I think most would agree with you. I don't know what threads you're reading where people are so opposed. If your life can't accommodate it then don't do it, but I think most would theoretically agree their performances would improve with 80-100 mi/week.
justrun! wrote:
So why then, were more people through 70s-80s much more competitive/harder working than those today? They could control the same things and had less access to training material, shoe technology, sports science than the runners of today. Maybe information overload isn’t helping anyone.
There also wasn't much choice for what you saw on TV, no internet, gaming wasn't as big, harder to find things to do/get traveling directions, couldn't conveniently order things to your house. There wasn't really that much to do besides drink beer with your friends and everything else that was fun happened by chance (ex: CBS produced a show you like and you can only catch it 9PM Saturday). There was way less to distract you from training, because even if you felt lazy and wanted to take the day off you would just be laying about bored with nothing to do besides hitting people up. If you could invent a time machine and bring a 25 yr old runner from 1980 to 2020 they'd behave the same as a 2020 25 yr old.
Here is Today's tip from Hal Higden. This is the sort of stuff that youngsters are being fed on.
TIP OF THE DAY: How many miles can you run a week? How many should you run? Determining a safe level puzzles researchers. One study attempting to determine the cause of knee injuries suggests 55 weekly miles as the point where joint breakdown begins, but only a small percentage of runners train that much, even when getting ready for a marathon. Reportedly, if you limit your training to 15 to 25 miles a week, you're safe. To move beyond that, you probably need to increase mileage very, very gradually, not only during the marathon build-up, but also during base training the rest of the year. Increase mileage gradually, avoid gut-busting workouts, and you can injury-proof your body. Intelligent training, not anti-inflammatories, is the best preventative for injuries.
Easy Snowflake wrote:
Exactly right. And the whole point of starting the thread. I've been thinking about it a lot lately and it all comes down to the following things:
1. Impatience - people want a quick fix.
2. Lazy.
3. Strava. (look how fast i run all the time, i am so fit)
4. Social Media in general and the whole comparing yourself to others
5. Obsession with 'Marginal Gains'
Rewind back to the 70s-90s. People were almost secretive about their training. They didnt want their mates/rivals to see what they were doing so they had an edge come race day. Ask someone how they're going and they'd almost always say 'ohh not great, we'll see how this goes' - Today, every detail of every run is in peoples faces.
Now, to answer a lot of the excuses. There's 24 hours in a day. If you want to be good at running, you'll prioritize your time so that you can spend some of it running. Sometimes, things crop up but IF you really want to get your daily training in, you'll fit it in.
Motivation is the biggest bunch of crap there is. For serious runners, again i'm not talking to those who don't care all that much, i'm talking the competitive 'weekend warriors' as mentioned above. Those people should get into the routine that their daily run or even double run is just a normal part of their day. As in the same as their commute or making coffee/food, even your day job. They don't even see it as exercise. Just a simple necessity - something that has to be done day in day out for years and years. That's how you get good at it.
Talent goes so far but if you're willing to commit to training every day aiming to do about 10 hours per week, you'll become a bloody good runner.
Stop kidding yourselves that you're doing enough. Stop taking a rest day because you had to work an hour extra that day and you're now tired. Or you were stuck in traffic on the drive home and now if you run you may end up going to bed 45 minutes later and you think your optimum 8 hours of sleep per night is now ruined so you best skip the run. Stop thinking you need to do all these little 1% marginal gains, when deep down you're not even doing the optimum amount of RUNNING each week yet!
^This is a bunch of Boomer BS propaganda. If Boomers had actually been paying attention to running the country, instead of jogging 100 miles per week to run a 2:30 marathon or get 30th in some meaningless, no-name road race then we wouldn't be in the mess we now are as a country. They also wouldn't all be on their 3rd and 4th marriages if they had a little less running and a little more balance in their lives.
Boomers are a worthless generation that has done nothing but destroy this country and continually take credit for things they did not do. They have run BOTH political parties into the ground and are responsible for running the economy into the ground and creating a mountain of debt by consistently voting for generous entitlements for themselves while simultaneously refusing to pay (i.e. raise taxes or slash spending) for those entitlements.
They claim they have benefited us all by giving us cultural gifts--by starting movements that gave us fast running times, equal rights for blacks, women, gay folks, by giving us modern music (like rock & roll) through their pioneering efforts, by giving us modern computer science, and through things like iconic movies.
