Diminishing returns revisited wrote:
Question: if you have 2 people who are equally talented and one runs 80mpw (10 miles a day, 20 mile long run, 2 hard workouts) and one runs 120mpw (20 mile long run, 2 hard workouts, mileage spread over 10-14 workouts),
what would the difference in race times - 5K, 10K, HM and Marathon - be?
The extra mileage will improve the Aerobic efficiency. Which is why miles become more important the longer the distance.
I'd say 120mpw is too much to be at your best for any 5K runner.
Possibly also too much for 10K and maybe also for 1/2M
For marathon it's likely to be more useful than 80mpw.
That said, remember Steve Jones set the marathon WR at 2hr08 in 1985 off 80-90mpw. More mileage might have been useful but it could also have left him overtrained and slower.
Don't get hung up on mileage. It's a nice easy measurable but for anyone running 100mpw you should be figuring out what works best for you. How much can you train AND recover from. Don't run miles for the sake of a weekly total.