Is it physically impossible for many people to successfully run more than 50 mpw?

Mr. Slowpoke wrote:

And now at 6'5" and around 225, with 20 years of running under my belt, I am faster than I was in high school.

What's your current mileage and PBs? If you are running lower milage than Rupp, what is stopping you? You may run faster if you run 140mpw.

Some observations on this thread as it's interesting.

In Hadd's program, he basically said build up to where you can run 50-miles-per-week, comfortably, AND THEN we'll start training you. One of the first things he wanted to know was our MAX HR. From that, he would tell us to build up to about an hour a day never going over, maximally, about 80% of MAX HR. Secondly, he wanted us to run at paces where our HR stayed even and did not continually creep up (drift). So most of us ran stupidly slow as we tried to keep our HR's in check. Within weeks to a month our paces began to pick up (still under 80%) and still keeping our HR steady with no drift. The build up to 50 miles was gradual and the HR kept us from running too fast. 50 miles a week was no problem for most of us.

Also, this is anecdotal from the 20 or so runners Hadd was working with (which included me), those of us who leaned more fast twitch had a much harder time recovering and running higher mileage. A couple of the guys in our group who were clearly slow twitch guys could run 80+ miles a week, race a marathon and run a track workout the Wednesday after the marathon. On Wednesday after my marathon, I was still having trouble going up stairs. So many of us are not suited to running high mileage. And it isn't simply a matter of running more. It just really isn't in our genes...

It is a logical fallacy to equate becoming a world class athlete with building your way to marks that wouldn't win most high school races over the course of many many years. Or that results are a linear function of mileage.

Nobody is saying that you can become a world-beater if you just put your mind to it. Just that if your goal is to hit what is objectively an average amount of volume for people who are in the sport, you can do it if you are motivated enough and build up to it over the course of years. It doesn't take talent, it just takes showing up.

Mr. Slowpoke wrote:

It is a logical fallacy to equate becoming a world class athlete with building your way to marks that wouldn't win most high school races over the course of many many years. Or that results are a linear function of mileage.

Nobody is saying that you can become a world-beater if you just put your mind to it. Just that if your goal is to hit what is objectively an average amount of volume for people who are in the sport, you can do it if you are motivated enough and build up to it over the course of years. It doesn't take talent, it just takes showing up.

I didn't imply you could run faster than Rupp. You wouldn't. But you could run faster than you have ever run, if you run the mileage he has done.

So what is stopping you? If you think 140mpw is unreasonable, what is reasonable mileage for an "average" runner? Whatever Mr. Slowpoke has done?

Hadd-like wrote:

Also, this is anecdotal from the 20 or so runners Hadd was working with (which included me), those of us who leaned more fast twitch had a much harder time recovering and running higher mileage. A couple of the guys in our group who were clearly slow twitch guys could run 80+ miles a week, race a marathon and run a track workout the Wednesday after the marathon. On Wednesday after my marathon, I was still having trouble going up stairs. So many of us are not suited to running high mileage. And it isn't simply a matter of running more. It just really isn't in our genes...

I definitely lean more fast twitch, so your explanation makes sense.

I haven't done a marathon, but I once went on a 20+ mile day hike with over a mile of vertical gain with some of my friends. None of us had much hiking experience, but some of the slow twitchers were fine the next day and acted as if nothing happened. I, on the other hand, took the hotel elevator instead of the stairs. The building was only two stories high.

No, the average runner could do much more mileage than I have ever done if that was their goal and they were motivated to achieve it, since the average runner is more responsive to training than I am/was.

To throw out a number? I'd guess given significant motivation, 99% of able-bodied males could maintain 70mpw if they spent 20 years building up to it during their athletic primes. Biology is not a limiting factor in achieving something like a 50 mile weeks; our bodies are pretty malleable.

How many of these people who think running a 7min mile or putting in 30mpw are impossible have actually preserved through the demoralizing process of sucking for year after year? Every person I've ever met who thinks like this expects results to come quickly and pats themselves on the back for getting part-way through a half-hearted new years resolution type goal. I have never seen a counter-example.

Thicc_nuck wrote:

I just don't see how 50mpw is all that much. 1 hour of activity a day shouldn't be hard for a normal healthy person, obviously it takes some time to get there, but they recommend 30 minutes a day from childhood, so 30 more can't be that much.

I am 6'6" and 220lbs, overweight? Yes. Slow? Yes, 21 minute 5k, 3:28 marathon. I've been jogging (see race times) for 16 months, the last half have all been over 50mpw... maybe I am falling into the confirmation bias, and the 'I did so you can to' crowd, but slow easy miles shouldn't leave you broken.

Running, at any duration or speed, is a high impact high intensity activity.

Daily activity guidelines are generally geared towards low to moderate activities like walking and cycling.

Alan

Threads like these prove to me that LRC members do not know many normal people or have tried to train normal people.

David45 or whatever his name is the norm, not the outlier. He is odd in that he continues to chase something his body refuses to give him.

We self select our hobbies and pursuits by what we are good at.