But a closer look at these claims reveals their lies. As a starting point, please take note that it is widely agreed that Boomers were born 1946-1964. This means that the oldest members of this generation turned 30 in 1976 and, thus, they have been running the show (...or they should've been instead of running 100 miles per week) in the US since the mid to late 1970s.
The major civil rights leaders for black equal rights in the 60s (Martin Luther King, Jr., Medger Evers, Rosa Parks, Ceaser Chavez, Fred Shuttlesworth, Jon Lewis, Malcom X, and many more) were all born in the 20s to early 40s. But you know who is a boomer? Al Sharpton.
The major players in the second wave feminist movement (Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Mary King, Alice Rossi) of the 60s were all born in 20s - early 40s as well. Of course, this means the women who fought for basic rights (like the right to vote) were even older. These brave women were not boomers. But Boomers are the leaders of the disgusting mess that is third wave feminism...
The folks that were the pioneers in equal rights for gay people (Harvey Milk, Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon) also not Boomers.
Who is widely acknowledged to be the father of modern computer science? Alan Turing. A gay non-Boomer.
Let's examine the music claims...Jimmi Hendrix? Jim Morrison? The Beatles? The Rolling Stones? Bob Dylan? Yup, all non-Boomers.
How about movies, directors, actors, etc?... Stanley Kubrick? Harrison Ford? George Lucas? Robert De Niro? Al Pacino? Robert Duval? Martin Scorsese? Clint Eastwood? George Romero? Francis Ford Coppala? Chevy Chase? Steve Martin? J.J. Abrams? The entire Monty Python crew? Yup, all non-boomers.
To summarize, when Boomers are confronted with their obvious and verifiable failures as leaders in the US they frequently default to claims that their generation was responsible for major cultural progress, excellence in sport, and art movements but it's totally not true. Boomers are parasites and leeches....and I am assume some are good people. We should build a wall on our southern “boarder”, strip the boomers of their ill-gotten entitlements, and ship them down to old Mexico. All of our problems would be solved. Let's make America great again!
Pipe down, all i said was do a bit more running.
There was enough to do after work in the 70s to fill your time in. especially for people with families. As now, a lot of people did not run really big miles for various reasons but yes, more of us probably did run big miles than do today.
I think there are two bigger factors now that influence runners today to run less than my generations did. One is that there aren't examples of western runners doing really big miles and having really big success. Shorter and his standard 140 mile weeks was a huge influence and many of us figured that was the key to success so we went out and did similar things. And there were lots of other guys doing well on that sort of volume so you didn't take Shorter as a one off kind of guy.
The other is that we did not have the sort of "expert" information people get now. Look at the post with the Hal Higdon quote about needing to be very careful about going over 25 miles a week. That's an extreme example but there has been an army of physiologists preaching that there's no benefit to running more than a certain, fairly low, number of miles. Even here you'll get people telling you you're wasting your time, have no life, etc., if you're running triple digit miles and aren't making a living from doing it.
Tim.12345 wrote:
What would you call 12 hours of dedicated time? 1 hour of strength three times a week? Thats 9 hours of running left. Foam rolling and other injury prevention 30 minutes a day? thats 3.5 hours off. 5.5 hours of running left. Sleeping 9 hours a night (which is at least an hour more than the average person?) that's 7 hours off. -2.5 hours of running left. ~15 minutes of changing and warming up before runs x 7 days = 1:45 hours off.
-4:15 hours of running left
Thing is, running takes more time than just the running if you want to do it right. I agree with you that running 10 hours a week on top of those little things is possible for the average person. But most people just don't want to dedicate about 25 hours a week towards running faster, especially not when they don't have a chance at going to the Olympics and are over collegiate age.
The discussion is not about average people. If so, then those people are delusional and their satisfaction with their lives will always suck. Also, anyone that only does things because their only goal was to be the best in the world is in for a perpetually depressed life.
HRE it's good to have you here on the thread as i value your expertise and you usually have very helpful comments. The point i've made on the thread isn't really aimed at a certain number of miles per week. Especially not as high as the 140 mark but more so the amount of time runners should dedicate towards running in order to reach potential.
Whilst i agree doing too much can lead to injury, i think a lot of it is more to do with doing too much too soon. And too fast. That's why i'm encouraging 10 hours over a mileage target. I'm talking runners of all ages could benefit from a similar amount of time if they have that time available and arguing if they really wanted to, they'd make that time available. A lot of masters runners who were very successful back in their day at my club always say to me that if they had their time over, they would slow their easy runs down and focus more on recovering between sessions. So i'm trying to use that advice and apply it to the modern day by saying it's more a case of the time you spend training, over the distance that you cover that would be most important.
