High mileage for middle distance running experiment (finished)

Interesting, I do not have an answer to your questions, but have a question. How much race pace or faster work did/do you do together with this very high milage (let us say from 3k and faster) ? What about strength and plyos?

Jon Arne Glomsrud wrote:

Interesting, I do not have an answer to your questions, but have a question. How much race pace or faster work did/do you do together with this very high milage (let us say from 3k and faster) ? What about strength and plyos?

I do a lot of strides, just about after every run, so I suppose that is faster than race pace.

Strength and plyos - I do body weight core and glute work most days, but no proper gym or lifting. I do not do any specific plyos, but when warming up I do some drills that have a plyometric effect.

I very rarely ran faster than 3km race pace. The fastest 400 I did in training would have been around 60 seconds. Some 200s at the end of sessions I hit 28s right before my biggest races.

thanks, have you experience some change in how you feel during mile races and how you have approached them? 3.56 needs a strong run all the way, but I am talkingn about a steady hard effort vs a float with a fast last lap and kicking ability?

Many are born with, develops from young years, and have a good anaerobic and speed base to run really fast. The aerobic ability must be trained. It is genetically given (the theoretic upper limit), but must be developed and does not come for free. I guess focusing so much on strides at least maintains the speed efficiently.

Mile race is primarily aerobic, but needs a fair share of anaerobic work. I think it is somehow obvious that increasing the aerobic capability can improve the mile performance, but not obvious that such a very large milage can make such an impact. I think it also depends on the type of person and how he/she responds to a large mileage. You have obviously managed it and responded well which is not a talent all have.

What comes to mind is the increasing evidence of short term block training being better than a mixed training program. Short (1-2 weeks) blocks with focus on milage, moderate and hard intensities and maintenance of the other two types within a block. The problem with this is the very varying load and injury risk, but the reasoning and results are that a large block stimuli gives larger adaptations than the same amount of smaller and mixed over time. I guess that you have tried a very long block of a large milage stimuli and adapted with a large improvement. The question is if this continues or platous. that might depend upon if your aerobic ability is still not fully developed and can still be increased.

It is well known that so called Fast twitch type runners respond differently than Slow twitch type runners. Within running I do see a bias towards a training philosophy that is best for the ST type and it may be that this kind of reduces the number of FT types that succeeds and the type of training is sort of self-reinforced since we copy the ones succeeding (which is too much to the ST side).

Also the fast twitch muscle fibres need to develop aerobic capabilities as far as they can to excel in the mainly aerobic races. I wonder how efficient milage really is at doing this?

I have a couple of questions.

What is you mile time now? Do you think it is faster that 3:56?

What was the purpose of the high mileage, increase your aerobic engine specifically for racing the mile or to increase your aerobic base to be able to run more high quality workouts?

Interesting. What would you say a typical training week looked like? Not at the beginning or end, but a normal week from somewhere in the middle.

How old are you? Did you wear the same shoes? My son ran 3:49 two years ago on 75MPW and ran 3:43 thus year on 40MPW which negates your experiment. He had a different coach and different shoes and he had one year of running experience. Your improvement is due to the same things. Your mileage far exceeded what has been proven through trials of tens of thousands of runners just as my son's experience is less than what has been proven.

OP, it would be cool to see what some of your peak weeks looked like.

I have felt much stronger in a way that is hard to explain when I shift through gears towards the end of a race. Almost like I am more in control of my legs whilst under pressure. Actual fatigue and deficit feels similar after a race though. Within training, in say, 16x1km, I find I recover very fast between reps, and after 20 seconds or so genuinely feel almost ready to go again.

I agree. Part of my reasoning for experimenting was that I always ran faster indoors than outodoors, so I didn´t feel like base training was hurting my speed too much, and that I responded well to the more aerobic training.

I guess this brings up the question of how much to periodize training. If you are an aerobically trained middle distance athlete, how much anaerobic focus should you do during season? I believe more in macro cycles than the 2 week blocks you mention. I don't think they're long enough to properly develope aerobic conditioning.

I believe Peter Snell had strong opinions on this, and believed something about having to do 20 mile runs at under 6 minute pace in order to train fast twitch fibres. Maybe someone could chime in who knows more about how/why Snell thought this - I've heard varying reports on what he meant.

byteherder wrote:

I have a couple of questions.

What is you mile time now? Do you think it is faster that 3:56?

What was the purpose of the high mileage, increase your aerobic engine specifically for racing the mile or to increase your aerobic base to be able to run more high quality workouts?

I ran 3:56 this season, as well as 3:58 and a few 1500 equivalent times. I think I got the best out of myself in those races and do not think I could run any faster now.

The purpose was for a few reasons:

1. I just like running.

2. My indoor PRs were faster than my outdoor PRs. This made me think I didn't really respond to traditional 1500 training during summer

3. I have decent natural speed (I think I could have previuosly ran maybe 48 for 400). Aerobic capacity seemed to be my limiting factor

4. Primarily to improve my mile time, but to improve your race times you need to improve your ability to train, so I think the answer to your question is both.

