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

Yes, somebody has the science that shows this.No one gets injured from running too many miles, but from running the miles too intensely.Less science exists for running sharpening your vision (Good hypothesis though. Maybe with increased blood flow, and relaxed state...)I wouldn't dwell too much on capillary density. My understanding is they develop quickly. Once developed, they don't keep getting more dense. Afterwards running improvements come from other sources.

The science wrote:

"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?

Actually, no one got injured by simply running too many miles or running them too hard. They were injured because they PROGRESSED UP TO THERE TOO SOON.

I have a similiar sentiment as Ryan Foreman, in disappointment with most of the answers. (Now it's my turn to disappoint.)

I think the problem is not so much with the answers, but with the question. The question itself is quite vague and subject to a broad range of interpretations.

Does high mileage make you faster? Well maybe indirectly. Training to race makes you faster. Is there one mechanism? There must be hundreds of changes that happen with training. I guess there are also a few ways to do high mileage, and not to mention a few ways to interpret "faster" (do you mean higher top speed, or that slow endurance runs get faster?).

The thinking in high mileage camps, is that periods of high mileage develop your endurance, so that when you change to periods of higher intensity track training, you can tolerate higher volumes of workouts.

There are short term physical adaptations that take place: heart gets stronger, and grows larger; capillary density; mitochondrial growth and density; loss of weight/fat; robustness of joints; improved muscle strength and endurance.

But short term means short term. After about a year, you've grown about as many capillaries and mitochondria as you're gonna, and lost about all the fat you're gonna lose. Improvements start coming from other longer term sources.

There are some adaptations that only occur at the end of very long runs, when you start entering a glycogen depleted state (e.g. something like coaxing the glycogen out of unused fast twitch fibers).

There are also some long term efficiency considerations, along the lines of "practice makes perfect". Similar to playing the piano, you get better at running, simply by doing lots of it. Your brain, nerves, and muscles, over the course of decades, with each mile (or kilometer) fine tune the timing, orchestration and activation of muscles, so that everything works in concert, and opposing muscles don't oppose each other. Think of this as comparing a high school orchestra versus a symphony orchestra, or tuning an engine with 1000 spark plugs, and cables of random length.

There are also mental and psychological aspects to consider too.

So searching for a single mechanism will leave you with an incomplete answer.

All training includes slow, medium, and fast workouts, combined in some fashion. A lot of discussion is how to combine these workouts, to produce optimal or maximal results. But the human body can adapt to many things. To a certain degree (maybe a small one), you can exchange a lot of quantity for a little quality, and still get similar results. The human body also varies from person to person. Some may respond better to relatively low mileage, with a higher volume of intensity, than others who work better on higher mileage, with smaller volumes of intensity.

I run 250 mi per week average. I run 12:20 for 5k, just haven't done in any big meets so you have not heard of me yet. I think anybody could run 14min off of 25mi/week, but I do more because I am tougher. You're all just a bunch of wimps.

Seriously, though. Every distance runner needs to do a good bit over distance, some tempo, some speed and some over speed to be the best they can be. What defines high mileage? Good question. The max you can handle without breaking down. When you go beyond about 90min in a run, you are recruiting more fast twitch muscles (vs slow) and burning more fat (than carbos). You begin to train your muscles to work better when tired. Even a 100m specialist does not go to a workout and do 3x30m and call it a day. Nor does a miler run 3-4x400 everyday.

Even those pro runners who do lower mileage tend to do a lot of quality and typically do a lot of extra stuff like plyometrics and weights that don't count in the mileage. In other words, they are still doing volume, just not miles.

You have to train tired to learn to race tired. That is why heavy training volume works.

Exquisite Corpse wrote:

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.

So if I squeeze hard at the base, this will get more of it out?

girlfriend wrote:

So if I squeeze hard at the base, this will get more of it out?

I'm not sure which of two ways you mean this question. So, I'll give two answers. In the long term (and in the analogy), you will get more out by squeezing the base. In the short term, your quickest gains will come by squeezing the middle. That said, you can choose to look at the "base" as top end speed, or as very extended endurance. The analogy is more simple if you view the base as top end speed. If you view it as extended endurance, then you have to consider that you're getting away from pace as the sole or even primary parameter, as you're obviously not going to make increases in performance by simply running really slowly. The pace will certainly be slower, but the main parameter at this point is the duration, and as you get better and better, this pace has to be faster and faster.

So, two tubes: The base of one is absolute pace, the base of the other is duration, complicated by the fact that this is at some pace or set of paces.

Really, you have to think about pace even in the case of absolute pace, of course, but we're much more comfortable thinking about duration as being inherent in pace (i.e. if you want to run 4min pace as a 4min miler, your intervals are likely to be between 30sec and 3min long).

Again, it's an analogy that I find helpful, not something I expect to solve all the question of high mileage in training. The question always remains how to personalize any analogy, concept, etc. to the athlete.

I agree that its not clear what the original poster was asking. But I was surprised that people accepted as fact the basic premise that high mileage makes people go faster. I take "faster" to mean more speed, not speed endurance. Those are two totally different things. But maybe he did mean speed endurance. In any case, you have to resolve that before launching into the physiology and all that stuff.

nice post!

My take:

I posted here yesterday on a similar topic. An error I had and probably still make in my 25 plus years training is doing what I think I should do rather than being more tuned to the feedback of my body and performances daily.

