Why 100 MPW? Seems arbitrary...

100>90>80>70

huh? wrote:

I don't understand this 100 MPW obsession. It is a completely arbitrary number.

All numbers are arbitrary. 100 miles just happens to be close to 15 miles a day -- that's the number I look at. 15 miles a day just happens to be the number that gets you close to the edge.

Anyone can run a 100 miles a week. It's only is obsession if you have an obsessive personality.

But is it obsession that wins gold medals or the 100MPW?

Grammar check.

I guarantee I could run some great times off of 30 miles per week. The big thing here is that I would need to run injury free for a few years to make it worth while.

malmo wrote:

huh? wrote:

I don't understand this 100 MPW obsession. It is a completely arbitrary number.

All numbers are arbitrary. 100 miles just happens to be close to 15 miles a day -- that's the number I look at. 15 miles a day just happens to be the number that gets you close to the edge.

Anyone can run a 100 miles a week. It's only is obsession if you have an obsessive personality.

Perhaps it is the number that gets some runners close to the edge, but for other runners it may be a completely different number. I ran my best when my mileage was around 110 km/week. More than that and I got ill or injured no matter how slow I ran those kilometers (I always did very moderate workouts, too). My 10k PB is 29,42.

It is arbitrary, and I think it just goes back to human nature. We look at finishing in the top 10, not the top 13 or top 7, we list the top 100 albums of all time, etc.. 100 is just a number, but you won't see runners saying they want to average 93 miles per week.

The same with times, you want to be sub3 hr marathoner, or sub30 10K, or sub15 5k, sub4 mile... just points on the clock. Roger Bannister isn't famous for running sub402, it's breaking the 4 min mark.

Lydiard spent years experiementing on himself and ran anywhere from about 50-250 mpw in those years. He found that he got his bestr esults at 100 mpw and made that the number his guys were supposed to aspire to during their build ups. Of course it seems somewhat arbitrary. I'm sure there was a bit of rounding going on and if New Zealand had been using metric measurements in those days I wonder if he'd have used 160 kpw as his benchmark or if it might have been 150 or 180 or even 200?

eh. wrote:

I ran my best when my mileage was around 110 km/week. More than that and I got ill or injured no matter how slow I ran those kilometers (I always did very moderate workouts, too). My 10k PB is 29,42.

you would have run better if you could have run more and stayed healthy. that's the point. if you can run 100mpw and stay healthy, it's better than 80mpw.

more than 100mpw is great too, but it gets difficult to do for most of us time-wise.

huh? wrote:

I don't understand this 100 MPW obsession. It is a completely arbitrary number.

It's more than just an arbitrary number. It can be complete nonsense.

Running 100 miles/week can sound almost exactly the same when I hear meat-heads saying "I spent 4 hours in the gym last Saturday."

Zatopek was a smart man in realizing (50 years ago) that quality beats quantity almost every time. Running 50 miles/week, averaging 6:00 per mile will always beat 100 miles/week, at +7:00. (The marathon could be an exception.)

dsfsd wrote:

Zatopek was a smart man in realizing (50 years ago) that quality beats quantity almost every time. Running 50 miles/week, averaging 6:00 per mile will always beat 100 miles/week, at +7:00. (The marathon could be an exception.)

This 28:06 10k guy disagrees with your general sentiment:

dsfsd wrote:

Zatopek was a smart man in realizing (50 years ago) that quality beats quantity almost every time. Running 50 miles/week, averaging 6:00 per mile will always beat 100 miles/week, at +7:00. (The marathon could be an exception.)

Yep, that is why Zatopek still olds all those world records.

Hey moneky for brains, our understanding of the sport has progressed in the last 50 years and we now train with more quantity as well as maintaining the proper amount of quality and guess what: we run a heck of alot faster than Zatopek did.

in some european countries, runners are obsessed by 100km/week. and run like shit.

Tell it like it is yet again wrote:

Yep, that is why Zatopek still olds all those world records.

