I ran between 15:39 and 15:21 for 6 races my senior year of highschool cross running 25 to 30 miles a week. I ran 5 days a week with 2 speed workouts - a mix of quarters, thosands and mile repeats. I usually ran all of my mileage runs on the fast side. Training like that made injury more likely though.
mon: 5 mile progression run (7:00/mile --> 5:45/mile)
tue: 6 miles, 6 x 200m w/ 200m jog
wed: 3 x (1200m, 800m, 400m) @ ~ (3:45, 2:28, 72) w/ equal length jog
thur: 6 miles, 6 x strides
fri: 12 x 400m @ 75-72 w/ 200m jog, (76, 75, 75, 75, 74, 74, 74, 73, 73, 73, 73, 72)
sat: 10 miler later in the day to get more rest, sleep in
sun: rest
total ~ 40 miles
i think the most important elements of a week like this are the progression/tempo run and the continuous repeats workout. the off days are also important but are more like recovery days. i like to force myself to take a day off once in a while too.
i forgot, in spring of 2008 i did this workout and the following week i ran around 15:23.
Flagpole wrote:
low mileage runner wrote:you either an arrogant know-it-all or a good troll.
I am neither. I post only on subjects that I do know about though, and this is one. It is always a silly question when one asks one such as yours, and it happens all too often on this site. Why anyone's information provided here will get you to change your training is beyond me. Each of those runners is different than you, so what they did to achieve sub 15:30 should make no difference.
Has anyone here benched 300 pounds by lifting weights just 2 times a week? That's the kind of question you asked. The answers to that question can't possibly give you any useful information.
Now that you've provided your ability level (15:50s on 35-45 miles per week), I know that your question really was in hopes of getting an answer that you could implement. It's foolhardy. You are hoping that because someone else did it that you can to. BUT, you don't know their talent level. That's the big if here.
If you came in and said you've been running 35-45 miles per week and running only 15:50s and asked what you could possibly do to get down to 15:30s, the vast majority of people would tell you to up your mileage. That you want to run less than you have been (less than 40 per week, never more than 40), most people here would tell you that your hope is hopeless. I'm one of them; unless you were just jogging all of your runs at 9 minute pace or something and never doing any other types of workouts.
With your approach, I'm telling you now that you will fail. Those who did it on minimal running did it because they have greater talent than you do -- not a put down -- just a fact. You want to run 15:30, then your best shot is to add more mileage, not to ask silly questions.
___________________________
Looking back through archives and saw this post. Flagpole needs to be corrected. Unfortunately as a runner looking in on the area of strength training, you have likely only been influenced by bodybuilding mags which espouse specific bodypart training spread out over the week. That is not the most efficient form of strength training...it is but one form of it...but not how a true strength athlete (whether powerlifter, olympic, strongman) would train primarily.
Yes, a 300lb bench press and more is entirely possible on 2 Upper Body training sessions per week. Might want to check out how the Westside Barbell Club's most basic training template is structured.
I could, but Id rather do 80/90 mpw so i can try to go sub 14:00 this season
Ghost, are you from South London by any chance?
Funnily enough Les Roberts was on my sports massage course (London School os Sports Massage) in the early 90s. The thing about him was his ultra-low body fat. The guy is unbelieveably wiry with just 3% body fat. He tells a great story about how he had some fitness tests done in the USA after some races, and got a call a few days later from the scientist in the lab who said "I just wanted to check you're OK, because according to our results you're dead!"
A great character but seems not to be running any more..
--
This and other things actually make me wonder: maybe the high mileage is mostly a way for the rest of us to get thin.
Sorry, read the rest of the thread and saw even more local history...
Flagpole wrote:
low mileage runner wrote:i understand what your are trying to say, that there is no "magic formula" and i agree. just from the post above i have seen that most of the miles run are all up tempo or progressive. that is usable info.
stop taking yourself so seriously. wtf do you care if i am interested in running "decently fast" off low mileage. you have contributed nothing.
