Effectiveness of Mileage Micro-Loading?

What is your sense of “micro-loading”? I agree that after enough weeks the additional load will be paltry, though, if you are ably to stick with 1 mi/day indefinitely.

Mico loading would be first week 7miles/day...next week 7.1 miles/day...only after 10week would be 8miles/day.

When i hear the term micro loading I think about mushrooms not running a hour a day. You're over thinking this, just run.

The biggest downside is that you'll only be at an optimal level (for you) for a very short amount of time.

Let's say you're fit enough that 15 miles a week is near your sweet spot. If you're starting at 7mpw then you'll have a month that's too easy to get much benefit. The next two months will progress from 12mpw to 21mpw. That range is enough to do something during the first few weeks and probably challenging but survivable the last couple of weeks.

But once you get into month 4-5 and beyond your body is going to have a hard time adapting to keep up with the volume. You'll already be 50% higher than our arbitrary optimal mileage. If you're durable you might not be getting injured, but you're going to feel more and more fatigued trying to maintain the increasing volume and never really catch up.

1 mile a week added will never make any individual jump seem difficult, but somewhere along the line adding 52 miles a year is going to lead to problems.

The human body just doesn't adapt fast enough.

Now, if the plan is to stop somewhere when you hit the point that feels like a healthy challenge then that's totally fine. You just can't use it as a long term path to increasing fitness.

Yeah, if you've got a lot of time for a good build up, go for it. Add a cut back week 1 time per month and throw in strides a 2-3 times per week and you're on the road to a good base

As per your formula

49 + 3 x strides

56 + 3 x strides

63 + 3 x strides

49 + 3 x strides

70 + 3 x strides

77 + 3 x strides

84 + 3 x strides

56 + 3 x strides..... in another 3 weeks you'll hit 105!

If you're feeling good, 1- 2 times per week, make your runs a little bit harder or run a low key race once in a while. Level off the mileage about 6-8 weeks prior to target race or season opener. Once the mileage is leveled off, start incorporating some structured harder sessions.

I should add that if your peak mileage had recently been much bigger, you can certainly ramp up faster and if you've never approached some of the numbers above, you should proabably be a little more circumspect.

How is that "micro-loading"?

You've gone from 49 miles a week to 56 miles the next.

That's a 14.3% increase in volume; well above the 10% that's most commonly recommended.

This sounds illegal

Micro-loading would be doing doubles or even triples to accomplish your mileage (vs singles). The idea is to accomplish your volume with least amount of damage.

Sounds like something that might work for sprinters. Sounds dumb for everyone else.

I’ll try to hunt down the study, but that 10% rules has been debunked. You’re dead on that it’s cited constantly, but there’s nothing to back it up. Humans love round, even numbers.

This is basically the same as adding 10%

I didn't suggest that it was gospel; just using it as an example to demonstrate that a 14% increase was hardly "micro-loading".