Anyone surprised at how much mileage Graham Blanks runs?

I wasn't surprised about how much he runs but I certainly was surprised about how fast he runs each day. 6 flat easy days? He recovers quite well.

If you’ve read Running With the Buffaloes, that’s what Adam Goucher did as well. The National Champions are simply built differently

No. I am surprised people actually believe Valby really only runs 30 miles a week and / or she is totally clean

No, the volume is the same. Because, you know, it's volume.

Workouts are overrated. All that matters is mileage at a steady pace flirting with lactate threshold (run to the barn) when feeling good. He's a young man. He's already got speed. He just needs basic mileage to carry that speed or be able to use it at the end of a race.

Coffee Club guys discussed this and thought it was interesting as well that they seemingly built mileage only if they could run everything fast at Harvard. I tend to think running at a "hard" easy run pace on non-workout days is pretty overrated, and something you are likely to only get away with at a young age. Not sure it's the smartest thing to do if you want a long, post-college career. But I'm definitely not doubting that it works in the short-term, or that it's highly effective for some guys.

What do the women run for easy pace? Harvard women coming along as well. 6:40s? 7:00?

Yeah, Harvard guys run everything at 6:00 which burns a lot of runners out and leads to middling/no improvement for most of their runners but also serves as an incredible aerobic base for those who can tolerate it

shut up about valby.

that said, this isn't even a good argument. valby does enough cross training to be equivalent to around 90 mpw. she is either very talented (she is a national champion so i'll bet on this one) or she is a super responder to cross training.

also, on this thread in general - imo this gives a ton of credence to the idea that the US would be amazing at the marathon if more college level elites focused on it. blank's training is tough but not particularly unique. probably quite a few guys in there with the potential to run 2:05 with a few years of development. cam levins is a good example of that.

I'm not at all surprised that he runs that much. Decades ago 100 or more mile weeks were just the norm for plenty of good college runners. And six minute pace is not all that hard for a lot of people who can run a 10,000 on the downside of 30:00 pr so. If someone like that was using Lydiard's idea of running at your best aerobic speed six minute miles would be fairly common. Yes, if you've got everyone in your team running like that there could be several guys who'd struggle but it does not seem surprising to me at all to see a national champion doing it.

This has always been Gibby's training. He's had success with it for sure, but I'm not convinced that it's the most optimal way. Clearly Blanks is a once in a lifetime talent.

But not many athletes can handle Gibby's training. Their star recruit Vivien Henz (3:38 as U18 athlete) quit the team. Acer Iverson placed worse each year at NCAAs than the previous year (40th in 2021,then 50th then 97th this year).

The biggest secret to Gibby's success is recruiting. His training style does not appear to be the way of the future. The science is going the exact opposite direction.

He ain’t lying about his training. He’s on Strava. Have a look.

Hot take but graham blanks would be even better if he chilled out on his easy days.

13:17, his 5k pr, into a VDOT calculator puts easy pace at 5:38-6:13. So he is chilling on his easy days. Anything slower is junk miles.

6:00 isn't even fast for someone that is in low 13's shape. Maybe its too fast for the 14+ minute guys on the squad, but definitely not for the national champ.

easy paces in calculators are not to be taken literally. Some of them appear ridiculously fast. The idea of running 100 miles a week and all of it at 5:38 is ridiculous for the majority of people. I saw Graham does his easy days at 6 flat, but this I'd argue is an anomaly within similar level rnuners. Maybe some people can handle it, but you don't need to run that fast to get the easy benefits, that's the whole point of it.

How many AR 15s does this cat have?

to be fair, acer was 71st at heps in 2019--he took a big step forward training under gibby during the pandemic

but yeah, clearly gibby's training pushes away and burns out a number of athletes who would otherwise have successful running careers (Colin Baker, Vivien Henz are two notable examples in recent years of national-class runners who now might not race again)