Hey moneky for brains, our understanding of the sport has progressed in the last 50 years and we now train with more quantity as well as maintaining the proper amount of quality and guess what: we run a heck of alot faster than Zatopek did.

Zatopek is still the only man to win the 5K,10K,marathon at one Olympics so I honestly don't want to hear anymore of your idiotic statements about your knowledge of the sport being greater than his or the fact that you're anywhere near faster than him.

They may very well be true, however, I think most people aren't patient enough. If there's one thing I do agree with, it's a Lydiard principle in that as you continue to run for a certain "period" of time, sooner or later you will become fit and be able to run the "period" of time quicker, thus increasing one's mileage. For instance say you start out runnning 60 min everyday at 7min/mile pace, that's roughly 8.5 miles a day or roughly 60 miles per week give or take. Now, do that honestly and consistenly for a month or two and I assure you at some point ATLEAST 1 of those 60 min runs will feel easy enough for you to pick up the pace for the 60min, thus increasing your mileage.

The problem with this idea is that everyone wants it "now". Either because of time constraints, or just lack of patience... either way, nobody really want's to wait to build their aerobic capacity to the max because quite frankly it takes awhile. I'm a huge fan of kenyans and ethiopians alike, why? Because they do it right, and it shows. They're not only competitive, but dominant in most events from the 800 on. Sure you can quote and show me all training logs from zatopek,coe or whomever advocating quality, but when I see world records of under 26"20', 12"40' and so on.. held at one point by either a kenyan or ethiopian.... something tells me it just isn't the altitude or "quality". Of course they have an abundance of quality in their training no doubt, but only after they've put in their 80+ miles for 3-6 months.

Is 100mpw necessary, maybe for me, but not necessarily for the next man.. That is why you can't really settle the debate... What works for one person may not work for another.. though i'd be willing to bet my bottom dollar that within the past decade.. the performances by many athletes were preceeded by months of miles at a quantity greater then 80mpw.

o.O wrote:

Zatopek is still the only man to win the 5K,10K,marathon at one Olympics so I honestly don't want to hear anymore of your idiotic statements about your knowledge of the sport being greater than his or the fact that you're anywhere near faster than him.

Ummm..... idiot, Zatopek was definately ahead of HIS time in terms of training, but not ahead of OUR time (some 50 yrs later) terms of training.

And yes, all of my distance PR's are ahead of his and I'm still not any real threat at a national level. Shows you how much training has progressed in the last 50 years.

Take your head out of the sand and look around, you might learn something.

Zatopek's workouts were usually something like 40x400 with 200 jog. . . assuming he didn't do any warmup or cooldown, that's 10 miles of intervals and 5 miles of jogging in between intervals.

Where did you get 50 miles a week averaging 6:00 minute pace with Zatopek's training? According to Lore of Running, Zatopek usually did his intervals "around" 5k pace (66-68) with some faster and some slower.

Now I'm not saying he wasn't doing quality, but Zatopek was INFAMOUS for the quantity of what he did do. I forget if it was Bannister or Chataway or someone else, but one of the 1952 British Olympians said of Zatopek, "While we sat around cursing the gods and moaning about how we were too intelligent to train this yard, he goes out in the forest and jogs around for a few hours on his only easy day!"

Sorry, but whoever dominates an event, if you look through the eras, tends to be the guy doing more than his contemporaries. Nurmi didn't do much- but he did a heckuva lot more than his fellow runners. Zatopek might have "only" been running 80-90 a week, but again, much more than his competitors. Snell's 80-90 a week topped the 800/1500 runners at the time, Ryun did even more volume and intensity, Walker did more mileage, then Coe admittedly broke the mold.

And so on, and so on. Just like Kuts topped Zatopek by outworking him, and Schul did the same (no way Schul was low-volume- he was doing 2hr workouts twice a day). Again, and so on.

I don't know if this was the OP's intention as a joke, but 160.9 kilometers is 100 miles (technically 160.934k). So his "arbitrary" number is exactly the same. Clever!