here is EXACTLY how many miles per week need for EVERY 5k time possible

heyyo wrote:

For 14:30 -15:00 guys, they ran on average 65.1 miles per week.

For 15:00-15:30 guys, they ran on average 65.9 miles per week.

For 15:30-16:00 guys, they ran on average 59.0 miles per week.

For 16:00-16:30 guys, they ran on average 53.4 miles per week.

This trend of lower miles per week continues as the times decrease. So what can we conclude after this real rough and preliminary analysis?

1) Increasing MPW does on average lower athletes 5k times until they're running in the 15:30 range.

2) Athletes who can run between 14:00 and 15:30 on average tend to run about the same MPW. Or in other words increasing MPW does not appear to lower 5k times after 15:30 and does not explain the difference between someone running 14:30 and someone running 15:30.

Your data is very close to my model.

It is clear there's nut much point going over 80 or even 70 mpw for 5k performance.

43 year old male who took up running at 35. OP model is basically what took place with me.

Old question; how do you count miles? Session of;

2 mile easy, 1 mile striding straights jogging bends (end of warmup) 16x400 with 200m jog recovery, 2 mile easy cool down.

4 miles or 11 miles or some figure in between? Makes a hell of a difference to your figures here!

heyyo,

Instead of the average, please give us the median and upper and lower quartile numbers.

thanks

a thread to end them all wrote:

Just no.

You blew your troll cover with this response. Be more subtle next time.

i ran 6k in 23:20 on 18-24 km per week the rest was cross training. swimming really helped. Could have ran it in 23:00 had i paced myself better.

Garbage

You guys are missing the point of this thread.

No, these aren't solve-all statistics. No one cares that you "broke his system." As just a general rule of thumb they are very good standards and I find them fairly accurate. Not spot on but actually a very solid reference.

I think what people need to account for is the AVERAGE per week over the course of a year. For example, if a guy runs 50mpw for 12 weeks...but then cuts down to 25mpw for the next 5, his average over a training block would only 42mpw.

I think a lot of people are under the impression that if you have 5 weeks at 70mpw, then you'll instantly become a sub-16 5K runner.

I always feel that I'm doing a lot of running and I should expect awesome times when I've put in a lot of miles over the past 2 months but the reality of it is that my weeks of running only 15 to 20 miles a week 4 months ago hurt me more than I thought they would.

For me, the results were more like:

20:00 5K - 30mpw average for an entire year

19:00 5K - 40mpw average for an entire year

18:00 5K - 50mpw average for an entire year

17:30 5K - 55mpw average for an entire year

I beg to differ wrote:

20:00 5k can be ran by average talent etc on exactly 3.1 miles per week.

Go back to the drawing board.

You have no idea what "average talent" was. I was running 40-50 miles a week and couldn't sniff 20:00 5K (although I will freely admit I could have trained with more direction).

coach d wrote:

Mileage is an intelligence test (like static stretching).

As soon as you find someone who will tell you that mileage is the most important thing, you can be sure that person doesn't have a clue.

So if you don't play video games and you run 100mpw, Bekele's record is toast?

Yeah, right. Just like the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. Talent doesn't matter. Pace doesn't matter. Workouts don't matter. Just pound out those miles and all your dreams become reality. In reality, this is how people become mediocre marathoners.

This.

Nerds get caught up with milleage because it's easy to measure and compare. But reality is there are more aspects to training than milleage.

Most runners surely do more mileage in the winter, whilst NOT racing 5ks, then drop the mileage and introduce more speed work spring/summer and hit the 5ks. Not sure what mileage we are counting then. I used to winter at 50mpw and drop to 25-35 with lots of speedwork in the summer and ran 15.xx.

is there an age limitation to these mpw-time relationships?

How many weeks/months of training at those numbers are required?

what if an elite guy ran 13:28 in 1989 but is 57 years old now (Steve Cram) and starts running 80 miles per week but can't break 20:00?

