How fast is the average athlete that puts in 70+ miles a week?

Way too fast. I'll say: 2:15, 4:50s, 17:00, 35:00.

Something like that. I think someone who doesn't have talent can eventually break 17:00 in the 5k and get under 2:45 in the marathon. Going to take more than 8-12 months. Some people could train a good bit more than 70mpw and still never hit 1:57/4:24/15:59/32:59.

70 mpw for an 800m runner is a lot, so my answers may skew fast for the shorter distances and then gradually get worse for the longer events.

For males:

800m: 1:58

1500m: 4:08

5k: 16:10

10k: 34:30

In order to run 70 mpw (consistently), you need to be reasonably lean, injury resistant and dedicated to running (which implies that you are attaining good results). You also need to have been running for a number of years (yes, there are examples of people jumping up quickly, but most who do this get injured fairly soon after).

Impossible to answer, you are going to get answers all over the board depending on talent levels, how people run the mileage, and durability. But you will definitely get faster. Just go try it.

But if you can run 70 miles per week and not get injured, as a distance runner you'll probably run faster mile and up if you do run the 70 miles vs only something like 40 miles. You want to do as much mileage as you can without sacrificing quality of workouts. Jakob still focuses 1500 meters and routinely runs over 100 miles per week. There are some top 800 meter runners who even dabble around 70 miles per week. But if you get injured or are too run down to still hit your workouts then you need to back off a bit.

This is delusional.

Being able to run sub 15 in the 5k and saying "no thanks" to the 10k is hilarious IMO. 10k isn't even a long race, you are clearly a very talented runner, why not just get a mark in it?

Too much mileage killed my 800 and 1500/mile but made my 3k and up amazing. I'm talking about running 5 seconds off my 1500 PR pace for a full 3k

As other have said, it’s tough to say what “average talent” is. You can run really fast off 70-80 miles per week, it just depends how you do it. I have been thinking about putting together a thread or a blog post about this, but after indoors where all those guys ran crazy fast, heaps of sub-4 miles, I went on Strava to find what these guys were doing. A vast majority of them are running 70-80 miles per week. A handful are running slightly more during the fall XC season. Some of these guys are running sub-8 for 3k and are really strong cross country runners, even up to 10k on 70-80 miles per week. These boards absolutely love high mileage but it completely depends on the athlete.

The answer is there is no answer.

Run your best, whatever your best is. Every runner or former runner has a story. Make your own. Live with whatever your talents were or weren't and whatever your peak was or wasn't.

My very first week of XC practice way back in 1992 I ran 40 miles. I had run 1-2mi 2-3x a week for a couple weeks before that.

I had a surgery after XC season then quickly got up to 50-60mina week before track.

The summer after frosh XC I was running 70mi a week. Prior Jr XC I was running 80mi a week. This is all probably vaguely accurate. I increased mileage initially with doubles. 7/3s or 10/3s. 10 miles a day and 14mi long run was my norm for a long time. 3mi shake outs were sprinkled in.

I drank myself out of any decent collegiate running. A washed up has been who then got a marathon itch. Eventually got up to averaging 100mi a week for an entire year with sustained peeks of 120-140.

I was always big for a runner and never got under 140lbs at 5'6". Results are what they are: 4:27, 9:32, 15:43, 32:08, 1:09:40, 2:32:45. My best race I felt was a 48:56 15k back in 2000.

Alan

Very similar to this about 40 years ago, albeit off around 50 miles per week (but high intensity)-

1:57.5

4:21.0

15:22

32:22

It very much depends on a particular individual. With 40 mpw at the age of 22-23 (1980) I ran 8:45/3K, 15:0x/5K and 1:06/20K. 70 mpw was impossible for me as I was very injury prone. I just can't guess....

Marathon is good compared to other times. I had 5 minutes on you at 10k, but only 4 minutes at the marathon (and that was near perfect even paced one).

You're probably going to get this pattern a lot as non HS/College runners doing 70 miles a week are going to focus on longer races. I could just about squeak out an OK 10k or even, just about 10 miles, but that was the limit for anything respectable...

That just implies that you are well beyond “average talent”

I'm 65, and running 70 mpw would be very, very hard for me, especially if you wanted to include any quality. I did run 19:49 5k last year off more like 35 miles a week (the big drop in mileage is the easy days where I'd just do 3 or 4 miles, where they might have been 6 miles 30 or 40 years ago).

Actually fairly close. I ran

2:16

4:54

17:15

34.22

2:37.25

3600 miles per year is quite a bit. I’m not even sure I had that many miles in a single year but I would have some 400+ mile months and if I was on vacation, I had no problem running 20 miles per day in triples. I did run 4:10 for 60k and 7:02 for Comrades