Forgive me if this has been asked a million times before, but why does high mileage make you faster?

kudzurunner wrote:

1) It strengthens your ligaments, tendons, and bones, over time. This is a kind of insurance against strain and breakage. It allows you to do a higher volume of faster training later on. Without this background of high mileage, you'd have a harder time sustaining high volume, high intensity work. Thus--through this chain of events--high mileage makes you faster. It lays the groundwork for you being able to TRAIN harder & faster later on, which is what it takes for you to race faster.

Yes, I think too many people focus on aerobic vs anaerobic fitness. Personally I have found (in marathon distance) that my limiting factor was always muscle and joint fatigue. I've rarely felt out of energy, but I encountered cramping muscles and joint pain that became too intense if I ran faster. I think this is a matter of musculoskeletal endurance. Also, efficiency: probably running more efficiently greatly reduces the amount of damage you do to your body while running at any speed.

I think it depends on the actual person itself. For instance, Lee Emanuel ran a sub 14 5k at Mt. Sac this past year only doing mileage 60 miles or less (talked to one of his coaches). Some people need the higher mileage to get better while other don’t because of the talent they already have.

Actually, read my post. I didn't say that. Your not disputing my point. And I said the same thing you are by about 10 times more succinctly and efficiently.

three words: nitric oxide release.

Yeah, it was so succinct and efficient, (and with so many misspellings and grammatical mistakes), that I understood nearly the opposite of what you were trying to say. Now that you've explained what you meant, I can go back, re-read, and sort of see what you intended. Good work.

Question for you. Do you think the OP meant faster in terms of pure speed, like 200m in 24.3 seconds is faster than 25.1 seconds? Or faster like dropping your 5000m time by ten seconds?

Perhaps he would be faster if he could handle more mileage. The ability to withstand high mileage week in and week out is a talent.

I think So? wrote:

I think it depends on the actual person itself. For instance, Lee Emanuel ran a sub 14 5k at Mt. Sac this past year only doing mileage 60 miles or less (talked to one of his coaches). Some people need the higher mileage to get better while other don’t because of the talent they already have.

Solinsky in interviewed after his Stockholm race at Flotrack and he states that he has the same top end speed as anyone in the field and that lack of speed wasn't why he could not contest for the win. He claims that the Africans were still aerobic (or less anaerobic than he was) during the last lap as he was anaerobic which is why he could change gears fast enough. Solinsky also said that aerobic capacity is the key, is this just years and years of mileage?

How do the Africans stay aerobic longer in a 5km race, what kind of training, mileage?, hills? higher lactate threshold?, all of the above or just genetics?

1st grade science wrote:

An athlete can only improve his maximum speed by running 100% speed! Nobody can run at 60% and improve his 100% speed. On the other hand running at 100% can improve stamina to a point.

This is so stupid I'm not even sure what to say.

"High mileage gives you more capillaries" - Does anybody have any science to actually show this?

"High mileage makes you stronger and strengthens your connective tissue" - What about the people who get injured from too much mileage?

What if I were to say high mileage makes your vision sharper? There is just as much evidence that it increases your vision as that it increases the number of capillaries you have, correct?

Similar question, but what exactly makes it so that a certain pace goes from feeling like you're nearly sprinting, to feeling like a job?

Ok, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but for example maybe 6:30 pace feeling like a pretty fast run, eventually feeling like a jog, like your legs aren't moving as fast.

The science wrote:

"High mileage gives you more capillaries" - Does anybody have any science to actually show this?

You can find lots of articles on this, but here is a free one that mentions it -

The science wrote:

"High mileage gives you more capillaries" - Does anybody have any science to actually show this?

What if I were to say high mileage makes your vision sharper? There is just as much evidence that it increases your vision as that it increases the number of capillaries you have, correct?

check this paper out:

its pretty technical but conclusively shows that endurance exercise increases a growth factor called VEGF, which leads to angiogenesis (increased capillary bed size).

No runner manages 13' for 5000m without something near <50sec 400m speed. And the fastest US runner in that event does not run high mileage.

The fastest 800/1500m runner in the US does not do high mileage either.

And when it comes to the 10000m remember, whatever mileage Solinsky runs, that is the absolute most he needs to run the time, not the least.

The ability to sustain a running speed is not simply a function of miles run, or years spent training. If it were, 70 year old ultra runners would dominate at every XC and track championship.

...And when it comes to the 10000m remember, whatever mileage Solinsky runs, that is the absolute most he needs to run the time, not the least.

