What about koll? Big mileage, big results.
What about koll? Big mileage, big results.
long sox wrote:
5/10 for a semi decent trolling effort - a little obvious I thought, but some appeared to think you were serious.
Yeah, poor choice of words on the thread title, "Why is LetsRun still Hyping Megamiles?" and the capital letters didn't really add any effect of legitamcy, however I do like the sensationalism of invoking all of "LetsRun".. that's a timeless trolling technique. The body of the thread was as you say a "semi decent... effort," but lacked any stand-out qualities in terms of antagonism. Nothing outrageous enough to turn your average letsrunner red in the face. I've only given out one 10/10 on this board ever and this honestly is no better than a 5/10, simply because I've seen the mileage trolls before and I'll see them again. I concur - 5/10.
And as for my opinion I've talked to a lot of dedicated runners with good coaches... college runners, pros, and ex-high school phenoms. As a general rule high mileage in high school equals an earlier plateau as a collegiate and is unecessary, as your fast-twitch muscles are most responsive in young-adulthood. Why the hell would you want to go schlog 70-80 miles in high school when you could go clock some 400s? You've got your whole life to hobby jog unecessarily early in the morning on the cultural trail with a training group consisting of middle-aged feminists. Train smart and take your weekly long run seriously and you'll do fine. Milers in high school don't need to do more than 40, two-milers may want to go up to 50, and there's no need to exceed 60 mpw in high school and only during XC.
Take it from there as you get older, but most important is to stick to some kind of consistent, proven training plan, even if it isn't approved by Arthur Lydiard or Jack Daniels.
won't take long before antonio finds yet another thread to dis lydiard.
I could not agree more... we didn't have LetsRun and easy access to training logs then (84-92ish)... we had runners world expects telling us less is more. For those of us that squandered our one shot at seeing how good we could become... we feel a bit of duty to save others from wasting that youth.
I remember the 90s wrote:
I think that if some people on here are into hyping mega mileage it is because they remember the bad old days of the 90s and are overcompensating in training philosophy.
You've got to remember how bad the 90s were. Over like 30-50 was considered huge mileage. I remember when I was in high school in the late 90s I was considered to be a total mileage hound for hitting like 40-50 a week and putting in a couple of 70s over the summers. You would constantly hear things like: don't run so much, you'll get burned out/injured, you won't be able to walk when you're 40, try some nice plyometrics instead! And of course this sort of attitude led to things like a year where the fastest US marathon was 2:14, where a 15:30 5k gave one a legitimate shot at making footlocker, and where 13:35 in the 5k was national class.
Even though going out and jogging 150 miles a week is not a great way to train either, you have to remember where some people are coming from (and that jogging mega miles, even if it is not the BEST training philosophy, is certainly better than the worthless crap that passed for training advice back in the dark ages of the 90s). Also, I don't think most of the people here would advocate getting in mileage just for the sake of mileage, but would rather advocate increasing mileage as the natural part of one's training and not at the expense of at least some quality work.
Also remember that to many people who went through the 90s, especially if they were young and impressionable, 80-100 would seem like mega miles, so don't overestimate what someone might mean by "high mileage."
dsrunner has the day off wrote:
Well, I'm glad this is getting some discussion.
In terms of training volume: current versus late 70's/early 80's US record holders:
Hall runs less than Rodgers
Solinksky runs less than Nenow
Lagat runs less than Centrowitz
Webb runs less than Scott
Across the board we have seen faster guys running higher quality and relatively less volume to produce superior results than back in the day.
The idea is to get more out of the miles you run, not to simply run more miles.
These guys were all faster (regardless of mileage) at younger ages (excepting Lagat - just plain faster period). Rodgers was an also-ran in College , he needed the mileage to be be faster as a marathoner. Solinsky won foot-locker XC (by a lot), Nenow was a slow guy in College. Centro was never the talent that Lagat is, Webb the same for with Scott (not a huge HS star, not even a miler then - 800m).
In General, slower guys (relatively) need to do more mileage than faster guys. Will more "speed-work" help slower guys become competitive? It may come down to physical development (Coe was physically immature until College, for example) and ability to adapt to said-speed-work. A truly slow-twitch guy will not develop on a diet of speed (Intervals all the time). Bigger guys (Snell) likely need higher mileage (better endurance) than smaller guys to offest their size. This is why programs HAVE to be individualized to what athletes bring to an event, not just what the event requires physiologically.
Also, athletes today should damn well be able (or what has coaching learned in the last 25+ years) to train more "economically" than years ago. The technology and knowledge should mean that mileage is done appropriate to each athlete, and not with a mindset (see J.Drayton vs Ron Hill vs D Clayton) of "if so-and-so does xx, I'll do more" - not exactly very scientific.
higher mileage is fine if you build up to it and do it in a smart way. but you obviously cant just jump into a 100 mile week, it takes a few years to get to that level