It is NOT "usable" info at all. Is your talent level the same as theirs? Just because it worked for them doesn't mean it will for you. Absolutely NO correlation at all. My comments in this thread are actually the ONLY usable bits of information in this thread. Pretty sure Geb can run 15:30 on 5 miles a week and probably even less. Does that information help you?
How is what you wrote usable? Oh, and I mean besides for demonstrating what a useless dick you are?
All the info is usable for the OP. He is interested in that, hence a question was asked and he would like opinions (unforunately you gave yours). He got replies and can use that info any way he wants.
As a younger athlete I regularly ran sub 1520, running less than 30 miles a week. First sub 15 came when running around 35. At that age, consitency was the key for me. showing up and training everyday that I was ment to and listening to my coach.
m- 35 min run - 4-5 miles
t- 5 by 1k - 4-5 miles (incl warm up)
w 30 min run and circuits 4 miles
t - 12 by 400 5 miles (incl warm up)
f- off
s - hill session 30 sec/min reps 4-5 miles
s- 60 minutes 8 miles
sessions are just examples. We did 4 by 1200, 2 by 2k, 3 by 1 mile, 10 by 300, 20 by 200 etc
consistent training- missing no training and running fresh (easy days easy/hard days hard) was the key.
run and enjoy
Even though (I have no idea why) you decided to bump up a thread that was more than 2 years old, you haven't grasped what I was saying. Of course people bench press 300 pounds and even WAY more than that on two training sessions a week (I am friends with a woman who holds world masters records in the bench press (unassisted), and she trains just 2 days a week, so I know that's typical). My POINT though was that not everyone can do that, so whether someone did it on 2 days or 4 days or training for years, it matters not...can YOU do it is the question.
ProvingFlagpoleWrong wrote:
Flagpole wrote:I am neither. I post only on subjects that I do know about though, and this is one. It is always a silly question when one asks one such as yours, and it happens all too often on this site. Why anyone's information provided here will get you to change your training is beyond me. Each of those runners is different than you, so what they did to achieve sub 15:30 should make no difference.
Has anyone here benched 300 pounds by lifting weights just 2 times a week? That's the kind of question you asked. The answers to that question can't possibly give you any useful information.
Now that you've provided your ability level (15:50s on 35-45 miles per week), I know that your question really was in hopes of getting an answer that you could implement. It's foolhardy. You are hoping that because someone else did it that you can to. BUT, you don't know their talent level. That's the big if here.
If you came in and said you've been running 35-45 miles per week and running only 15:50s and asked what you could possibly do to get down to 15:30s, the vast majority of people would tell you to up your mileage. That you want to run less than you have been (less than 40 per week, never more than 40), most people here would tell you that your hope is hopeless. I'm one of them; unless you were just jogging all of your runs at 9 minute pace or something and never doing any other types of workouts.
With your approach, I'm telling you now that you will fail. Those who did it on minimal running did it because they have greater talent than you do -- not a put down -- just a fact. You want to run 15:30, then your best shot is to add more mileage, not to ask silly questions.
___________________________
Looking back through archives and saw this post. Flagpole needs to be corrected. Unfortunately as a runner looking in on the area of strength training, you have likely only been influenced by bodybuilding mags which espouse specific bodypart training spread out over the week. That is not the most efficient form of strength training...it is but one form of it...but not how a true strength athlete (whether powerlifter, olympic, strongman) would train primarily.
Yes, a 300lb bench press and more is entirely possible on 2 Upper Body training sessions per week. Might want to check out how the Westside Barbell Club's most basic training template is structured.
There is quite some stupidity posted in this thread:
"any elite runner can run under 15 with no training". That's just bullshit. They CAN'T!
Those runners are so good because they have been training 100mpw for the past 10-20 years, therefore they are so slim, so high threshold etc. Everything comes together.
Now if an elite retires, doesn't live at altitude anymore, doesn't watch his diet as before and doesn't train AT ALL for a year. Then he won't break 16.
I was your typical sub 16 guy and cutting back training to like 2 times a week or so for two years I was running in the 18s. Probably would be 19:xx with NO TRAINING at all. That's 4min off PR.
12:37+4=16:37 for Bekele after 1 year of ZERO training (also no x-training)