Let's end the mileage debate once and for all

Slowtwitchfaattwitch wrote:

How do you change your training plan for slow and fast twitch runners? Come to think of it, how to you know which someone is?

I thought your plan stays almost the same for everyone at every distance.

When I sometimes have started to coach a typical fast twitch 400/800m runner into become a longdistance runner I first test them at "normal length and pace" of workout reps and out from that it`s easy to find their best paces and length of reps up to present shape.

quick thoughts on mileage wrote:

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

It`s a common mistake to believe that slow twitch runners need higher mileage at a slower pace and fast twitch runners need less miles at a a faster pace.What they both need is enough mileage and exact best individual paces to reach their goals.

I disagree.

Usain Bolt and Galen Rupp obviously needed to train differently because they are in different events and have different body types.

Even in training for the same event, such as the 1500, a runner like Donavan Braizier (a 800/1500 type) is going to train differently than Matthew Centrowitz (a 1500/5000 type).

Donavan Brazier is not a 800/1500 man. Brazier will race a 400 every now and then. Brazier will race a 1500 every now and then. That is simply bracket racing.

Centrowitz is not a 1500/5000 runner. Centrowitz is a 1500m runner. See above regarding bracket racing. Centrowitz has never raced 5000m in Olympics or W.C.

Brazier is an 800m runner. He trains differently than a 1500m runner. We see this stuff often on letsrun. Posters will state reasons why 800m runners need to log 80+ miles a week. Posters will point to legit 800/1500 athletes. Athletes who actually race both 800m and 1500m at Olympics and World Championships. Eight-hundred metres/1500m runners will log more miles than an 800m specialist. Athletes need to train for their event. Eight-hundred metres is a low mileage event. Eight-hundred metres is a low mileage event for 1:45 800m runners and 2:15 800m runners. Five-thousand-metres is a 90 miles per week event. A truly 1500/5000 athlete may run fewer miles a week. A 5000/10000 athlete may run more miles a week. Athlete should not train based on a perceived muscle twitch ratio. 1) An athlete may be a slow sprinter due to short legs. 2) An athlete may be a slow sprinter due to poor flexibility. 3) An athlete may be a slow sprinter due to lack of coordination. 4) An athlete may be a slow sprinter due to being weak. 5) An athlete may be a slow sprinter due to being skinny fat. Train for your event not perceived twitch ratio. [High school 5K XC runners do not need to run 90 miles per week. Most high school XC runners will get injured running 90 miles a week or suffer chronic fatigue.]

There are way too many variables and individual differences. I think the best thing to do is race your strong point while train the weak points. If you get injured a lot with high miles, it won't work for you. And I think there more than one way to get to the same point. I can be done with high-slow miles and low-fast miles. You have to pick what works for you.

There is absolutely no rational proof of any mileage requirement. Most runners who believe in high mileage, or that results are even proportionate to mileage, are only parroting and imitating what they see elites do. This is NOT a rational justification for a training philosophy, because ability is first a foremost a function of genetics, which is an absolutely inexcusable state of ignorance not to understand. Saying you should train a certain way because X elite athlete does so is like saying you should refuse to believe in evolution because the Pope told you not to. Beliefs without rational proof are no better than religion, and since there is no rational proof such thing as an ideal amount of mileage, the “run a lot of miles” and “do a lot of miscellaneous, unrelated physical training” schools of training philosophy are running religions.

iflyboats wrote:

There is absolutely no rational proof of any mileage requirement. Most runners who believe in high mileage, or that results are even proportionate to mileage, are only parroting and imitating what they see elites do. This is NOT a rational justification for a training philosophy, because ability is first a foremost a function of genetics, which is an absolutely inexcusable state of ignorance not to understand. Saying you should train a certain way because X elite athlete does so is like saying you should refuse to believe in evolution because the Pope told you not to. Beliefs without rational proof are no better than religion, and since there is no rational proof such thing as an ideal amount of mileage, the “run a lot of miles” and “do a lot of miscellaneous, unrelated physical training” schools of training philosophy are running religions.

No rational proof of any mileage requirement? You sure about that? Certainly you don't believe one can get by in the distance events on no training at all, so zero miles doesn't cut it right? How about 1 mile per week? Might that be enough? Would 2 miles per week be better? Would 3 be better than 2?