For example, and the numbers are rough but aiming for 10-12 hours per week, with two quality workouts and maybe even only covering 75-80 miles would be one of the better ways to approach training and rather than emulating Shorter's 140 mile weeks, it's better to focus on the training time at much more comfortable pace.
Easy Snowflake wrote:
Exactly right. And the whole point of starting the thread. I've been thinking about it a lot lately and it all comes down to the following things:
1. Impatience - people want a quick fix.
2. Lazy.
3. Strava. (look how fast i run all the time, i am so fit)
4. Social Media in general and the whole comparing yourself to others
5. Obsession with 'Marginal Gains'
Talent goes so far but if you're willing to commit to training every day aiming to do about 10 hours per week, you'll become a bloody good runner.
I agree with this. Running intervals and easy days too fast must also act as a curtailment to extending frequency and duration of runs. There is also the undeniable fact that many runners believe it is all about the workouts and don't believe that there is a great benefit from running another few hours per week.
Another factor is the coaches. Coaches come into their own when prescribing the workouts, and some coaches also believe it is all about the workouts.
This is very common unfortunately. Racing workouts or setting the paces based off PB’s. Even if the runner isn’t in PB shape.
But also, just because you CAN run 10 x 400m in 65 seconds doesn’t mean you should.
There’s something special about steadily putting the weeks/months/years of training together and making gradual improvements but I feel a lot of people have a bit of ‘success’ or a ‘breakthrough’ and think all of a sudden then can start hammering workouts and easy runs only to get injured and start the process all over again.
Sometimes holding back and ticking them off is harder than pushing it.
What you are saying about the 90's and running in general is inaccurate. In the past few years we've seen Boston and US marathon champs won at <90/week training. Where were all the 160 mile/ week guys on those days?
The biggest difference in US running today is more <4 milers running longer distance.
And at the HS level, more < 50r <1:52 800 runners in the 3200m.
Currently there are no US record holders at 5000m or below who ran more than 1 h/ day to achieve those records. And there are no records at any longer Olympic race distance that don"t require < 4 mile capability for realistic shot at a US record. Olympic gold at 10000m requires ~4:50 2000m capability.
Aside from this realization that speed-side capability is mandatory the other evolution in distance running is shift away from slow jogging and more focus on quality work below 3:30 or even 3'/km.
This thread has inspired me to increase my training load from 8 to 10 hours a week. I easily spend 2 hrs a week surfing LetsRun/Strava mindlessly.
justrun! wrote:
So why then, were more people through 70s-80s much more competitive/harder working than those today? They could control the same things and had less access to training material, shoe technology, sports science than the runners of today. Maybe information overload isn’t helping anyone.
Running is a very intuitive sport. The loads of information now available undermine a natural approach.
It also was inspiring to regularly see the top U.S. runners among the very top in the world. There have been no comparable figure to Shorter, Rodgers or Pre in the last three decades (although the current top American women are very impressive).
Easy Snowflake wrote:
HRE it's good to have you here on the thread as i value your expertise and you usually have very helpful comments. The point i've made on the thread isn't really aimed at a certain number of miles per week. Especially not as high as the 140 mark but more so the amount of time runners should dedicate towards running in order to reach potential.
Whilst i agree doing too much can lead to injury, i think a lot of it is more to do with doing too much too soon. And too fast. That's why i'm encouraging 10 hours over a mileage target. I'm talking runners of all ages could benefit from a similar amount of time if they have that time available and arguing if they really wanted to, they'd make that time available. A lot of masters runners who were very successful back in their day at my club always say to me that if they had their time over, they would slow their easy runs down and focus more on recovering between sessions. So i'm trying to use that advice and apply it to the modern day by saying it's more a case of the time you spend training, over the distance that you cover that would be most important.
For example, and the numbers are rough but aiming for 10-12 hours per week, with two quality workouts and maybe even only covering 75-80 miles would be one of the better ways to approach training and rather than emulating Shorter's 140 mile weeks, it's better to focus on the training time at much more comfortable pace.
I agree completely. Ten to twelve hours is about an hour and a half, hour and three quarters a day which seems a very reasonable amount of time to spend doing something that you want to be as good at doing as possible. And as you get fitter the distance you cover in that time will likely go up.
My comment about Shorter was to point out that when people saw the success has and so many others were having running two or more hours a day it reinforced the idea that running a lot made you faster and 90-120 minutes a day didn't seem an excessive amount. Now, with fewer examples of people doing really big miles that 10-12 hours a week looks like a lot.