Off the Grid wrote:
I love these threads - like there is some absolute # to which your performances could approach, if ONLY your training was perfectly fine tuned.
Life is less than perfect - most runners 30-40yrs ago trained 1x/day because they had jobs and families and obligations. Could they have been better if they trained more?.....who cares? they found what worked for them, and hopefully they enjoyed it while they were doing it.
Marty Liquori wrote 30yrs ago, "There are many fine runners who compete at the world class level year in year out and run once a day".
This is not true. 30-40 yrs ago would be 1970-1980. Runners of that era ran twice a day. I started running in 1978 at 11 yrs old and by 7th grade I often ran once in the AM at running club and once in the afternoon on my own. This continued in HS: AM practice 3 mornings a week, PM practice every day.
When you say "most runners ... trained 1x/day" you would be right if you mean MOST of ALL runners. But the best runners of the last 60 yrs have run twice a day.
As far as Alan's assertion that "150 mpw for 5k runners" is a recent obsession. I know that is hyperbole, but I can think of dozens of great runners (the greatest really) from the 70's who ran more than 100mpw consistently through the year and nearly always ran twice a day.
Liquori - 120 mpw - AR and 3x world #1
Rodgers
Shorter - 140 mpw - AR holder
Brendan Foster - 120 mpw - WR holder
Greg Fredericks - 110-130 - AR holder
Salazar - 100-120 - WR and AR
Viren - 100-150 - WR
Bedford - WR
Dixon - world ranked for 10 yrs
Roelants - WR
Quax - WR
Rono - WR
Vainio - ER
Puttemans - WR
My point is that "high" mileage (what I consider to be 100-140) is not a recent idea. Nor are "doubles". They proved their effectiveness around 1960 with "Lydiard's Boys". I am sure that there were devotees and examples of it before that ... I have just rarely seen training examples of the best runners of the 30s, 40s or 50s.