Ryan Hall eliminated JUNK MILEAGE

There;s lot of reasons..?

Change distance, race.. ALSO.. change JUICE.. because its so many Athlete who raise up time..BUT only compete in USA * UK... let try Europe in ANTI DOPING race.. LOL..everybody know everybody LOL...

Antonio Cabral wrote:

Meanwhile, imagine Bernard Lagat and some others they stay on the top for so long.

Similar to Regina Jacobs

After his 26:59, Chris Solinsky went on to run 12:56 and 12:55 in the 5000m that summer and the next summer before getting injured. So, it was not a one-off performance at all. There were also those two races where he got pushed or phantom pushed off the track where he might have run as fast or faster had he finished.

High mileage doesn't finish you, but when you don't know when to ease back AND, most importantly, do not closely monitor your little aches and pains and twinges and constantly do rehab and preventive exercises targeted to those issues, but also focused more generally to avoid muscle imbalances. When I was young, I could not stay healthy for more than a week or two on low mileage and workouts that were not special in any way, whereas in my forties I've been able to rack up the mileage and numerous pr's while usually not going out too long, except for the inscrutable, unsolvable calf injuries.

People bragging about performances on limited mileage would do far, far better on higher mileage in most cases. Why limit your potential?

The Pre wrote:

Ralphy wrote:

Lagat does about 40mpw. I call that very low mileage.

No

When he was training for the 1500 in the early 2000s he was in the 50s.

Now he is in the 70s as a 5k guy.

And again I think he does more. He doesn't log plenty of miles.

I really have a hard time with the idea that guys who have really fast times did not train properly. Hill's overall mileage was never that high. He had ONE year when he ran more than 5,000 miles. Typically he averaged around 90 for a year with stretches of 120-130 mpw for a couple months before his marathons balanced by 10-12 weeks at 30-40 miles. He did that until 1975 and all of his best races were from that time.

Similarly, I have a hard time with the idea that someone as fast as Hall has was doing it wrong but I think it's possible that as the years went on he may have needed to adjust what he did and didn't make the best adjustments. I think that the adjustment he's trying to make now is not aimed at making him faster than ever but more at running well enough to keep earning a nice living from the sport. To do that he needs to run fast enough to be competitive and keep his name before the running public but not necessarily run a PB or win a big race. Of course he can't say that publicly.

At any rate, I don't think we'd have much of a bet here because I think we'd both bet that he won't ever run a new marathon PB but perhaps for different reasons.

a little curious wrote:

Only a person that believes in God is capable of believing in Junk Miles.

Neither exist.

To believe in a creator of the life and order around you is only logical. Go out in a field sometime on a starry night and ask yourself " how did all this get here?".

The truly great athletes know that the only way to be great is by out-working everyone else.

I'll let y'all figure out what kind of athlete RH is.

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

People bragging about performances on limited mileage would do far, far better on higher mileage in most cases. Why limit your potential?

What if someone has tried the high mileage(more than once) and it only made them slower(like it did for me)?

NotAustin18 wrote:

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

People bragging about performances on limited mileage would do far, far better on higher mileage in most cases. Why limit your potential?

What if someone has tried the high mileage(more than once) and it only made them slower(like it did for me)?

Then you're lying.

But seriously, I know plenty of people like you. unfortunately, for many letsrunners, they think more is better in nearly all cases. This is absurd. It IS better for those runners that can handle high volumes of running and turn that extra stress/stimulus into improved performance without injury. But for many people, this is simply not the case.

Padilla, Webb, Spivey, Lagat are just a handful of cases where runners ran between 40-60 mpw (for the majority of their base-weeks) and ran world-class (13:15 or below) 5k's. There are plenty of more examples. But I guess jjjjjjjjj knows better, and knows that all these guys would have done "far, far better on higher mileage" ?? Unlikely.

