Let's end the mileage debate once and for all

Piano_Man87 wrote:

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.

+1

Gotcha! wrote:

No no no wrote:

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

Explain to me what's racist about that?

Seriously mate? 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.

You actually have that backwards. Fast twitch need to run their easy runs slower than slow twitch to ensure adequate recovery.

Yes. Doing them too fast would mean the FT runner would use his FT fibers to work which is not wanted during long runs or easy runs. Also it will probably impact his workouts and prevent him from running them faster. He would also use more glycogen at faster paces which could lead to fuel depletion and is going to severely impact his training the following days.

Legendary Portuguese runner Mamede (WR holder 10k) was a FT monster (48s 400m speed, 27 low 10k) and did his easy runs at around 4:15-4:30/k, NEVER below 4:00/k (~6:30/mi to 7:20/mi). He also never did tempos, he hated them as it was so easy for him to do them too fast, produce way too much lactate and not target the right system.

For coaches, ST runners are much easier to train. They don't have any closing speed, but it's very hard for them to do something wrong or run too fast in interval sessions. A FT runner can easily kill himself in long runs, easy runs, speed work, peak early due to their strong anaerobic system.

ST runners can do easy/long runs and tempos at very fast paces even at low lactate levels. Carlos Lopes did 20-30 min tempos from 3:10/k to 2:50/k regularly and his easy runs were often 18k in 1 hour. Mamede would never run longer than 40-45 min for an easy run, at slow pace but his short interval workouts were MUCH faster than Lopes.

Racist is a nonsense word wrote:

Gotcha! wrote:

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

Explain to me what's racist about that?

Due to makeup. judging someone's ability based on their race. Text book definition Rojo.

Save some time in this debate by considering the history of competitive swimming. Once goggles became accessible in 1972, the average swim mileage of high level swimmers jumped from 7,000 meters per day to 15,000 to 20,000 per day with corresponding meet results. The world 1500 meter swim record dropped from 15:53 in 1972 to 15:02 in 1976.

However those programs who tried to increase weekly mileage even more saw negligible results. With only a few exceptions, no major program trains as much mileage as the 70s and 80s, but with the inclusion of higher intensity they have superior results with less overall mileage.

Nevertheless, it is still imperative that swim coaches adjust volume to fit their different athlete's.

Mileage aside, it seems like 12-16hrs of running per week is a pretty inclusive way to “end the debate”. For some, this could be 60 miles/week, for others it could be 160 miles/week, depending on relative development.

Gotcha! wrote:

Racist is a nonsense word wrote:

Explain to me what's racist about that?

Due to makeup. judging someone's ability based on their race. Text book definition Rojo.

You realize there is this field about the study of genetic? Not every race is made the same. Shocking, I know. Eskimos or the Inuits internal body temperature is lower than the rest of humanity. This is because their body adapted to the harsh cold conditions that they live in. Europeans are not as dark as people who live around the equator, this is because their bodies adapted to getting less vitamin D from the sun. There are certain things certain groups of people can do better on average. West Africans are better at sprinting and explosive sports. Europeans tend to be better at swimming due to their bones and how they have more fat. East Africans are better at distance events. You can deny reality and accuse people who acknowledge it racist all you want, but that doesn't change the facts. I would recommend you reading up about the genetic differences between different people before just throwing around the word racist.

I don’t know if I agree with this or not. It makes sense but then you have guys like Webb and Lagat and Coe (how has nobody brought up Coe in a thread debating mileage?!?! This is the ultimate mileage debate) that ran lower mileage (60-70) and ran most of the mileage at a quick pace.

Then you have somebody like Cam Levins, that ran 150+ miles per week, most of it really slow, but could run well under 4 in the mile and close 5ks and 10ks in 53. Is he really slow twitch? Are Farah and Rupp really slow twitch? All three are pretty close in speed from 100-400m. Yet Salazar typically has all NOP train the same way in terms of running easy days at fast clip regardless of mileage.

Yshehehdhe wrote:

I don’t know if I agree with this or not. It makes sense but then you have guys like Webb and Lagat and Coe (how has nobody brought up Coe in a thread debating mileage?!?! This is the ultimate mileage debate) that ran lower mileage (60-70) and ran most of the mileage at a quick pace.

Then you have somebody like Cam Levins, that ran 150+ miles per week, most of it really slow, but could run well under 4 in the mile and close 5ks and 10ks in 53. Is he really slow twitch? Are Farah and Rupp really slow twitch? All three are pretty close in speed from 100-400m. Yet Salazar typically has all NOP train the same way in terms of running easy days at fast clip regardless of mileage.