Look into Arthur Lydiard and Peter Snell (800 gold medal winner Olympics)

They thought Arthur was crazy training snell like a marathoner but he delivered in the Olympics final

colder and wiser wrote:

Interesting. What would you say a typical training week looked like? Not at the beginning or end, but a normal week from somewhere in the middle.

The main ways I boosted my mileage were:

- Double every day apart from Friday. Friday I would still do 60 mins, so around 8-9 miles

- I added in a triple run during my lunchbreak several times per week (thank you covid and working from home!). 30 mins x 4 times per week is an extra 15-20 miles for the week

- I did 3 sessions a week. I think I could not run such high mileage on 2 sessions per week, as those sessions would be too big of a load to recover and keep moderate steady running inbetween, and I feel like I respond well to steady running (or as many proclaim - "grey zone training"). Instead, I kept the intensity always a touch under threshold during sessions, and around 6:20-6:30 pace on jogging days. My long run would be a natural progression towards 5:20s or so.

General week would be:

Monday: 10, 3, 10

Tuesday: 10, 15x1km

Wednesday: 14, 4, 6

Thursday: 10, 4, 45 minute tempo

Friday: 8

Saturday: 30x400, 8

Sunday: 20, 6

Warmup/downs generally 20 minutes jogging.

run faster and faster wrote:

How old are you? Did you wear the same shoes? My son ran 3:49 two years ago on 75MPW and ran 3:43 thus year on 40MPW which negates your experiment. He had a different coach and different shoes and he had one year of running experience. Your improvement is due to the same things. Your mileage far exceeded what has been proven through trials of tens of thousands of runners just as my son's experience is less than what has been proven.

Hey, I'm not saying it works for everyone! Many guys can run 3:35 1500s on 60 mpw. Some need 100 mpw. A few can do it on 40. For me, high mileage seems to be working.

I am a 24 year old with more than a decade in the sport of consistent training. I had only improved by 2 seconds since I was 21 despite no injuries or major setbacks. I had decent coaches in highschool and college who trained many runners to faster times than me (many sub 3:40 1500 guys have trained under my college coach). I wore the same shoes. (unfortunately haven't been able to get my hands on a pair of dragonflies yet!)

This is not a thread to say that everyone needs to run 150mpw. It's a thread to say high mileage training works for a small amount of people. I want to know if there is anyone else that has tried such an experiment on themselves and how they structured their year/sessions.

Very few coaches would asign such a program, as chances are it would backfire 96% of the time, but I believe for some people that are injury resilient, recover well, enjoy running, and have natural speed and a high trainable aerobic ceiling it can work for.

wikid pissah wrote:

Look into Arthur Lydiard and Peter Snell (800 gold medal winner Olympics)

They thought Arthur was crazy training snell like a marathoner but he delivered in the Olympics final

I have studied Lydiard and Snell, and know they did a lot of miles. Zatopek is also an interesting observation where he continued to improve and improve with more and more training load until he found a breaking point somewhere shortly before the Melbourne Olympics.

The Japanese also train similarly. Admittedly, they don't get the best 1500 results, but maybe that is because no one races it? With that marathon depth, you'd think a few of the sub 2:08 guys must be easily sub 3:40 runners with only some small changes in training.

I thought this might be Eric Holt but he said he didn’t do well outdoors so I dunno now

Have you tried going up in distance? Perhaps some new 5k prowess?

run faster and faster wrote:

How old are you? Did you wear the same shoes? My son ran 3:49 two years ago on 75MPW and ran 3:43 thus year on 40MPW which negates your experiment. He had a different coach and different shoes and he had one year of running experience. Your improvement is due to the same things. Your mileage far exceeded what has been proven through trials of tens of thousands of runners just as my son's experience is less than what has been proven.

He ran 3.43 off a 75MPW and a 40MPW two year period. It would be good to see how he goes off another 40MPW or two.

Come On Tokyo wrote:

run faster and faster wrote:

How old are you? Did you wear the same shoes? My son ran 3:49 two years ago on 75MPW and ran 3:43 thus year on 40MPW which negates your experiment. He had a different coach and different shoes and he had one year of running experience. Your improvement is due to the same things. Your mileage far exceeded what has been proven through trials of tens of thousands of runners just as my son's experience is less than what has been proven.

He ran 3.43 off a 75MPW and a 40MPW two year period. It would be good to see how he goes off another 40MPW or two.

yes. even a guy like Coe would do 70ish in the winter and then spend many months around 40. It all works together.

or maybe not for some people. perhaps permanent 40 is the sweet spot for a few.

How fast do you run your mileage runs? Any full workout examples (including rest and times)? Also, how do you think you avoided injury on such high volume?

OP, when did you start feeling the benefits of the really high mileage and did you ever take down weeks? The past 9 months I’ve been experimenting with higher mileage, I’ve hit 140 about 4 times and 120+ probably about 15 times now. I get that feeling of being able to recover very fast when I’m hitting 140, but only did it in doubles and felt dead when trying to go fast, but I’ve been thinking about trying triples to consistently hit 140. Also, are your workouts mostly threshold (like the Ks and the 400s)? Thanks for posting! This has motivated me to get back up there after a tough last few days (just had a 120 mile week with a 28 and a 30 mile day that I’m recovering from, did a little too much) I think I’ve also been neglecting threshold/tempo too much as well. So again, thanks