*also, you can't run 14:00 on average talent as others have said

me:

14:49 PB (about 70-80 miles per week in NCAA D1)

sub 20:00 = off couch, zero miles needed

sub 19:00 = off couch, zero miles needed

sub 18:00 = maybe 1-2 runs per week. 10 miles total

sub 17:00 = about 25-30 mpw - not that tough to get into this kind of shape

sub 16:00 = 50 miles per week - hard, focused training. maybe 6-8 months after a few years of base

sub 15:00 70-80 mpw. intense training. 4 years college. best race of life

some guys can train like 40-50 miles per week, maybe do one fartlek a week, and run under 15:00, which is my PB. it needs to scale relative to talent and years of no running (i.e. Bob Kennedy etc).

Increasing mileage does not linearly correspond with improving race times so neatly.

Coach James Li of the University of Arizona, who coaches Bernard Lagat and Lawi Lalang, advises going for quality miles (faster miles) rather than more miles. In hot places like Arizona, this strategy arguably works better since you just can't do that many miles in the heat.

More speedwork and short but fast tempo runs can do the trick too.

needs a coefficient for natural baseline talent wrote:

me:

14:49 PB (about 70-80 miles per week in NCAA D1)

sub 20:00 = off couch, zero miles needed

sub 19:00 = off couch, zero miles needed

sub 18:00 = maybe 1-2 runs per week. 10 miles total

sub 17:00 = about 25-30 mpw - not that tough to get into this kind of shape

sub 16:00 = 50 miles per week - hard, focused training. maybe 6-8 months after a few years of base

sub 15:00 70-80 mpw. intense training. 4 years college. best race of life

some guys can train like 40-50 miles per week, maybe do one fartlek a week, and run under 15:00, which is my PB. it needs to scale relative to talent and years of no running (i.e. Bob Kennedy etc).

So how old are you now? I'd say that if you are running 16:XX off of 30mpw as 30 year old or older I say that you a talent level that most do not have. If you are running 16:XX just a year or two removed from your 14:49, off of 20mpw I would not be as impressed.

I would for someone to create a site that shows multiple data points of mileage over the past two year vs age vs performance to get a ball park figure of what it actually takes to run sub-15.

does a good job predicting shorter race performance, and

does a good job predicting longer stuff....but I would a hybrid that looks at it from a mileage perspective.

i'm 35

i can get into 16:25-17:00 shape with 30-35 mpw consistent running and like 5 x 2:00 at 5k pace as a weekly workout. Usually my spring rust-buster race is about 16:50-55. Long run around 7-8 miles. To get between 16:00-16:25 I need to get in the 40-45 mpw range and do some tougher workouts and a tempo here and there, and to get under 16:00 i need to either get my miles up to 50-55 or train specifically for the 5k and be doing 12-14 miles at 6:20-30 pace once a week, tempos at 5:30 pace

it would be a heroic effort for me to run under 15:30 these days and not something i'm willing to pursue (or perhaps not even capable of anymore)

i was a 400/800m runner in high school/college. speed guy

MoreAccurate wrote:

For average talent (male)...

20:00 - 40 mpw

19:00 - 45 mpw

18:00 - 50 mpw

17:00 - 60 mpw

16:00 - 70 mpw

15:00 - 80 mpw

14:00 - 90 mpw

That is more like it.

I've spent [4] years of adult onset hobbyjogging/hobbycycling/hobbyswimming

and at age 40:

year 0: 0mpw, 5K TT ~30-31 minutes

year 1: 8 mpw, 5K TT ~24-25 minutes

year 2: 12 mpw, 5K race 21:45 season PR

year 3: 18 mpw, 5K race 20:55 season PR [spent a couple months injured, did a thon this year, stupidly]

year 4: 14mpw, 5K race 20:20 season PR [injury slowed me down]

year 5: around 17mpw, flu season smoked me, no PR progress. This could be my year

still havent broken 20, but have snuck under 6 in a mile [3] times last year

So I have zero talent, but after age 40 it seems like 20 mpw is required to get under 20:00 in a 5K IMHO. If you started already fit and are just trying to maintain: completely different story of course. But off the couch/30 minute range its going to take a while I think in the no-talent/40+ crew