Can you get faster by just doing “easy”mileage (no speed)

Details on the CV 400s? How many reps and what is the rest? They sound interesting.

NERunner00053 wrote:

I think the answer is yes if you're newer to the sport. You can probably make gains like that up to a 20:00ish 5k time if you start off at 25:00 or more. More mileage can take someone running 8:00-9:00 miles to 7:00 miles. Workouts will take you to 6:00 & beyond.

People can make a lot better gains than that if new to the sport. As a 15 year old non-runner, I ran my local 10K in 54:xx (on no training, progressing from 58:xx at 13 and 56:xx at 14). Then I decided to join the cross country team and needed to start training. We had a summer running club my school where people had goals of running 500 or 750 miles over the summer. I decided to go for the 750 miles because I was coming from cycling where I had be riding 8-9+ hours a week the previous couple years. I ran 8 miles the first day in training as a runner, then 9 miles a day the rest of the summer, all easy. I figured it was the same amount timewise as my previous cycling, so it worked out well. We didn't have any guidance over the summer, so I just dragged myself through the same run every day on my own. My first high school race that fall I was second on the team in varsity, running the equivalent of around 17:00 for 5K cross country (our XC courses weren't standardized to 5K back then, mostly 2.8-3.0 mile races).

Like. All of these. (Thanks)

hottytoddy99 wrote:

The thresholds (tempos) are fine like it’s comfortably hard as it should be but the K repeats and 800m repeats always have me gasping for air.

Run your 800s and Ks a bit slower then. You will make bigger improvements if you hold back on the hard sessions right now.

This is a great story. It has the makings of what a response should be to the young grasshopper who wants to run seriously. Have you run 1,000 miles in the last few months? No? Come back when you have and then we can talk about small changes to your training.

If your body can handle milage, that’s the most important aspect of your training. You gotta work up to it though - don’t go from 20 MPW to 50 over the course of a month or something. But you can absolutely get much faster if you work up to 70, 80 or even more MPW with the vast majority being all slow runs. This is especially true if you already have good speed naturally. High schoolers train on low MPW with way too much speed work - they have little time to train HS kids and few HS kids would run high milage anyway, even if it could be done safely (which is very questionable since HS kids can’t really control their nutrition intake - it’s really up to the parents). Don’t get caught up training like a high schooler if you are an adult. High milage, when done with correct strategy and nutrition, builds a base that you can add speed to later. I’m talking about many months - I’d recommend at least a year of mostly high milage with some speed work thrown in whenever you actually feel good and want to. Not when a training plan tells you to, but when you’re feeling strong and mentally into doing a speed day. After a year or more of consistent high milage, you won’t feel anywhere near as sore after workouts and long runs, if you’re really even sore at all. I had several years of consistent training, doing like 40-50 MPW and doing okay at marathons and stuff. Since I could telework during the pandemic and saved so much commute time, I started averaging over 90 MPW for the last year, with probably 85-90% of it easy milage. Had massive breakthroughs and just ran a half marathon at a pace I thought was totally unrealistic, even doing so without a taper, and was hardly even fatigued at all afterwards. I did some good tempos but literally only did 2 track workouts the whole year. Low milage with mostly hard workouts is for high schoolers - if you’re an adult, build your milage first and your speed will naturally come.

Murdock wrote:

If your body can handle milage, that’s the most important aspect of your training. e.

Yes but it doesn't mean you should be stupid and go to the extreme of doing only easy mileage. You aren't gaining anything versus doing say a tempo run a week and some strides/short hills. Some people here have some weird aversion to running fast.

Nobodies is suggesting you should be banging out 8x400 2x/week all out every week. But avoiding those 10k-MP work that has shown to really help aerobic development seems sort of pointless.

Obviously if you don't care about performance, do whatever you want.

ddidididid wrote:

Murdock wrote:

If your body can handle milage, that’s the most important aspect of your training. e.

Yes but it doesn't mean you should be stupid and go to the extreme of doing only easy mileage. You aren't gaining anything versus doing say a tempo run a week and some strides/short hills. Some people here have some weird aversion to running fast.

Nobodies is suggesting you should be banging out 8x400 2x/week all out every week. But avoiding those 10k-MP work that has shown to really help aerobic development seems sort of pointless.

Obviously if you don't care about performance, do whatever you want.

Some people here have some weird aversion to running high mileage easy.

FSmith wrote:

Some people here have some weird aversion to running high mileage easy.

Other than a few troll posters nobody here pushes low mileage. The debate tends to between high mileage (60-100) and really high mileage(100+).

And of course that has nothing to do with the stupidity of doing 100% easy mileage. The fact that there are worse ways to train doesn't make something a good idea.

It will depend on a series of factors:

_Previous running history

_Level of fitness

_Genetics

From couch to 5K? sure. You will get neuromuscular adaptations, and aerobic adaptations that will make you faster, Eventually you'll have to do some speed/threshold work to keep improving.

If Evan Jager starts to run 40-50mpw easy running. He'll get slower.

Here’s my real world experience. Every year there is a big 5k in my neighborhood. I wasn’t a runner but one year I decided to run it. Not knowing anything about running, my strategy was to do 2 or 3 runs a week for a weekly total of 6-9 miles and each of those runs I’d do them as hard as I could. Every run was an attempt to go faster than my previous run.

The first year I started in June (race was in September) and I ran just under 22 minutes. For the next 3 years I did the same thing, the only difference being that I started running at little earlier in each season and my runs became a little longer. My times increased by 10-15 seconds each year.

