Run three shorter runs a day

No.

When I had the time in school I found doing three 20-30 minute runs a day was a good way to to reintroduce mileage but I don’t know if it’s good beyond that

The great only person I can think of who did something like this was Karel Lismont of Belgium who medaled in the marathon in 72 and 76 (silver and bronze respectively). I think he would do three 10k runs a day

Just like interval training can allow you to do something like 6000m at your 5000m race pace because of the rests, this training method would allow you to run more mileage in a day than running once or twice a day.

Taking it a few steps further, you could run 10x a day and do 2km at a time rather quickly. If you did this on the hour beginning at 7AM, you'd be done by 4:08PM or so, and you would get about 50 minutes of recovery between each effort.

Cumulative fatigue would add up quickly with your three-a-days. Decades of experimentation has settled on 1-2 efforts per day being the optimum balance for stress and recovery for most athletes.

It has to be an even number. 3 is an odd number, that's why it's wrong.

I think most people on here have the attitude of "you could run that amount of milage in singles or at most a few doubles. So, why bother?"

Never stopping to wonder if it would actually be beneficial. I have a feeling that if time werent an issue, 3 runs a day would be great training

Jimmy21 wrote:

I think most people on here have the attitude of "you could run that amount of milage in singles or at most a few doubles. So, why bother?"

Never stopping to wonder if it would actually be beneficial. I have a feeling that if time werent an issue, 3 runs a day would be great training

From many years of experience of 1, 2, 3, and 4 I concur you may well be right.

Florida Boy wrote:

When I had the time in school I found doing three 20-30 minute runs a day was a good way to to reintroduce mileage but I don’t know if it’s good beyond that

The great only person I can think of who did something like this was Karel Lismont of Belgium who medaled in the marathon in 72 and 76 (silver and bronze respectively). I think he would do three 10k runs a day

I know a guy who got Gordon Pirie to coach him. Pirie had him do four 20 minute runs a day at a pretty good pace. The guy got a mile PB in his early thirties, though I don't know what it was. He'd been under 2:30 for the marathon so it was probably decent.

In the '70s, Runner's World referenced a study done on female British marathoners to see what variable was the best predictor of fast times. It turned out to be number of runs done in the preparation, not overall mileage, that was the #2 predictor. Van Aaken thought that the "runner of the future" would do maybe 40 km a day broken into four or five runs. But there probably have not been enough people doing three runs a day to have a clear idea of what will happen.

My thoughts:

- Who has time for that with all of the change clothes, warmup, cool down time to stop sweating, shower after, etc?

- That's a lot of laundry

- You'll need at least 3 pairs of shoes for hot summer days or rainy days

Florida Boy wrote:

When I had the time in school I found doing three 20-30 minute runs a day was a good way to to reintroduce mileage but I don’t know if it’s good beyond that

The great only person I can think of who did something like this was Karel Lismont of Belgium who medaled in the marathon in 72 and 76 (silver and bronze respectively). I think he would do three 10k runs a day

Before injuries ended his career, Dave Bedford ran 3×10 miles.

Bullet the Blue Sky wrote:

My thoughts:

- Who has time for that with all of the change clothes, warmup, cool down time to stop sweating, shower after, etc?

- That's a lot of laundry

- You'll need at least 3 pairs of shoes for hot summer days or rainy days

This. Running three times a day would be a pain.

Bullet the Blue Sky wrote:

My thoughts:

- Who has time for that with all of the change clothes, warmup, cool down time to stop sweating, shower after, etc?

- That's a lot of laundry

- You'll need at least 3 pairs of shoes for hot summer days or rainy days

A good point, but lets assume you have time for three runs and 3 pairs of shoes. I read an article (i think here on letsrun) about a runner training with a Japanese group and they did three runs daily.

Bullet the Blue Sky wrote:

My thoughts:

- Who has time for that with all of the change clothes, warmup, cool down time to stop sweating, shower after, etc?

- That's a lot of laundry

- You'll need at least 3 pairs of shoes for hot summer days or rainy days

Like everyone else, I used one pair of shoes to run doubles. If I added a third run, I would need to buy 2 more pairs of shoes?

An old norwegian coach who was an international distance runner in the 70s, coached his succesful daughter in the 90s and now coaches his grandchildren with success, stated that to increase milage for 5k he would rather do 3 shorter runs than 2 longer a day. Based on his experience and knowledge I guess this is a good tradeoff btw the effective adaptation, the risk of injury and the effective recovery.

We know the rule of diminishing returns for a run. The gain/return from adding 5min in duration is diminishing over the workout. It can be that 3 shorter runs give more return than 2 longer.

I guess since he thought this was relevant for 5k this does not apply as well for long distances like HM or M.

At least I feel that if running easy, before 25min it is fresh and easy, btw 25-40 it is still good, but starting to feel something and excess 40, closing in on 60 and above I feel that parts of the legs increasingly experience fatigue and the "long run" feeling emerges. It depends what adaptation is wanted. I would not skip long runs, but short runs might introduce quality miles.

If you live somewhere with low humidity, you might not need to rotate shoes as much. In the summer, I sometimes finish with squishy shoes, so they take some time to dry. I'm not a fan of putting on wet shoes to start a run. So I guess you only need more shoes if you like to start with dry feet.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Bullet the Blue Sky wrote:

- You'll need at least 3 pairs of shoes for hot summer days or rainy days

Like everyone else, I used one pair of shoes to run doubles. If I added a third run, I would need to buy 2 more pairs of shoes?

Julien Goater was a world class runner, and he writes in his book 'The Art of Running faster' that he tried 3 times a day, it was nothing for him.

I guess he is right.

I very, very, occasionally ran with a guy who was one of the first runners doing a Ph.D in exercise physiology. He told me he'd learned that when you run for more than an hour at a time your body releases some sort of enzyme that damages your muscles. So he only ran for longer than an hour in races. His version of the weekly long run was three ten mile runs in maybe 58-59 minutes. He only did the three runs on his "long run" day. It got him to the mid 2:20s for the marathon at a time when that got you nationally ranked and made you a contender to win almost any marathon outside of Boston or the Olympic Trial.

When Ian Thompson ran his 2:09 I recall reading a training profile in Athletics Weekly which showed him doing 30 miles on Sundays. I thought maybe that was the thing that would get me to the next level and spent a couple months going 27-32 miles in my weekly long runs. I decided all that was doing was getting me to dread Sundays so eventually let it go. A few months ago I learned that Thompson was actually doing those 30 miles in three separate ten mile runs. And you've got Karel Lismont who almost never ran for longer than an hour but trained three times a day during the work week.

Have fun doing laundry.