Is 42 mpw a good mileage for an amateur?

gregmacd wrote:

1955 wrote:

As with many of the other posters, 40-45 mpw was my sweet spot. I had a few weeks of 100+ over the years, a few years of 70 mpw (during college), but during my working career 40-45 was the best trade-off between available time and minimizing injuries. I did it for close to 50 years.

Unfortunately, I'm only doing 25-30 mpw now, much slower, following a(n unexpected!) heart attack and some bad hips, but I'm still at it!

Sorry to hear about the heart attack. I've been running for about 40 years in part to avoid a heart attack. Did your Dr. say what the cause was (genetics, diet,..etc)?

Here's a thread on it. Long story short, no obvious reason.

My best theory is that running all those years/miles may have been the contributing factor, as this article describes:

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

The ones who burn out aren't the ultra-runners, but the Solinsky's and Salazar's who push the pace every day, race a lot and break down their bodies. There are many cases of former elite runners that are toast in their 50s/60s. Meanwhile the ultrarunners who do more volume but nothing that creates acidosis keep going for years and years, same with triathletes.

This is not the case. Ultramarathoners burn out at alarming rates. See this article.

Dufus wrote:

Perspective or semantics or something at play. I don't know if we know the gender and age of the OP but for a Open class male running 42 miles a week 18:45 is average. If that demographic can't run around 18:45 with those miles one certainly isn't an average athlete by general standards. 67 % age graded. Would 50% age graded be considered average? I think if you include people who run much less and aren't fit.

Age graded 50% is below average as those tables are odd, nearly impossible to get below 20%. I suggest age graded 60% is average.

Over than training for a marathon, I never did much more than 45-50 a week, and managed a low 15:xx 5k (have a high 14:5x) age graded.

Did include an hour run, but when younger, did three track sessions, or two track sessions and a race, per week. Most of the steady running was not much outside 6:00 per mile. Drop to two rep/interval/lt sessions as I got older.

Did 17:32 5k at 53, a 37:16 10k at 54, and an 11:32 for 2 miles at 60 off a similar sort of training (although the steady running was more like 7:00 than 6:00 by that stage).

You can run a decent 5k off 45 miles per week if it's 45 miles of the right stuff.

gtsolid wrote:

I'm running 5k in 18:45.

i usually spend 7 mpw warming up and the remaining 35 in the real workout.

i've no particular talent, i only run because i like it.

Am i on the average for my time? i wish to improve the weekly distance.

Unless doing marathons yes.

Banner. wrote:

Regular 30-40 weeks and i'd say most people should expect to hit 17-19 5Ks. From my experience 95% of runners that turn up to local 5Ks (parkruns in UK) barely hit 10-15mpw average, so in this sense you are above average if only because you are trying more.

I don't think that's true. For a brief while (probably because of privacy concerns) the Parkrun results website used to show a person's Strava link next to their time. I looked at quite a few and most of the top 10% of runners did much more than 15 MPW, and further had been running for years (even just from their Strava).

17 to 19 isn't just top 5% of Parkruns, btw, it's usually the average winning time. 17 will win you most Parkruns, sub 20 get you into the top 5% on nearly every course.

"Heck, you could run a marathon on 42mpw if you don't mind a crawling jog the first 20 miles. "

It depends on genetics. Off that mileage, I went through 20 miles in 2:17 in my one and only marathon. And did not slow down to finish in 3:01. But then, my Dad ran a 4:23 mile in 1950.

asking the important questions here

...……..Yes!