Don’t quote me on this but I remember hearing Nico does a lot of cross training which is probably a fine substitute for the 10-20 extra miles you’d expect from a world class 5k-10k type. I think coaches are learning a lot from injury prone athletes like Giles and Valby
Says his mileage is all over the place and peaks at 80-90 mpw. Am I missing something or is there room to get even better?
Kipchoge as a marathoner was peaking around 120-130, only like 30% more mileage for an event 420% longer. Also Nico is 23 and training at 7k feet. Also doing double threshold. Jakob gets up to 110-120 during the offseason, though he’s an outlier so far as 15/5 guys go.
I’m sure there’s room for Nico to get better, but that’s more because he shouldn’t hit his peak for another 3-5 years. Also keep in mind he’s peaking at 80-90 and making massive improvements. Pushing it up to 100-120mpw might end with him getting injured, which would probably slow his progression.
Says his mileage is all over the place and peaks at 80-90 mpw. Am I missing something or is there room to get even better?
Kipchoge as a marathoner was peaking around 120-130, only like 30% more mileage for an event 420% longer. Also Nico is 23 and training at 7k feet. Also doing double threshold. Jakob gets up to 110-120 during the offseason, though he’s an outlier so far as 15/5 guys go.
I’m sure there’s room for Nico to get better, but that’s more because he shouldn’t hit his peak for another 3-5 years. Also keep in mind he’s peaking at 80-90 and making massive improvements. Pushing it up to 100-120mpw might end with him getting injured, which would probably slow his progression.
Just adding here, Jakob is kind of a special case since he has had a huge mileage since a young age. And by huge mileage I mean relative to his age at that point. He also started competing very young.
I would guess that his mileage will vary depending on what his coach identifies as the weaknesses that he needs to work on. From what I've read on LRC, he was a guy with a poor kick a few years ago and now he seems to have developed that. If they've been working on speed and turnover quite intensively, then it makes sense to drop volume a little to aid recovery. Volume and intensity always have to be traded off if an athlete is going to stay healthy.
Don’t quote me on this but I remember hearing Nico does a lot of cross training which is probably a fine substitute for the 10-20 extra miles you’d expect from a world class 5k-10k type. I think coaches are learning a lot from injury prone athletes like Giles and Valby
Though Giles has gone up in mileage since he's needed better muscular endurance for the 1500 - he didn't need it as much in the 800 but longer distances benefit from bigger mileage most of the time
I assume if he's only doing 80-90 miles, his easy run pace is probably mostly 6:30 or faster. When you get to the marathon runners who are doing 140+ a lot of their running is slower than 7, sometimes slower than 8. So if you run relatively low volume, you need to make it be a little bit more quality. If you do tons of volume, a good chunk of it needs to be super easy. Cam Levins ran super slow a lot of his big mileage, so does John Korir (Chicago and Boston marathon champ last year). Then you look at Bernard Lagat who would run 5:50 pace on an 'easy' run but did relatively low mileage.
Says his mileage is all over the place and peaks at 80-90 mpw. Am I missing something or is there room to get even better?
Kipchoge as a marathoner was peaking around 120-130, only like 30% more mileage for an event 420% longer. Also Nico is 23 and training at 7k feet. Also doing double threshold. Jakob gets up to 110-120 during the offseason, though he’s an outlier so far as 15/5 guys go.
I’m sure there’s room for Nico to get better, but that’s more because he shouldn’t hit his peak for another 3-5 years. Also keep in mind he’s peaking at 80-90 and making massive improvements. Pushing it up to 100-120mpw might end with him getting injured, which would probably slow his progression.
Keep telling yourself that. Nico is maxed out. I don’t think he is going to get faster at any distance including 10k, where at his height we start to see diminishing returns. I think he has pushed himself to his limit and after this season we will see him on the injury list for the next several years and then he’ll be an after thought. My God you people are such prisoners of the moment that it’s actually funny.
A lot of the top 5k/10k guys don't do hit 100mpw these days (Fisher is one too). If the longest you'll ever race in track is a tactical 10000m, then you don't need to be pounding out huge amounts of mileage. That really only becomes necessary once you get to the marathon distance
A lot of the top 5k/10k guys don't do hit 100mpw these days (Fisher is one too). If the longest you'll ever race in track is a tactical 10000m, then you don't need to be pounding out huge amounts of mileage. That really only becomes necessary once you get to the marathon distance
100%. I think 60 to maybe 70 mpw with a lot of strength training is more than enough for 1500 and 5000. Jakob is a lot stronger physically than people probably realize. Like he can probably deadlift a huge amount for his weight.
There is a certain tipping point for each athlete where more mileage vs harder workouts is the give and take.
There is no use for running more miles if you can hit the workouts necessary. If you run 12:45, you need to be doing a lot of intervals around that pace. That beats you up.
So think of it as you plan the workouts first, then run as much as you can without sacrificing those workouts. Gotta back off somewhere.
Same sort of idea with tempos. I remember Mo Farah saying late in his track career he stopped doing tempos, they were too slow. He got more benefit from intervals