Farah and Levins are VERY slow-twitch. Not as much as Hall or Salazar, but still very much. Being able to close a mile or 5k fast or to run a sub 3:40 1500 has nothing to do with being fast-twitch. 40m fly, 200m dash, 400m those are much more relevant.

Farah ran a 100m in 12.9s, that's pedestrian ask any sprinter about it. In fact anyone who can run a good marathon like Farah and Levins is mostly ST.

You mentioned FT athletes (for their events), like Coe and Webb. Do you think Coe could ever run a 2:10 marathon? His best 5k ever was only 14:06, and the drop would just get bigger and bigger each distance he moves up.

I was talking about the training for a 5k/10k runner based on muscle fiber characteristics. Coe's training was great for the events he specialized in - he was a FT runner in the 1500, winning most of his races with a crazy sprint last 100-250m. Compare that to Guerrouj, who was always doing long accelerations, breaking his opponents over the full last 1-2 laps. Interesting note here is that when Guerrouj moved up to the 5k, he was suddenly the FT guy and would always draft behind Bekele and outsprint him at the end.

Now say Coe wants to run a good 5k - would his training with low mileage and high intensity still have been optimal? No, he should have trained like Mamede. More mileage (but not as much as a ST 5000m runner), but slower easy runs and still do fast workouts. That would have got him to 13:30 or lower I'm sure.

Farah definitely ran faster than 12.9. He's closed a very slow 5,000m in 50.

Levins also has run much faster than that. There is an interview with him on Flotrack where he says that he's run 11.5 in trainers with a standing start.

https://www.flotrack.org/video/5448328-cam-levins-100s2

What about Rupp? He is also claimed to have run close to 11 seconds in the 100.

I understand that closing speed is about aerobic ability but I think we need to define our terms. What qualifies as slow twitch and fast twitch? Farah, Rupp, Centro, Willis have run sub-50 for 400m in practice. Is that slow twitch? Yet these guys all run (or have run) mileage above 90 per week. Is sub-50 in the 400 really slow twitch?

Willis and Centro are an interesting comparison as well. They both run around 90 per week. Willis often talks about running really long runs (for a miler). With NOP Centro didn't go that far. Willis runs easy days slows and Centro seems to run a bit quicker on easy days . Both of these guys would seem to be similar to me in terms of speed and muscle fiber composition. However, they seem to train a bit differently.

retired swimming coach wrote:

Save some time in this debate by considering the history of competitive swimming. Once goggles became accessible in 1972, the average swim mileage of high level swimmers jumped from 7,000 meters per day to 15,000 to 20,000 per day with corresponding meet results. The world 1500 meter swim record dropped from 15:53 in 1972 to 15:02 in 1976.

However those programs who tried to increase weekly mileage even more saw negligible results. With only a few exceptions, no major program trains as much mileage as the 70s and 80s, but with the inclusion of higher intensity they have superior results with less overall mileage.

Nevertheless, it is still imperative that swim coaches adjust volume to fit their different athlete's.

It should be pointed out how much 15k m of swimming is. That is in the range of 30 miles/day of running and most of them are competing in events that are more middle distance (2-5 mins) than distance (10+ mins). You do have the ultrashort race pace guys but my impression that they are more like running 90mpw with lots of workouts than a pure low mileage (call it

hit by the less than bug again:) 60 miles week). Strength training also seems a lot more important for swimmers than runners.

Swimming and to some extent XC skiing/biking are interesting in that you can really crank up the volume and have people survive.

Just think about how small the differences we are talking about. Top 1500m/5000m guys might run a 47s 400m. The "Slow" twitch guys are 49/50s guys. That is a pretty small difference. I have a feeling biomechanics matters as much or more for most runners than muscle composition. Have good levers attachments points and you can get a lot more out of the energy that the muscles are generating.

Yeah this is an interesting point. I definitely think that there are categories of runners who respond to training differently, like many have said. However, to start building pseudo-scientific categories (slow vs. fast twitch) in which to place runners in is to simple of a model that is hard to verify. There are far too many variables involved. As jngjerngerjg said the race speeds of some accomplished distance runners fit into what would be considered high level sprint speed for some high school athletes, and that clearly is a muddling factor. Especially considering that sprint ability is heavily neurological, and genetic (neural explosiveness does not respond well to training) it would appear that many of these 'slow twitch' athletes display really amazing fast twitch ability.

