10, Sa = 20, and Su = 15. All singles.

I simply jumped in with no buildup and I did not get injured. But what made it doable was it was done relatively slowly.

Here’s the thing, I obviously was not talented as my 5K time only dropped to 15:40’s and 10K 32. But it made me durable where I could do these times year round with little speed-work. Unfortunately I did not have a coach, and it is obvious looking back, that mixing just a bit more tempo, progressions, and sharpening with speed-work I could have gone faster.

So, 100 miles a week in and of itself is not magic. You still have to adhere to basic training principles. Lydiard himself, of course, reminded us that it was just a base period in the summer that prepared us for the real training later.

A while back I ended up getting a weekly newletter Amby Burfoot was putting out that looked at all sorts of running related research and summarized it. Amby isn't doing it anymore but someone else has taken over. Just a few minutes ago I was reading it and there was a piece about research done on trail runners and their likelihood of getting injured or not and what might predict the likelihood of it happening. It was done by a team at Lausanne University Hospital.

It turns out that trail runners who run more more miles get injured less than ones who run fewer miles. Nothing is said about how applicable this study's information is to the general running population but it's hard to see why it wouldn't be. I have seen similar conclusions drawn from other studies over the years, i.e., low mileage runners get injured more than higher mileage ones do but couldn't cite any of them now. Of course yo can argue that higher mileage runners are naturally more durable and can do those miles. That might be true but in the 70s when almost everyone was running hundred mile weeks you rarely heard people talk about injuries as an ongoing problem.

The conclusion of the Lausanne study was that more running is not necessarily dangerous as long as it's balanced with rest and adequate sleep.

Hasn't there been a recent study that points to the increase in any single (long) run by more than 10% being much more likely to be the cause of injury than increasing overall volume?

I think it is best not to think in terms of miles per week but instead in terms of workload.

What is your long run currently? X

then add a couple of miles to that (X + 2) and see how you feel.

take the next day off or short and easy

then go X + 3. see how you feel

take the next day off or short and easy

then go X + 4. yes, I am saying do 3 long runs in a week. then see how you feel. If you need to take a down week after that - do it. If not keep pushing.

The idea is to gradually get more long runs per week and get used to going longer.

but you have to be giving your body time to recovery (the day off or short and easy day)

At some point you can try two long days back-to-back to see how your body handles that.

Using this method I did two 20 mile runs back-to-back and was okay.

then did 3.

then 9 20 mile runs in a row. my body had adapted. That got me 146 miles in one week on single runs.

A season or two later I was able to start stringing these bigger volume week together, but the whole time I was always taking a day off here or there. So, in a 160 mile week for instance, doing doubles, I would run 10 times in the week (and have 4 times where I would not run at step). The days off are the key.

you basically overtrain for a day or two and then rest for a day. Your body will adapt. Your mileage will increase. By how much and how quickly is not up to a pre-set schedule. It is up to how your body handles each new load. That is how you do it without injury or illness.

I think age is a big factor. When you’re 19 you can get away with breaking a few rules...up to a point. One week I pushed it up to 131 miles just to see what it would do. I got PF soon after. Of course running in those brick-hard Eugene Brutting (“Lydiard shoes”) prob didn’t help either. I run low miles now as I am injury-prone. Hum, wonder if I should try to throw in a 10 miler? Will it totally break me? Yeah, probably....

It seems to me like the OP is on the younger end of things. I'm not sure how many fifty year olds, at least ones who have been running for decades, can hold up under even fifty a week. Quax was in high school when he went out and did a hundred mile week as soon as he decided to. I always wanted a pair of those EB shoes but they were really expensive for the time and more than I could afford. I think they're still available somewhere. I know a guy who got a pair maybe five years ago.

Maybe you could try 60 or 70 first and see how that goes before going to 100?

It takes one week to go from 50 to 100. Run easy. Run long. Take naps. If you don't make it, try again the following week. You don't ever accomplish anything you don't try.

Here's how I'd do it (another version of boiling the frog):

4 weeks: 50-54 mi

4 weeks: 55-59

4 weeks: 60-64... keep going until you hit 100.

Also: if it's in singles (or maybe even if it's in doubles), when you get to 10 hrs of running a week, maybe keep things the same for an extra week or two to be sure you don't get injured by creeping fatigue.

do what you're doing now, and add 4 easy miles in a second run monday to friday.

work and play very super relaxed. don't hang out with anyone is annoying in any way.

try that and see how you're doing in 4 weeks. and take if from there.

while your plan is not the best, why not do it for the voyage?

go for it,

Fastest way to a 100?

Conditions: 1. You're really a 16:50 5K runner. 2. You have run 50mpw for a year or so, with regular workouts (intervals, threshold, tempo, etc)

Adjust one of the F.I.T. variables (Frequency, Intensity, Time) with increases in mileage.

Week 0: 50 miles

Week 1: 75 miles (decrease I, increase T and F)

Week 2: 55 miles (maintain I, decrease T and F)

Week 3: 90 miles (decrease I, increase T and F)

Week 4: 60 miles (maintain I, decrease T and F)

Week 5: 85 miles (decrease I)

Week 6: 65 miles (maintain I)

Week 7: 95-100 miles

The maintain Intensity is the Intensity associated at Week 0. A consistent 50mpw runner at 16:50 level of age 22-26 could probably go faster, but 7 weeks will get you there safely.

Go ahead downvote me.

Easy. Just run doubles six days a week and a single long run one day a week. You'll be fine. Just don't run too hard while you're building up to that.

Yeah, I take your point, and we’re saying the same thing ultimately. But, I feel like OP is a high school kid or even young college kid, and they run *everything* too hard unless they have a particularly adept coach. Which, of course, along with increasing the training load, would be a recipe for disaster.

Someone training smartly (not with too much intensity) can increase the volume load rather quickly of course. And I think the ultimate distillation of this thread is to do it by adding doubles. For the second stimulus as you said and to actually prevent injury that might come with just running long singles.

I take your point, and a fully ruptured PF is what ultimately expedited my exodus from the sport, but, there’s a huge difference going straight, from, say, 70 or 80 to 130 and getting to 130 over a few years.

My thoughts are somewhat my own experience, because I went up too quickly with volume while not reining in intensity, and injury was the outcome. I also was running too far in my long runs, when I would’ve been better off just doubling that day. YMMV.