The ability to sustain a running speed is not simply a function of miles run, or years spent training. If it were, 70 year old ultra runners would dominate at every XC and track championship.

Well you're wrong about that or Paula Radcliffe would not have run her 2 fastest 10's (30:01 and 30:17) after marathon training. She got faster because her aerobic fitness improved. Over two years of 120-140 MPW did that. And while she wasn't 70 years old, she was 28 and 30 years old respectively.

I think this (what makes 6:30 pace feel like a jog) is actually mostly speed/power/coordination. Even if you're a high school 400m runner who has great speed and relatively low endurance, you might not be able to run 6:30 pace for very long, but it will feel very slow, at least at first. Compare this to a high school 3200m runner who is racing 11:00 for 3200. 6:30 is only 1min/mile off his race pace, and it won't feel like a jog, despite that the 3200m runner will be able to hold 6:30 pace for longer. I think this is part of the reason why you see on college cross country teams that the guys coming from the 800/1500 in track tend to run their base runs faster than the guys coming from the 10000. If a group of 27 minute 8k guys gets carried away and runs a 10 miler in 60minutes, likely the guys coming from the 10k background will have an easier time handling the run than the 800/1500 guys, but the 800/1500 guys probably find the pace, at least early on, easier to handle. I think it comes down to the differential between the fastest "comfortable" pace (very fast) and the given pace that makes it perceptually seem slow, which comes down to a combination of energy systems, muscular strength, power, and coordination, form, and who knows what else.

To the OP: I think something not mentioned heavily on this thread that probably matters: If you're logging 100mpw at 6:30 pace, yeah you're running slower than race pace (say race pace is 4:45 pace for whatever distance you're racing), but there is still a very significant muscular demand from the accumulation of 6:30 miles that is going to be somewhat similar muscularly to 4:45 pace. I like to think of pace training as a tube of toothpaste: Race pace is right in the middle, and sure, you might get the most paste out in one squeeze if you squeeze the middle, but squeezing anywhere will have an effect on the contents of the rest of the tube to some extent. Again, it's not the science, but it's a model that I find useful.

I don't think you need to focus on miles. Focus on running surface. The best way to get faster is to keep it on the crete.

dsrunner has the day off wrote:

[1]No runner manages 13' for 5000m without something near <50sec 400m speed. And the fastest US runner in that event does not run high mileage.

[2]The fastest 800/1500m runner in the US does not do high mileage either.

[3]And when it comes to the 10000m remember, whatever mileage Solinsky runs, that is the absolute most he needs to run the time, not the least.

[4]The ability to sustain a running speed is not simply a function of miles run, or years spent training. If it were, 70 year old ultra runners would dominate at every XC and track championship.

1. So are you saying that a 14:xx 5ker who drops their 400 PR from 55 to 50 will drop their 5k time by a minute? Not likely. But it actually often works the other way around. You're taking correlation and implying causation the wrong direction. Also, all top U.S. and world 5k runners have run many many more lifetime miles than just about anyone under the age of 20-22.

2. Obviously the 800m and the 1500m to an extent have a bigger anaerobic component than the 5k-10k. That doesn't negate the point of this thread -- in general, higher mileage makes you faster at distance events. Otherwise 800 guys would all train like sprinters.

3. Where did you get this from?? BS.

4. You're twisting things. Nobody said it was that simple. But all successful pro runners have something in common -- they run a lot.

Summary: this is always an interesting discussion because nobody knows all the reasons and mechanisms. But it works. "You may not believe in mileage, but you sure as hell run mileage."

Runner A does 40 miles/week including several "workouts" aimed at 13:00-minute 5K racing. Say 12 x 400 in 60 w/200 meter jog. Runner B does the exact same workouts as Runner A, but logs 80 total miles a week, because he does a lot more EZ mileage.

How much faster is Runner B than Runner A? Is it enough to justify the extra 40 miles a week? Or would Runner B be better off doing something different, say, power and plyometric exercises?

Yes, these articles discuss VEGF which causes angiogenesis.

Where is there evidence that doing 100 miles a week causes greater VEGF expression and greater angiogenesis than doing 60 miles per week. I am talking about diminishing returns physiologically. If you theoretically did 400 miles a week, would that improve capillarization 4x greater than 100 miles a week?

It is a gigantic extrapolation to say that because endurance trained individuals have greater something than sedentary individuals that higher mileage causes this physiological adaptation to a greater degree than lower mileage.

A lot has been demonstrated with physiology, but all these "facts" floating around with high mileage training seem to be unsubstantiated.