Alan

50 mpw is a lot, but I know fat hobby joggers who can crank out that mileage no problem. Lots of them work full weeks and have kids even. If you were to say anything 75 + I'd agree with you.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Threads like these prove to me that LRC members do not know many normal people or have tried to train normal people.

David45 or whatever his name is the norm, not the outlier. He is odd in that he continues to chase something his body refuses to give him.

We self select our hobbies and pursuits by what we are good at.

Alan

I disagree. I think the people starting these types of threads have never tried, I mean really tried, to improve at something they didn't immediately show promise at.

In another thread I was talking about the BP and how it took me months of training with DBs and pushups just to bench the bar. Years to hit a plate (though surprisingly much less time to hit two). And yet I am pretty confident I will hit 3 plates before I stop progressing so long as I stay healthy knock on wood.

Genetics aren't the limiting factor, motivation and consistency are.

Mr. Slowpoke wrote:

How many of these people who think running a 7min mile or putting in 30mpw are impossible have actually preserved through the demoralizing process of sucking for year after year?

Nitpicking here, but a 7 min mile is several orders of magnitude easier than a 30 mile week.

My first timed mile that I remember was under 7:00 despite having no training and horrible pacing. It took me 7-8 months to run my first 30 mile week and almost 2 years before that started feeling really comfortable.

By that time, I would have lapped a 7:00 guy in an outdoor mile race, assuming he ran even splits.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Running, at any duration or speed, is a high impact high intensity activity.

Daily activity guidelines are generally geared towards low to moderate activities like walking and cycling.

Alan

I agree on the impact part, the intensity I think does depend on speed and duration.

I always took the metric to mean basically team sport related activities, which just seemed to mean running in some context. My bias may be stronger than I expected. Thanks for the reply

One thing this posts leaves out is a question of how long are we talking? Putting in 50 miles a week for a month, an entire summer, a week, 2, etc? Most runners of any ability could do one 50 mile week. The difference is in recovery when trying to do it back to back.

I mean, you likely walked more than 10 miles a day if you ever worked retail...So running 10 miles a day shouldn't be a problem for most able-bodied individuals...

At age 47 I ran 39:22 for 10k, a 1:26:41 HM and a 3:13 marathon.

All that on 25-30 mpw and one longest run of 20 miles, running 3 times a week.

Over the last 3 years I've tried to run 4 times a week by adding an extra easy run, but it resulted in injuries. The same thing happened when I did a hard interval session.

So I just do an easy run, a tempo run and a long run.

I'll experiment with making the easy run somewhat longer, going from 4 miles to 8-9 miles.

But high-mileage is definitely impossible for me, at my age and working full-time.

N=1, but I'm sure there's a lot of self-selection on this message board, and it wouldn't surprise me if some of the people that tolerate high mileage now will develop injuries in the future.

mileage sucks wrote:

Diminishing returns is a thing. You don't need anywhere near 20 years or "a couple decades" to reach your potential. Most of the gains happen in the first 2-3 years, and virtually all of it happens in the first 5-6 years.

Correct. The idea that 20 years are necessary to become a long-distance runner is laughable: most people starts training in high school; according to this theory, they should not be competitive until they turn 35. There are tons of olympians in their early twenties or younger.

Thicc_nuck wrote:

Runningart2004 wrote:

Running, at any duration or speed, is a high impact high intensity activity.

Daily activity guidelines are generally geared towards low to moderate activities like walking and cycling.

Alan

I agree on the impact part, the intensity I think does depend on speed and duration.

I always took the metric to mean basically team sport related activities, which just seemed to mean running in some context. My bias may be stronger than I expected. Thanks for the reply

Even in a running-intensive sport like soccer, the players run a lot less than what you'd expect. The average soccer player playing all 90+ minutes in a World Cup match would run 7 miles or less:

50 mpw would be like playing a full length soccer game every day with no rest days. How anyone thinks that most people can handle that volume of activity is beyond me.

The Subprime Minister wrote:

Much less than 1/3 healthy men ... wrote:

You have to realize poster, in the real world, outside the (150 to 250) folks who post here, there are healthy men in (175 to 225) pound range. Most healthy men are not (125 to 150) pounds. The vast majority of healthy men whom are about (175 to 225) pounds cannot run 50 plus miles a week.

A 175 lb man is not healthy and someone over 200 lbs certainly is not. Health isn't like pronouns where you can just choose what you like.

Not everyone is 5'8...

Any man over 6' who's been to the gym more than twice is can weigh over 200 and still be perfectly fit.

Running cold wrote:

mileage sucks wrote:

Diminishing returns is a thing. You don't need anywhere near 20 years or "a couple decades" to reach your potential. Most of the gains happen in the first 2-3 years, and virtually all of it happens in the first 5-6 years.

Correct. The idea that 20 years are necessary to become a long-distance runner is laughable: most people starts training in high school; according to this theory, they should not be competitive until they turn 35. There are tons of olympians in their early twenties or younger.

Nobody said it's necessary. I said if you slowly but surely build up to a mileage goal (much different than a performance goal) of 50mpw over the course of many many years (say 2 decades, starting when you're a teen), I would honestly be pretty impressed if you were unable to hit that goal.

Sure as hell isn't 140 mpw for the average runner.