In the 5th year, I made a big change. A guy at my local running store said they needed a pacer for the 9:30 pace group of their half marathon program. He asked me if I’d do it. I reluctantly said yes after telling him I didn’t know if I could run the distances they would be running and also run that slow. Free shoes and clothes convinced me.

So starting in May, instead of doing my all out 3 mile runs, I was building mileage only doing longer ultra slow runs. As my yearly race got near, I was really worried and was resigned to running my worst 5k ever. I’d done almost zero fast runs in the preceding 4 months but my mileage went from about 15 miles per week to around 30.

That year, with no workouts and extremely slow running I knocked a minute off my 5k time! This was by far the biggest yearly improvement I’d seen. I was shocked.

After that, I learned more about training and proper workouts and my 5k times dropped very fast over the next 5 years, but even today, I still run 70-80 percent of my runs at a 8-9:30 pace. Yes, there is something about slow running that makes me faster.

There is nothing stupid about doing 100% easy mileage during a period of building mileage.

Particularly, if building to a volume that has never been attained previously. This is largely an experiment and the body needs time to adapt. It does not need the added stress of speedwork, whatever the form that speedwork may take. It is always possible to catch up on the faster stuff later.

I do think too many are in a hurry to cram everything into a training block. This is short sighted.

seikosha wrote:

Here’s my real world experience. Every year there is a big 5k in my neighborhood. I wasn’t a runner but one year I decided to run it. Not knowing anything about running, my strategy was to do 2 or 3 runs a week for a weekly total of 6-9 miles and each of those runs I’d do them as hard as I could. Every run was an attempt to go faster than my previous run.

.

Yes if you don't train, easy running is better than that. It doesn't make it good training. Compare the 5k times of a guy who runs 50mpw easy and the one who does 50mpw with 1 workout/week were they run at say 10k pace. The second guy is likely to be 30s-60s faster.

Seriously we did this every year in XC. We would easy run over the summer and come back and run 18 min 5ks. 3 weeks later basically nothing other than the same mileage with 2 races/week(yes we were overraced😁) we were running 16 high on the same course.

FSmith wrote:

There is nothing stupid about doing 100% easy mileage during a period of building mileage.

Particularly, if building to a volume that has never been attained previously. This is largely an experiment and the body needs time to adapt. It does not need the added stress of speedwork, whatever the form that speedwork may take. It is always possible to catch up on the faster stuff later.

I do think too many are in a hurry to cram everything into a training block. This is short sighted.

How many less easy miles are you going to run if you do 8 strides, 2x/week? How many does a 20 min tempo run take off? If that stress is putting you over the edge, you are way too close

hottytoddy99 wrote:

Would it be beneficial enough for say a 5k? Maybe doing 40-50mpw of all easy runs (one long run).

If you've been doing very low mileage in the past, yes you can get faster by just doing only easy runs.

For example, say your typical week was only 2-3 quality sessions with no easy runs for 10-15 miles a week, with several days off.

Then over a 3 month period, you did a base phase of gradually building up to 50 miles per week of only easy runs. It is definitely possible for you to time-trial a 5k faster at the end of your base phase. This has happened to me. But this generally only happens to people running extremely low mileage for their entire life [who take multiple days off per week], who suddenly find out they respond to high mileage.

Yikes, at 2 races per week, you can only do easy days in-between. Good on your coach for not doing workouts over summer, you'd be burned out by the end of the season. Your races were your workouts.

FSmith wrote:

There is nothing stupid about doing 100% easy mileage during a period of building mileage.

Particularly, if building to a volume that has never been attained previously. This is largely an experiment and the body needs time to adapt. It does not need the added stress of speedwork, whatever the form that speedwork may take. It is always possible to catch up on the faster stuff later.

I do think too many are in a hurry to cram everything into a training block. This is short sighted.

I agree with this. My best college xc season came after a summer of mileage & strides 2x a week. Didn't mess with any workouts at all (tempos, fartleks, whatever). Just tons of doubles, long runs, etc. However, this running wasn't all "easy". A lot of medium effort runs in there depending on how I felt on the day. Tons of like....feeling good and running the last few miles or so sub 6. Stuff like that. I think that stuff can transform you as a runner before any of the real workouts even begin.

So basically you don't agree with it at all. You did speed work 2x/week and did some faster aerobic work on top of it. The fact that you didn't call them real workouts doesn't change what the were.

ddidididid wrote:

i do r pace stuff wrote:

I agree with this. My best college xc season came after a summer of mileage & strides 2x a week. Didn't mess with any workouts at all (tempos, fartleks, whatever). Just tons of doubles, long runs, etc. However, this running wasn't all "easy". A lot of medium effort runs in there depending on how I felt on the day. Tons of like....feeling good and running the last few miles or so sub 6. Stuff like that. I think that stuff can transform you as a runner before any of the real workouts even begin.

So basically you don't agree with it at all. You did speed work 2x/week and did some faster aerobic work on top of it. The fact that you didn't call them real workouts doesn't change what the were.

You're being pretty unnecessarily combative on this thread. The dude said various paced runs would come up when he was "feeling good and running the last few miles or so sub 6." For a really good runner, that can still be easy. The days when you're floating along, and just cruising, actually feel easy.

Also, strides are easy. If you do them right. Yes it is faster than slow, plodding running, but if you do 8 of them with plenty of rest and just practice running fast, guess what? It's easy!