What could elite runners run if they only ever ran low mileage

Probably wouldn't even be running faster than 4:30 in the 1500

that's roughly 4:50 mile pace, you really think that that is the fastest they could ever do if they never ran over 20 MPW for their decade long career? interesting.

Good question.

I’d bet Fisher could break 15 in the 5K on 25mph.

yeah they'd be doing less than a 3rd of what they have easily averaged across their career. I bet some of them could still run fast, but most would probably struggle to break 1:55, 4:30, and 15:00 respectively, some could do it off of that little mileage, but they all would struggle.

Could Nuguse be a sub 4 miler? I think so.

Roger Bannister ran a weekly total of less than 30 miles on average when training to break the 4 minute mile barrier. Weekly mileage is just a sum of duration, intensity, and frequency of sessions and that formula will look different for each specific athlete and their needs. I would speculate that athletes with greater performances at shorter distances would be more competitive with a higher focus on overall quality as opposed to volume and vice versa. Assuming the limit for total weekly mileage is 20, and athletes could not cross train for additional aerobic stimulus beyond their designated weekly mileage (only stretching, mobility, drills beyond that), I still believe some athletes would be highly competitive. Athletes who have stronger performances over shorter distances typically run less mileage on average and would excel compared to their counterparts in this scenario. I can’t think of the perfect example off the top of my head but think of Peter Snell (100 mpw) compared to Donovan Brazier (~30 mpw) in terms of volume. Both ran amazing 800m performances with very different stimulus to fit their training needs. There’s a lot of variables when it comes to a persons specific training needs and their physiology so some athletes would struggle and some would still do amazing in this scenario.

Only twenty miles? What were they running back in the 1930s? Adjust for shoes and tracks, probably around those times.

Likely faster than most of us would like.

It would probably be shockingly fast, especially at the shorter distances. For the most talented men in the world there's a chance they dip under 14 for 5k off of 20mpw. 5ks are short enough to gut out off of pure talent, and these guys are absolute freaks. I think I read somewhere that Abdi Abdirahman ran a 15:12 time trial when he first started training. They need serious milage to be the best in the world, but I wouldn't underestimate the sheer talent these guys have.

Maybe at least 15:20 in basketball shoes…

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Long-distance runner Justyn Knight will compete in the 5000m event in the Olympic Games for Team Canada. The goal? Household-name status.

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If 35 miles per week is low mileage, then one could run 3:49.80 for the mile. Just ask Jim Spivey who never run more than 40 miles per week and was often in the 28-35 range.

You're joking, right? They'd be way faster than that even if all they did was 20 miles a week (all speedwork) and no supplemental stuff. But they could also hit the elliptical or whatever for an extra 10 hours a week and be pretty close to where they are now.

Spivey was running 40mpw in HS and 60-80 as a pro. You can google the threads on this board from 15 years ago and here straight from Spivey.

There have been a bunch of 800m guys <20mpw and sub 1:46. But for 1500/5000m guys most are more like 35mpw and running 3:40/13:45. Obviously in theory you could do pool running/elliptical for 10 hours/week and get close to those people’s PR.

if you look at the low mileage HS milers like Hocker and kennedy they were running 4:05-7 off their lifetime PR with 4 years of training and 35mpw. So doubling(or more) the mileage and 4 more years (and super shoes for Hocker), gets you 10-20s of improvement. The decline in improvement for mileage is pretty sharp.

I think out of the athletes you named Jakob would fare the worst. His durability is really what separates him as far as TTs go. I think they would all be barely under 4 with the possible exception of Fisher since he is more of an endurance guy(sub 4 in HS notwithstanding).

They could all probably be pretty good 800-mile, & their 5ks would suffer. Talent is talent. These guys probably ran quite fast in HS off of limited mileage. If they kept doing that, with a good amount of quality, then they'd still run fast. We've also seen with runners like Valby what a bunch of cross training can do. There are triathletes who run maybe 50k/week to go sub-70 in a 70.3. That means they could run an open half in sub-1:05. Obviously they're not really running 50k/week when their overall training is 20+ hours/week but there's a lot you can do aside from running to get close to potential.

Didn't Hobbs Kessler break 4 at 35 mpw or something like that.

Yeah, I definitely think that it would depend on the athletes. some would perform extremely well, while others would have their time suffer. but say a milers career lasts 12 years, and during that career they averaged 60 MPW. then imagine a person with the same talent runs less than 20 MPW for the same 12 years. no matter what the person with less mileage will perform worse, they did less than a third of the training as the other guy (assuming neither of them were doing cross training). I would guess that in this senario over the course of the person off of lower mileage would maybe be able to hit the higher mileage guy's high school times, assuming they had exactly the same physiological talent.

I've known uber talented high school kids that ran 4:10 on that kind of mileage. With a smart allocation of those 20 mpw, Kerr and Nuguse would be well under 4 for the mile. I suspect Jakob is the product of his enormous training history, and would be less impressive. Fisher is such an aerobic monster, it's hard to know how he'd develop.

With unlimited cross training, they could still all be world class, just a lower tier of world class.

With 20 mpw and the rest of the time on the couch, they'd still be better than almost all of us could be no matter how we train. But I doubt you could be better than mid-tier DI with that training, no matter how talented you are.

For the 800m and if cross training, mobility, circuit training, strength training and drills etc were included I think people would be shocked how fast people could run on low mileage and rep-based workouts. Different for the 5k.