Amazing how not over training makes you faster:) Frankly unless I see a full year of someone training, I tend to take it with a grain of salt. When you hear so and so has been doing 140mpw weeks you never know has he done 16 straight of them or have has he built from 100 to 140 over 6 weeks and is no dropping back down to 100 and adding in the quality.

HRE wrote:

I think you've nailed it. Hall has years and years of big miles behind him and I don't think he'd have been as fast as he has without those miles. But after a while you don't need as much mileage as you once did and may be better off on less.

After about six years at 100-150 weeks I had almost two years with no PRs and dropped to 75-90. I got one last stretch of PRs from that. If you followed Ron Hill's career, you saw that he did 120-130 mile weeks when he was prepping for marathons from the mid 60s to mid 70s. Then he dropped his average to around 65 per week with high stretches of 90 or so and ran some of his better times, though he never got under 2:12 then.

saying guys (all who had GREAT speed) ran world-class 5Ks off 40-60mpw is not a good argument for the "benefits" low milage. they didn't need the aerobic benefits of 80-100mpw because they had freakin turbo engines and speed to burn. and it's a ONLY A FIVE K, 13min of hard running. 40-60mpw ain't gonna cut it for a world class 10K, HM, M, etc. what this has to do with Hall running say 100mpw instead of 150mpw, who knows. but i think it's well established that high milage is not necessary to run a good 5K for certain types of runners.

Tyrannosaurus Rexing wrote:

NotAustin18 wrote:

What if someone has tried the high mileage(more than once) and it only made them slower(like it did for me)?

Then you're lying.

But seriously, I know plenty of people like you. unfortunately, for many letsrunners, they think more is better in nearly all cases. This is absurd. It IS better for those runners that can handle high volumes of running and turn that extra stress/stimulus into improved performance without injury. But for many people, this is simply not the case.

Padilla, Webb, Spivey, Lagat are just a handful of cases where runners ran between 40-60 mpw (for the majority of their base-weeks) and ran world-class (13:15 or below) 5k's. There are plenty of more examples. But I guess jjjjjjjjj knows better, and knows that all these guys would have done "far, far better on higher mileage" ?? Unlikely.

I didn't get injured. It's just that I couldn't recover and couldn't maintain my quality. A couple months ago doing 110 mile weeks I was at 730 pace easy days, now at 60 mpw my easy days are all sub 7 pace and I feel much faster.

I agree with your point about the lestrunners, but would like to add that high mileage is worth trying for the untalented athlete that doesn't have injury issues. I fit that profile so I tried it. Plenty of people improved drastically by just running lots of miles, like Bill Rodgers for instance. And sure that is the case for some, but I think its not a cure-all as you said. One way or another(dumb luck or trial and error), you have to find what works for yourself individually speaking.

And the other point, I think at the end of the day everyone can reach at least 95% of their potential on 60 mpw or less. For some people they reach 99-100% (like Lagat, Willis, etc) on 70 mpw in base and 60 mpw for the bulk of their training. Others, they really want that extra 1-5% that comes with more miles. But ultimately, if you can't recover enough to maintain the quality don't up the mileage. If your legs can only go so fast in training, doing more slow stuff doesn't help, you need to run less and get in a good pace. But if you're like Mo and Galen doing 545 pace on easy days at 120 mpw then no reason to bump down but few of us are able to grind daily like that.

junk mileage means by definition useless or harmful running.

you want to use all your energy to best adapt to the pace of your distance. after you've done the work you need to recover and moving around the legs helps the recovery process.

since injury is what kills most guys, you don't want to do all of your recovery work continually stressing the muscles and joints to infinity. this is beyond stupid.

low resistance "cross training" like a bit of cycling. swimming, even static work where you centrifuge the blood and lymph fluids to pull metabolites out of the tissues...active massage - at the right time and in the right amount - can assist the muscles to not knot up, allow small tears to get blood.

also when you are recovering you want a variety of movements not say, just sit on a cycle every time.

