If you ran 2 Hours MINIMUM every day, What would your 5k PR be?

Many of the top 5,000m runners are running between 140 and 170km per week or 85-105ish miles per week. There is a reason for this. These are the best athletes in their country or in the world. They all want to win gold. If simply running more was the answer, they’d do it.

Actually this happened to me when I was an international student, I was forced to be outside during club time at school for 2 hours everyday from 9-11pm. What did I do? I ran circles around the school like David45 ran in his back yard.

The result? I had an insane base, slow 5k, but also became severely malnourished and sickly thin. Don’t recommend running 2 hours every day.

ElGuerroujFan wrote:

I have this question because recently I started bringing up the mileage a lot more. It seems that my long runs are the most beneficial out of all the runs every week, and these seem to prepare me a ton for running a 5k race/tt. So if I run long runs more often, or just increase the time every day until you are 2 hours minimum of running every day, how quick would that average person's 5k PR be?

Let's say they have sub 60 second quarter speed.

-EGF

You are 14 years old. Give it 8-10 years before you build up to that kind of mileage.

Sorry, I do not recall this thread? However, I see what you are saying.

AverageForFun wrote:

Actually this happened to me when I was an international student, I was forced to be outside during club time at school for 2 hours everyday from 9-11pm. What did I do? I ran circles around the school like David45 ran in his back yard.

The result? I had an insane base, slow 5k, but also became severely malnourished and sickly thin. Don’t recommend running 2 hours every day.

Gotcha. I would have guessed something like this would happen. I will ask though: When you were malnourished would it have changed anything just to eat more? Or was it more like you were mentally and physically stressed every day?

There is no way to know the answer. It is different for literally everyone.

The Wizard JS wrote:

"It`s not mainly a question about how many miles you run, it`s about HOW you run your miles. "

-J.S -

I can’t agree man. Mark Nenow got down to 13:18 and 27:20 by just plowing miles, two hours per day, lots of hard running. He was not very fast over 400 meters. You trying to convince us he would’ve been just as fast on 60 miles per week, because I think that is naive?

In the past.

If you ran a minimum of two hours a day your 5k PR would be in the past.

The only person that would run two hours a day everyday is a middle aged man with no life. I've seen it happen.

ElGuerroujFan wrote:

Sorry, I do not recall this thread? However, I see what you are saying.

It was someone else's thread. I didn't remember correctly.

Probably wouldn’t have changed much, living in China as a college kid we were pretty limited to more rice and veggies or rice and some kind of meat. Could have gotten easy calories from oil or beer but too much of both wouldn’t provide any nourishment. Cafeteria food was pretty limited since our stipends weren’t the largest.

It was probably a combination of the 3. We had a small international dorm kitchen but you’d walk a mile away for groceries, a mile back, walk a half mile to a class and back, etc. I’d average over 20,000 steps daily without exercise. It was just impossible to keep up the necessary calories for what I was expending. Plus when you’re learning a new language and living it day in and out you’re mentally fried. All of that with 2 hours of running just wasn’t healthy.

It wouldn't be optimal for 5k, but you'd have a really strong base. If you do it in doubles 1-2 long runs per week, you'd be okay. If you do it all in singles you'll get injured. With such a large base if you race frequently, effectively using racing as speed work, you could probably run well at 10k and longer. Would it be optimal? Probably not, but if you stay healthy, you'll run well at the longer distances.

This is actually an interesting post but with very little substance in the replies.

Of course, you all know that it is very often asked here, how can I improve, how can I get better, how can I run faster, how can I be more efficient ... And the general answer that is always provided is increase your mileage.

So this begs two questions. What benefits are provided given x number of runs per day amounting to 2 hours? And if 2 hours of running per day does not yield improvement whether in aerobic capacity or efficiency, then how does one go about improving in the first place?

Race to top wrote:

Hutchins said she runs 38-40 MPW. That is 40 minutes per day.

I heard her say she runs 5 days a week and cross trains swim or bike the other two. Also played soccer growing up.

I might try this pretty soon. Twice a day every day.

ElGuerroujFan wrote:

I have this question because recently I started bringing up the mileage a lot more. It seems that my long runs are the most beneficial out of all the runs every week, and these seem to prepare me a ton for running a 5k race/tt. So if I run long runs more often, or just increase the time every day until you are 2 hours minimum of running every day, how quick would that average person's 5k PR be?

Let's say they have sub 60 second quarter speed.

-EGF

DNS

If I was able to run 2h a day with workouts and still being healthy, I would run sub 14 5k.

Without workout, only slow to medium pace running, I would say around 15 flat.

But if I try tomorrow I would be done after 2 days. 1 week if we can do doubles instead of a single 2h run.

Have you broken 14 before? If not, you have no way to predict it. 90% of the top 5k runners put in less than 2 hours per day.

No difference

Done it a few times in build ups for marathons... I was about 20 sec slower than my 5k PR (which honestly is a soft PR for me) during 120+ mile weeks (15:5Xs) but my 10K pr was run 4 weeks post marathon 1 week of rest/traveling/being sick 2 weeks of running and speed work (65-85 mpw (I forgot really)) and ran my 10K PR and went through 5k at 15:3X which is my 5k PR (as I said it was a soft PR for me) but I died a little (ran a stupid race but was trying not to get last).

The 120+ mile weeks won't make you fast but they make you so strong that even after a week or 2 break you are so aerobically strong you just have to focus on speed at that point.. basically running like that provides a great base. But I would agree that it isn't the optimal way to train for the 5k... it takes a long time of just slogging miles and long workouts and long runs to get a time you could manage running 85-105 miles as a base and doing more speed and always being in close to 5k PR shape vs being in great aerobic shape but not being near your 5k best