Take anything that is very competitive, be it athletics, art, business, etc. what you'll find is that at the very top you have genetically gifted individuals that put a lot of work in for a long period of time. Elon Musk would still be very successful if he worked 40 hours a week, but nowhere near as successful had he not put in tons of 60, 70, 80+ hour weeks.

When it comes to endurance athletes, it appears that they need to put as much energy into their craft as possible without going beyond the bodies capacity to recover. Long term this typically means expending, on average, about 1.5x the basal metabolic rate towards their workouts. For an athlete that has a bmr of 1000 calories for instance, that means they'll need to average about another 1500 calories of energy expenditure per day on average over the course of a year, with some periods higher and some lower, of course.

iflyboats wrote:

There is absolutely no rational proof of any mileage requirement. Most runners who believe in high mileage, or that results are even proportionate to mileage, are only parroting and imitating what they see elites do. This is NOT a rational justification for a training philosophy, because ability is first a foremost a function of genetics, which is an absolutely inexcusable state of ignorance not to understand. Saying you should train a certain way because X elite athlete does so is like saying you should refuse to believe in evolution because the Pope told you not to. Beliefs without rational proof are no better than religion, and since there is no rational proof such thing as an ideal amount of mileage, the “run a lot of miles” and “do a lot of miscellaneous, unrelated physical training” schools of training philosophy are running religions.

S&P Indices have only released public data since 1946. Analysts make numerous forecast on future equity prices based on little over seventy years of data.

We have app. 100 years to study race results from 1840's to 1940's. Those athletes during that era were 100% believers in no mileage to very little road mileage and only workouts. See Walter George. See Lon Myers.

Emil Zatopek is the first know man to combine workouts plus 100 miles a week of road mileage.

Lydiard got carried away. Lydiard believed in 100 miles a week for every runner, 800m and longer. Some 800/1500 athletes still train that way. No self respecting 800m specialist trains that way any more.

We actually have a lot of evidence to review. You are partially correct. There is no rational proof high mileage is necessary for 800m athletes.

It should be obvious that by "mileage" I mean the practice of frequently running far longer than one's race distance at far slower pace than race pace. If your chosen events include distances of at least 1 mile, you've got to run at least one mile at a time to train in an event-specific manner, although it might very well be possible to get good results by doing this less frequently than once per week.

People who insist that race results are valid form of evidence are simply choosing to be ignorant, choosing to be idiots, choosing to shamelessly flaunt the most flagrant logical fallacies in the open. People like the above posters are simply stating loud and clear that they either do not know the difference between correlation and causation, one of the issues most essential to thinking scientifically and making sense of the world, or do not care because they're apparently content to be ignorant as long as most other people are. To a rational person, arguments made in the posts above like the one that race results prove the necessity of mileage are beneath even reading.

Mileage makes champs wrote:That won't work for slow twitch runners who need higher mileage at a slower pace. While fast twitch runners need less miles at a faster pace.

I think Whitlock was a fast twitch runner (former mid-d guy) who ran high mileage at a slower pace.

Gene Dykes is probably a slow twitch runner who runs lower mileage than Whitlock (although his mileage is still high for a guy in his 70s) at a faster pace.

Just Another LRC Idiot wrote:

Mileage makes champs wrote:That won't work for slow twitch runners who need higher mileage at a slower pace. While fast twitch runners need less miles at a faster pace.

I think Whitlock was a fast twitch runner (former mid-d guy) who ran high mileage at a slower pace.

Gene Dykes is probably a slow twitch runner who runs lower mileage than Whitlock (although his mileage is still high for a guy in his 70s) at a faster pace.

This is a common misconception that slow-twitch runner = high, slow mileage and fast-twitch runner is low, fast mileage.

I again bring in the cases of Portuguese 5/10k superstars Mamede (heavily FT, 48s low 400m speed) and Lopes (never broke 54s).

They had the same coach but totally different training. Did mileage differ? Not much. The difference was the type of training and intensity.

Mamede would run super-slow easy mileage, never faster than 6:30/mi. He didn't want to recruit his FT fibers on easy runs. Lopes was running much faster and longer. Him being ST actually allows him to do that.