I don't think this means that categorizing runners is a hopeless endeavor. One of the positive things that makes the task of a coach easier than that of a scientist (I'm both, so I would think I have space to make this comparison) is that a successful coach does not necessarily need to be able to say what "exactly is going on here" but rather know just simply what works. Now of course science can help with that process, but typically the results drive the scientific inquiry. Take Lydiard for example, he had no idea what exactly was going on physiologically, but he trained some hella good athletes. Now we have a better idea why running easy miles is important for athletic development (a less damaging training stimulus is still a stimulus that drives certain adaptations, such as heart hypertrophy, capillary development, etc.), but also why high intensity training is absolutely necessary still (which focuses on the adaptations of blood buffers, muscle recruitment, psychological strength, etc.)

I think this whole conversation is attributing definitions to things we've observed as coaches, but we shouldn't take the leap from observations to scientific fact too lightly. Obviously, there are some distance runners who do better at lower or higher mileage, or taking easy runs faster or slower. The goal is figure out how each part of an athlete responds to the training, and continually adjust the stimulus to maximize the returns in performance and fitness. What this means is the stimulus must constantly then be increased to drive adaptation, which is why most elites have impressive volumes. More running = better runner, simply put. But the question of what that 'more running' means is an individualized question that a good coach has to figure out.

In summary, I believe the whole question this thread is trying to answer is the wrong question to be asking. The question is not whether "high or low mileage", but rather "how can I, as a coach, continually push my athletes to increase their training stimulus in a productive way to increase their race-specific performance?".

asdfdasfas wrote:

Just think about how small the differences we are talking about. Top 1500m/5000m guys might run a 47s 400m. The "Slow" twitch guys are 49/50s guys. That is a pretty small difference. I have a feeling biomechanics matters as much or more for most runners than muscle composition. Have good levers attachments points and you can get a lot more out of the energy that the muscles are generating.

We always have to take the event into consideration and the individual athletes.

Ingebrigtsen clearly lost to Lewandowski in the EU Indoor 1500m this year, despite much better PR. It was a slow race, and Lewandowski being way more FT than Jakob (Gjert said his main weakness is the lack of natural speed) just crushed him on the last 200m. Lewandowski has 47s 400m speed whereas Jakob only has 50-51s (official PR 51.03).

Lewandowski as FT athlete can ONLY use his speed if he doesn't die staying on pace. In a fast race, he is useless at the end, he already had to use his strong anaerobic system just to stay on pace and there was nothing left in the tank at the end.

His 3k PR is 8:16, so let's say he is racing vs Jakob in a 3k, the pace is 8:15. Jakob would finish in 52-53, while Lewandowski would struggle to finish in 60 despite having the better natural speed.

In 800m, it is completely different. Here Lewandowski has 1:43 PR vs Jakob's 1:49 - since Jakob doesn't have much speed and is mostly ST, he would get crushed in any competitive 800m race.

The difference between 47-48s 400m speed and 50-52s (which is standard for someone more ST) is huge. In slow races, the FT athlete would always win due to the better kick. Muir beat Klosterhalfen easily in European Indoor with the same strategy, wait until the last 200-300m then fly away, there is nothing someone as ST as Klosterhalfen can do at that point her muscle fibers just aren't made for sprinting at the end.

I wish this was true. Intervals are SO much easier--and more fun--than stacking up mileage. I'll take 64x200 fast over, say, an 8-mile tempo any day.

jaazcatt wrote:

I wish this was true. Intervals are SO much easier--and more fun--than stacking up mileage. I'll take 64x200 fast over, say, an 8-mile tempo any day.

You could do something like 25-30 x 400 with 100 recovery instead of a 8 mile tempo.

Oh, absolutely possible. My brother did this back when he was a freshman or sophomore; after our coach fed him faster stuff for a couple weeks, he dropped closer to 60. He was obviously in shape to run faster than 68 when he broke 5, but I doubt he had ever run 30 for a 200 either. He just didn't run many short intervals faster than mile pace (like, maybe 8x400 @ 75, or 12x200 @ 35).

Lewandowski runs around 100 mpw and has run 30 minutes for 10k in practice.

Late Runner Phil, in your previous post you said "Being able to close a mile or 5k fast or to run a sub 3:40 1500 has nothing to do with being fast-twitch. 40m fly, 200m dash, 400m those are much more relevant."

In your most recent post you contradict yourself when talking about ST closing races .

Cherry picking an indoor race where Lewandowski beat Jakob doesn't prove anything. Jakob beat Lewandowski last outdoors in the Euro 1500 final.

By your logic Centro would probably be considered ST. So would Willis. Mauhkloufi and Souleiman would be more FT. Yet in the Rio final somehow Centro and Willis were able to medal over more FT runners in a slow race.

I can cherry pick races too and manipulate data to prove a point.