30 minutes light cycling followed by 30 minutes light leg movement in the pool might be done 3 times a week but not more. just get the blood flowing and muscles moving and then shut it down.

you can go into the gym too, and just move the muscles over their full range with light resistance. and lightly work muscles over a great range of leg exercises. again you want concentrate on the muscles relaxing and having a full range of movement. all thoughts are on getting the muscles to recover.

for the marathon, your target, that is if you want a WR, is 4:30 to 4:40 mile pace.

and you need to sustain your energy for 2 hours.

this is the focus of the training then.

you need to ask, how can i get in the largest volume of 4:40 pace while recovering and building up the system? how can i store up enough fuel for 2 hour runs high octane?

i'd look at training days 2 or 3 times per week.

training day would be 10k at race pace, rest, 10k at race pace, rest 10k at race pace, then a recovery run. you will have run 40km on this day. 3 days of this is 75-80 miles right there.

recovery days, 3 times per day just get the muscles moving a bit through various means. bike, swim, gym, run, stride outs easy and fast-ish too full recovery. just wake up the muscles and then shut it down.

once a month you could lay low for 4 days or so and get some deep massage. this is where you need to know what you are doing. same as stretching. people haven't a clue.

a note in the training days is that you don't necessarily have to run race pace but at kick ass pace for the 10k repeat type work. strong efforts but never racing efforts.

this is where the college kids go wrong wrong wrong. they race in practice to keep up. dumb. if you don't recover you'll never be optimal. if you're not getting the results you want, skip one hard training day once in a while and do your recovery work instead.

also on hard days a substitute for a 10k segment could be mile hill repeats or 12k at pace up and down hills at altitude. you however would not "gone out to lunch" work like 200m or 400m repeats,

Fast Runner Dude wrote:

I guess we will find out if recovery runs are really necessary on Monday or if a focus on quality works better. Keep in mind, this is what Lagat has been doing throughout much of his career.

What is Lagat's time for the marathon?

From the front page article it sounds like he replaced all long runs with long tempos.

He doesn't say how long, but I would imagine anything from 12-18 miles at MP.

In my personal experience, these are far superior to regular long runs.

Perhaps it is the earlier high quality, then the high mileage, then the more intense work with less junk miles that will be key?

You can't say one way is better because those junk miles are the foundation. Without them maybe the increase in intensity would never have worked. The body changes, as does the training it adapts from.

There is not one right way, it's all connected.

quality over quantity, it's that simple

There's a danger in applying your logic NotAustin. You conclude that because you tried higher mileage and did not see improved performance, that higher mileage didn't work for you and might not work for some people.

This may be entirely true (and, in fact, I'm inclined to agree with it).

However, you didn't just try higher mileage, because as complex biological machines, we don't have the luxury of isolating one variable in our training.

You tried higher mileage at a certain intensity, combined with certain periods of recovery, with a certain diet, at a time you were facing life stresses of a certain level. You ramped up to this mileage at a certain rate, you held it for a certain amount of time, you reduced it by a certain rate, and you tested your fitness at certain intervals during and after your period of increased mileages.

These are just a handful of the actual variables in play, and any one of them (and almost certainly a combination of them) can explain the fitness changes you experienced.

Since you are a sample size of one, you would have to repeat the experiment over and over changing some of the other variables to really conclude that higher mileage wasn't beneficial (and again, I think it's totally possible that it isn't for you). This is how we all train, manipulating variables and trying to get to the right combo based on our genetics and specifics of our history and current situation. We use science and research for this, but it's not as easy to go the other way - we can't make valid generalizations based on our individual experiments.

I guess my point is that we all overestimate our ability to isolate certain variables in our training, and that we focus too intently on a few (pace and quantity) while shortchanging others (recovery is a big one here). We then have a breakthrough (or, we see a famous runner have a breakthrough), and we all scramble to generalize the single data point. Sadly, some change their whole training based on such a singular data point. That's not so wise.