High mileage for middle distance running experiment (finished)

I’m really glad you did start this thread, I’ve found it useful and it’s fun to talk about this stuff, which LRC hasn’t had much of lately.

To answer your questions, I didn’t keep up the mileage because I’m in college and I was worried about racing well (hit the big mileage right before the season started). I don’t think I was overtrained at all, but at the same time, I thought if I were running that much, I wasn’t going to race as well as I could’ve (aka I got in season and my long term plan was thrown out to try and do well short term). I planned on running that much after thinking about doing it for years (even when my highest ever week was still 80 in high school). The benefits I felt were weird, it was like you’re saying where I recovered almost instantly (until I dropped my mileage to the 80-90s) and my sprint speed felt so fast (I was doing hill sprints throughout). I’m now in the summer and have been hitting 100 - 140 consistently, but after reading your thread, I’m probably gonna hold 130 - 150 throughout xc and indoors and outdoors and try for only a couple 2-3 week tapers down to 100 ish and see what happens.

agree with most here that this has been an awesome thread to follow.

for me, I want to believe Lydiard and the anecdotal advice here, but as someone who started running a few years ago in his mid-thirties I've found keeping >100mpw to be very challenging.

each time I've done more than two weeks in a row at that mileage I've gotten injured. any tips on how to do high mileage AND workouts? For example, I remember hitting 110 as my peak last cycle but could barely run a 5k at marathon pace during the prescribed workout. Is it just a matter of willing yourself through? Do I need more years of training in my legs despite the worry of father time catching up?

father time wrote:

agree with most here that this has been an awesome thread to follow.

for me, I want to believe Lydiard and the anecdotal advice here, but as someone who started running a few years ago in his mid-thirties I've found keeping >100mpw to be very challenging.

each time I've done more than two weeks in a row at that mileage I've gotten injured. any tips on how to do high mileage AND workouts? For example, I remember hitting 110 as my peak last cycle but could barely run a 5k at marathon pace during the prescribed workout. Is it just a matter of willing yourself through? Do I need more years of training in my legs despite the worry of father time catching up?

Curious to hear what others have to say. I have not hit 100+ mile weeks, so take my thoughts with a bunch of grains of salt. I'm in my 40s and have been slowly getting miles up, but never quite where I want them to be.

If you've only been running a few years, my thoughts are to keep doing what you're doing and be patient. If 100 mpw and workouts doesn't work, spend as much time at the mileage that does work. If it's 88 miles, that is great. Stack the weeks and months up with that. Then flirt with 100 again and see what happens.

Every time I talk to people who are better than me and who are doing more than me, they often talk about consistency over time. And patience. I think that is perhaps even more true for those of us past our physical prime.

Hard to say what exactly you've run into, but a few things worth watching out for:

1. Keep your easy runs easy; let the pace come to you instead of forcing it. Doesn't mean you need to jog, just listen to your body.

2. Doubles - much easier to recover from than singles, plus some evidence that your body responds better

3. Diet - make sure you're eating well and enough, including getting enough iron (note that iron from meat is absorbed better than from plants).

4. It's fine to take a down week/day off.

5. Don't race workouts

Not broken wrote:

I think what is different is all the filler mileage inbetween that means I ran more than most 1500 runners normally do by a considerable amount and I improved a lot.

How do you ramped up your mileage? How long it took to get up there?

How long do you run? (you are 25y old now, right)

lexel wrote:

Not broken wrote:

I think what is different is all the filler mileage inbetween that means I ran more than most 1500 runners normally do by a considerable amount and I improved a lot.

How do you ramped up your mileage? How long it took to get up there?

How long do you run? (you are 25y old now, right)

I'm not OP, but I've "ramped" up to 140 pretty quickly. After a week off, my mileage usually goes roughly 80 - 120 - 140. It's really not too hard as long as you go pretty chill the first couple weeks, and that 140 is usually followed by a down week (like 100 - 120 with a day off). I also do strides twice a week before a progression run, it helps with the boredom of just jogging and probably keeps the legs feeling a little better touching on some faster stuff.

Again, I'm not OP, so if you didn't want my answer, sorry, but for the other questions, it took me from a highest week of 80 mpw to a high of 140 in 6 days (or 140 in 7 a few weeks earlier) a little over 2 years. (Had been running seriously for about 3 years before that too).

Your last question I'm not sure what you're asking, but if its how long will I keep running, I'm in my early 20s and will run till I get slower (so hopefully another 10 years or so). If it's the longest I'll run at once, the longest I've ever gone is 2.5 hours, but that isn't super common for me, usually I max out around 2 hours for anything.

Also, I tried OPs workouts (so far just the tempo and 400s) since I'm just base training right now and I found the tempo relatively chill for about 30 min and then you gotta focus the last 15 min, but I also started faster than planned. Something interesting, at least to me, was my heart rate went from 80 - 82% at the start and got up to 90% at the end at the exact same pace on the track. for the 400s, I went a little too fast (ego) and managed 25 w/ 100m jog in about 35 sec. Towards the end I was hitting 93% heart rate and since each rep was only 400m, that was probably too hard. Started out with each rep maxing out around 85% heart rate (so went from 85 - 93% throughout). I definitely think if you go the right effort, these workouts are repeatable, however, I was definitely too tired to do a long run the next day, at least at a steady effort, legs were dead, but after an hour easy run, the next day I feel great and could definitely do it again. That might just be the difference of a sub 4 miler and someone a decent bit slower, or maybe just being used to the workouts. I will probably continue doing them for now, as long as I feel alright doing so. Also, mileage is about 140, so not quite his 150, but roughly the same amount of time spent on feet.

Oof, that was long, hope that helps someone or something.

Thx, appreciate your words, effort and time.

Every athlete has to find his/her own way. Copying a plan 1:1 is maybe not optimal, and works not for all.

My last question should mean 'How many years have you been running?', which you answered perfectly.

Good luck, and all the best.

are you doing these workouts alone? for me I gotta psych myself up big time or else I risk falling short of goal pace if running alone

Bump

My son! Where have you been?

Bump. How is OP?

Bump

Read No Bugles, No Drums if you want to see this experiment from the 1960s. Spoiler, it works and the guy, Peter Snell, got a bunch of gold medals. This should be required reading for middle distance runners. Great guy, great book.

Was just gonna mention Snell as well, but people think Lydiard is just 100 mpw easy/steady, when in the context of Snell's training he was basically doing fartlek and tempo work in his base phase with the mileage and preparing his speed with the hill circuts