Tempo runs? Lopes would go on crazy 20/30/40 min tempos and no one would have been able to hang with him. Well maybe Mamede could, but he would have not been able to train the day after. Mamede barely trained tempos, but they were a big staple in Lopes training.

Intervals? Mamede did them extremely fast, much faster than Lopes. He either did very short but slow jog recoveries (~30s for 200s, ~45s for 400s) if he wanted to work at his LT and did very long standing rest/walk recoveries when working on longer intervals (like 5x1k or 4x2k) at very fast speeds. Lopes did the intervals a lot slower (5-6s/400m), and used much longer recoveries, often walking 2 mins between each 400m.

What else was different about them? Lopes was always in great shape, very consistent performances. He beat Mamede in like 93 out of 100 races. But if Mamede was peaked properly, he was unstoppable. He beat Lopes in the 10k WR race, fully peaked he was able to hang with Lopes and then just absolutely exploded the last 300m. His performances however were very inconsistent, he gained shape quickly but also lost it quickly, typical for a FT runner.

A more modern example would be Webb vs Ritz. They were both roughly similar in 5k/10k. In events like an 800 or mile, Webb would just blast away and destroy Ritz. He simply doesn't have enough FT fibers to keep up with a FT monster like Webb. On the other hand, there was no way in hell Webb could have ever kept up with Ritz on a Half or Full Marathon. Where would Ryan Hall or Alberto Salazar fit in? Extremely ST, even more than Ritz.

Should Webb and Ritz/Hall train the same for a 10k? No, individualization is needed.

Slow jogging at 9:00 pace for an hour each day would be far more effective for a 5k than running 1 mile at 100% effort each day.

This looks like a thread started by someone who is lazy to put in the miles and is trying to justify not doing it.

Icons wrote:

getrealbro wrote:

No you don't. You may know someone that has a stated 400 PR based off what they did at the end of a workout, but you don't know someone who has given a true effort in an actual race who couldn't break 68 in that same time period broke 5:00 for the mile.

I'll believe you just as much when you tell me you also know someone who broke 4:00 for the mile, but has never broken 55 in the 400.

I ran a 66 two weeks after a 4:46, both true efforts. I also know a 15:2× guy who has never run under 60.

I often run with a 14:5x guy (over 40) who cannot break 60.

No no no wrote:

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

Here you have a classic example of what I`m "preaching". No training in this world could make Rupp run as fast as Bolt on 100/ 200 m , but there is a theoretical most likely chance that Bolt could have reached the same times,or better, as Rupp did.

If I had coached Brazier and Centrowitz I had coached them with the same basic system , but with a little difference in length of LT-interval reps and pace and so on.

Bolt limit would've been 800 at the elite level, maybe 1500. He's 6'3 and about 200 ibs. Plus he is of West African decent. Which don't do well beyond 800 due to there makeup.

Hello Rojo!!! Your tell is your poor grammar, and latent racist views

Um, yes they are evidence. Do you run poorly and tell everyone your training is great?

quick thoughts on mileage wrote:

Nope, this debate will never be ended once and for all.

- As a general rule the more you run the better you will be.

- Some runners show minimal improvement no matter the type of training (low responders).

- Some runners show dramatic improvement no matter the type of training (high responders).

- A good generalization is as the race distance increases more mileage in training is required.

- Some runners are inclined to injury as mileage increases, other runners are inclined to injury as intensity increases.

- The secret to success is consistent training with minimal interruption from injury. This is accomplished by proper training and recovery, and the athlete's natural talent for avoiding injury.

This ends the debate.

I remember when Bob Kennedy broke 13;00. He said something like- I realized I wasn't going to be able to compete at the top level on only 90 mpw.

So you're proving mileage is over rated by by citing a rigged study that you made up and other imaginary scenarios? there's a reason all the best distance runners 5000 on up run lots of miles. It definitely works.

To quote from Athlete Farm by George Oval:

All miles are equal, but some are more equal than others.

What he actually realized was that he or his coach didn`t know how to reach sub 13 on 60-90 mpw.

Justifying? wrote:

This looks like a thread started by someone who is lazy to put in the miles and is trying to justify not doing it.

Bingo.