Increase volume first. Intensity will come naturally.

I agree that more mileage is the key. If you're training right then the intensity will come. Increase mileage, find the right mileage to avoid injury, and watch times drop.

Too many people think the way to improve is to "run more." The truth is you just need to run smarter. If a guy seems to be plateauing off of 70 mpw, I would recommend that they drop down to no more than 50 mpw at a slightly more aggressive pace rather than just add miles. What happens in guys who are not improving is their bodies become accustomed to the stress level that they subject it to, and unless they are training for the half or full marathon, increasing mileage will just make them flat.

The key phrase in your argument is "Trying to increase the pace of the intervals or tempos before you're ready does nothing but cause you to overtrain." If you do anything before you're ready then it is a bad idea. That's just common sense. Unless you are having trouble completing the sheer volume of workouts (which usually only occurs in severe low-mileage runners), then there is little use for upping mileage.

I know there are a lot of guys who neglect base training and go right into hard workouts, but that is a different thing than being stuck at a certain fitness level (with a consistent training regimen in place) and trying to find a way to improve. The answer is most definitely to reduce mileage so that you may introduce a new stress level.

Truer words never spoken. Can't get my daughter (hs junior) to understand this. She recoils when she hears of other athletes doing 50-60mpw in high school.

I don't push her or anything, nor am I suggesting a certian number of miles a week. Her training is 100% dictated by her coaches. I simply try to point out that it's actually crazier to do 30mpw when nearly 50% of that work is hard interval running, than 50mpw when 80% is easy-moderate aerobic training. I want her to understand the concept that safely building her aerobic volume is the key to getting her 3200m and 5K times down. She's reached a level in both events that I think it will be hard to improve, given her ability, without taking her base aerobic training up a couple notches. I suspect she'll be hammering away for another year or so of hs and her times will stay about the same.

Great example of that principle:

After a few years away from regular running I started back on Jan 1st a few years ago.

I started slow, running just 3k 6 days a week. Nothing hard or fast just 3k at an easy aerobic pace. Every 2-3 weeks I added 1 to 1.5k to my runs. After I reached 5k, I added a long run (2x) on the day before my day off. After three months I was up to running 100k (62 miles) per week. My effort was still easy on all my runs but my average pace went from 8:30 per mile to 7:30 per mile as I become more cardiovascularly fit. Once I got to 100k per week I added in a modest tempo run in the middle of each week. By the end of the 4th month I ran a half marathon (my first race in years) and managed a 1:23:00. So I went from barely being able to run 3k at 8:30 mile pace to a 1:23 for the HM in just 4 months by just slowly raising my mileage, giving myself a few weeks to adapt and then raising it again.

I think this illustrates the fact that our sport is at its core an aerobic activity and basic aerobic fitness is the most important piece and nothing beats mileage for building aerobic fitness.

"The prevailing training philosophy in 1977 was 'more is better', and weekly mileage was the stuff of competition. If Derek Clayton was quoted as running 160 miles per week, then someone else would try 175 miles per week... This approach to training may sound harsh - and it was - but it reaped rewards. Distance running in the U.S. improved markedly, and although there were a few casualties along the way, pure hard work generally paid dividends." - Pete Pfitzinger, two-time Olympian and exercise physiologist

Lenny Leonard wrote:

The key phrase in your argument is "Trying to increase the pace of the intervals or tempos before you're ready does nothing but cause you to overtrain." If you do anything before you're ready then it is a bad idea. That's just common sense.

That's what I thought. Training at a level you're not ready for is a bad idea. It's common sense, but common sense isn't as common as you think.

When I made my argument, I didn't mean that increasing mileage is ALWAYS the answer to getting better. I meant that if you're a developing distance runner, you'll get a lot more out of an increase in volume than an increase in intensity. If a runner is already running as much mileage as they can currently handle, they should just maintain that volume for a while and not mess with their intensity.

I know one successful D1 coach who told me he has his freshman train no harder than they did in high school. They all improve because they gradually increase their mileage. By maintaining intensity and increasing volume, they get fitter without having to blast a bunch of workouts, and the mileage helps their long term development.