Raising mileage from 100 to 140?

rectal-cranial inversion wrote:

I hate it when people misuse the term "begs the question."

And I hate it when people misuse the word "term." You meant phrase, right???

And I REALLY hate it when someone corrects me while making an even more idiotic mistake than I made.

(And, yes, you are correct that I did indeed misuse the phrase. I was vaguely aware of that as I was typing it, but I did not stop to consider correcting it. But YOU screwed up something a lot harder to screw up, and look twice as stupid for doing it while CORRECTING me. Consider it a lesson learned: think twice before you correct someone in a haughty manner)

Not as stupid as the person who wrote "Per say". Particularly as even "Per se" would have been bollocks.

Tim Grose wrote:

Moscow wrote:

There is no linear relationship between your 5k time and the number of miles you run in a week.

I went from high-17 shape off 20 mpw to 18:45 off 40 mpw to mid-21s off 70 mpw.

Er? I think you will need to clarify that a bit! ????

There does seem a good relationship there. If you now ran zero miles a week (or at most 3.1 miles for the 5K race) your experience might suggest you could run 15 for 5K!!!

My point is that you will not run faster just because you ran more miles. My times took a turn for the worse when I senselessly added mileage and did not do a single speed session. Even when I tried introducing speed at 60-70 mpw (high for me), the increase had been too senseless and I couldn\'t break 3 for 800 m repeats.

I\'m never going to buy into the proposition that one can dramatically reduce times through simple easy running. Each run should have a purpose, and higher mileage should be PART of your regimen. Yes, it\'s important to get out there and run everyday because distance running is about your aerobic system, but running 200+ km every week for the sake of it is pretty senseless.

Sorry if you start running 60-70 miles per week and your 5K times get 4 minutes slower than you must have been seriously ill and/or you were in a permanent state of exhaustion.

3 minutes for 800m is hardly "speed" work especially if you have done 17 for 5K.

That's what happened. Like I said, I probably did it too fast, since I wasn't even running 20 mpw for track, though I had been around 45-50 mpw the summer before.

I ran just to get in the miles, and it showed in my training. How on earth could I run anywhere near, say, even a paltry 3:45 per km when all my training was between 4:30 and 5? I tried dropping mileage in the fall, but really it made no difference.

I'm back now and am sensibly building mileage with the criterion that it's too much if I can't do 6-7 km worth of repeats at some semblance of a fast pace. I'm doing long intervals (1 km or a mile) with short rests and I'm stronger than ever. I will get up to about 55 mpw before it's all said and done, and try getting up around 60-70 mpw again in the summer. I've only been running seriously for a couple of years, FWIW.

wags wrote:

i sure hope that you are not saying the 30 second improvemnets for kennedy and these 18:00 runners are equal. to drop 30 seconds from a 13:28 is a lot harder than from 18:00. there are thousands of people who go from 18:00 to 17:30, but you dont see the 13:28 to 12:58 drop all that often. you can get away from the miles.

You can make the case that the gains are equivalent if both groups are training equivalently hard relative to their respective talent levels, but that isn't the point here.

What IS the point here is that for a 5K, increasing mileage significantly above 50-60 mpw yields a VERY small gain in performance. Once again, BK increased is mileage by 60%....and got a 3% gain in performance. If you're Bob, you've had access to the best coaches and there aren't likely any gaps in your training that you can easily improve, and that last 3% do to the mileage means the difference between challenging for a medal in the Olympics and maybe not even getting into the Olympics.

But if you're a more typical competitive 5K runner getting 15:30 off 50-60 mile weeks, then next 30-60 seconds of performance is likely to be more easily obtained from something other than more mileage: vVO2max, progressive LT runs, 1600-1200-800-400 breakdowns that Bob did, explosive strength training (including Renato's 60m hill sprints), maybe also some of the intermittent training that Renato had Shaheen do. 100 mile weeks (especially if you have to run slower just to get in the mileage) isn't where the gains are going to come from. You need a combination of mileage and hard intensity; One or the other hasn't proven very successful.

^

Speed Kills,

Totally disagree with you on the "above 50-60mpw" very little gians. Huge gains are made with concsitent, steady increases. Mitochondria, myoglobin growth, capilarization, etc. The best 5km runners in the world run a lot more than that and have run a lot more than that. El Guerrouj may peak out at 90 most of the year but compare his lifetime background to that of an American. Renato says that all the time.

Ditto 3% performance improvement for a world class athlete is a massive gain.

Just think what a sprinter would give from going from 10.3 to 10.0

Tim Grose wrote:

Ditto 3% performance improvement for a world class athlete is a massive gain.

Just think what a sprinter would give from going from 10.3 to 10.0

Sell his soul and take the roids?

Agree. Lance Armstrong's total time for the 2004 Tour de France was about 3% faster than the 98th place finisher. I found it very amusing when a doctor buddy suggested performance enhancing drugs administered by experts usually afford about a 3% improvement in times for track and cycling (he had studied improvements of known drug-cheats). If Lance is on drugs -- not saying he is -- without them he probably would have finished 98th. Ouch.

Regarding the Tour: If all or a great majority of finishers were on drugs the point is moot -- 3% boost for everyone cancels out the advantage. Of course, obtaining a 3% advantage by training is very difficult as disagreements on this thread indicate. I believe that all athletes at the professional level do about all they can in workouts -- the difference is in the details. More mileage or high-impacty pylos might be enough to separate the men from the boys in a photo-finish, but huge changes in training are clearly necessary to yield a 3% separation.

i would cut the mileage down an do more quality, start running ur 1k reps in 2:50(14:10) so when u race 2:54 dont seem to hard early on. 140 miles is far 2 much, i ran 14:00 off 50 miles a week. U will just become a jogger. Around 80 miles a week should be enough with 3 quality sessions a week.

Why is it too much? You need to decide what are the goals and the means to achieve them. You say that you ran 14flat off of 50mpw -- I say that Geb ran 12:39 off of 130mpw.

Let's hear what Haile himself has to say about mileage at the collegate level:

"First of all, I am surprised that you already run 110 mpw. Please try to do more speed work and use your mileage for recovery. Maybe you are running too fast at your long runs?"

[This is from "Haile answers your questions" news.co.bbc.uk]

It isn't that 140 is too much, but that 140 with no 5k specific work is not an effective training program for running a fast 5k. At least that seems to be the consensus view, if you look at the training programs of the top 5k athletes.

I absolutely agree -- never do too much too soon and always touch on all energy systems...

My one exception is when there is a planned and intended goal of making a massive bump in annual training volume, in some ways, to make up for time missed.

As with my example from the previous page, if you're going to make a big bump like that, it needs to be very well planned, and you need to have planned dates as to when to re-introduce those energy systems.

Hey CoolRunner, would you mind posting the kind of workouts you do?

scepticus, I was doing specific 5k work including 1k repeats, ladder workouts, tempo runs, strides, drills, and a long run so it is not that I am simply jogging 100+ weeks a week. I was wondering if it would make any sense or help my fitness for example raising my morning run from 4 or 5 miles to 9/10 miles. Didn't Frank Shorter say something like "do 2 hard workouts a week, a long run and run as much mileage as you can in between"? Anyway this is a great discussion about training so lets keep it going.

Sir Lance-alot; I was a 4:27/28 mile guy in HS. That isn't THAT good on 20-25 miles a week average. I raced the mile probably 15 times in HS while I ran only one 5k so far in 15:15 in the middle of a normal training week.