Mileage taken as the endgame in training has made me chronically stale on too many occasions. Mileage has also made me strong. The answer is not reducible. It has mostly been a mater of paying attention and doing more of what works and less of what doesn't. It's that simple and also that complex.

That sounds very confusing but your graphic is useful.

It seems to me the top of the tube is the speed end because it can come out there the fastest. More can come from deeper in the tube, and the most from the base, except that getting everything from the base takes much longer, which is fine as I'm very patient. The base takes longer to develop.

Everything comes out the top, speed end of the tube, but how much and how deep depends on how much the whole tube has been worked and developed. This is exciting!

It might be best to start with the top, as that's were everything comes out anyway, than gradually work down to the base, squeeze hard and the base and suck everything up through the tube. Then start over and do the same thing again, working down through the tube, squeezing hard and pulling back up through the length. Well I think the tube would get longer this way too, as we keep working on the base, along with all the other aspects of the tube.

Benefit, you don't have enough intelligence for even the 1st grade!

How hard is it to understand that if your event is the 100m sprint, for example, you can't train for it by jogging!

What the hell were you doing in 1st grade, smoking in the bathroom?

smeeeeeeee wrote:

What exactly is the mechanism that makes you faster? I would have thought it would just give you super high endurance. Why does it make you faster?

High mileage doesn't make you faster, it makes you STRONGER, and when you are stronger, you can run for a longer period of time at the pace you want.

As Mr. Canova has been telling us, what we are looking for is not SPEED, but rather ENDURANCE EXTENSION.

Exquisite Corpse wrote:

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.

Either you´re Hadd, or you´ve stolen the toothpaste metaphore directly from him.

well. wrote:

[quote]Exquisite Corpse wrote:

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.

better metaphor

Brian: "Well uh, I suppose if you imagine it like a parking space that you think 'gosh there's no way I'm going to be able to fit in there' but then you fold in the side view mirrors and sure enough, well look at that."

Stewie: "Well in that scenario it sounds like I'd rather be the parking space than the car."

Brian: "Yeah, that's what I've always guessed."

So, if I do high mileage, I will not get faster (being able to race Usain Bolt), but I will get stronger (being able to compete in world' strongest man competition).

This is why this message board can be filled with such conflicting advice - people mean one thing and then say another.

Long runs do not make you stronger or faster. They increase your endurance. Speed training makes you faster. Weight training makes you stronger. Plyometrics increases your power.

This recent journal article also appears to be relevant to this discussion:

"Low-Load High Volume Resistance Exercise Stimulates Muscle Protein Synthesis More Than High-Load Low Volume Resistance Exercise in Young Men"

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0012033

This is how I think of it-

You gradually increase mileage- I am talking over a year to year span, not week to week, month to month, season to season, etc.

You adapt (or don't adapt) to increased training. If done smartly, 95% of runners should be able to increase training load without injury. Everyone thinks they need to bump their mileage up 5-10 miles a week so they can write down that they ran one 100 mile week in their log in preparation for their upcoming season...when really a string of 3-4 consistent 85-90 mile weeks would do more benefit.

So now that you've built up a resistance to consistent training, you are able to actually TRAIN at an increased capacity. Not just more mileage but better mileage at a slightly better pace, longer workouts, etc. I think of it like this- if last year you ran your 5x mile workout at 5:30 per mile, if this year you can run that same workout and same effort at 5:20 per mile, that is significant improvement. It took you 50 seconds less to run the same workout than the year before. Whether those 10 sec per mile came from increased mileage, increased time spent cross training, increased weight training, drills, strides, etc., it came from SOME form of increased training that your body was able to handle.

Higher volume of training due to increased resistance to fatigue/breakdown built up steadily over time = ability to handle longer/faster runs and workouts = better results.

Well said buildingblocks. To paraphrase Peter Snell - It's not the mileage that makes you a great runner, it's the workouts you can do because of the mileage.

ever heard the saying "practice makes perfect?". the more you can run at a higher intensity, the better you will get at running. end of thread

I had this explained to me once by a very successful distance coach, and I really took a lot from it.

When you train, your body activates muscle fibers in groups, not fast twitch and slow twitch, but different groupings of both muscle types. When you're running a sustained effort over a long period of time (1.5 to 2 hours) your body gradually activates and fatigues every grouping of muscle fibers needed to complete the long effort. This fatigue, if allowed to recover properly, generates improvement in the efficiency of the muscle fibers.

When you do an interval workout that requires you to go anaerobic, you must take a longer break between reps in order to maintain the pace. During this break the muscle fiber groups activated during the interval are allowed to recover, thus the body does not need to activate multiple groups in order to complete the workout.

Contrary to popular opinion, a race is better replicated by a long sustained run, than an interval session at race pace for this reason. In a race your body activates muscle fibers in groups just like in the long run, and just like the long run each fiber group is exhausted and another group is recruited to fill it's void. When you've been using high mileage, your body has experienced the exhaustion of high numbers of muscle fiber groups multiple times, thus it can handle the same demands more efficiently in a race. If you've cut your mileage to focus on race pace and anaerobic intervals, you have not fully experienced this stress.

A lot of times you can tell a mileage trained runner from an interval trained runner in a race because their race resembles the type of work they do in preparation: the mileage runners will generally run even races, sometimes with strong last miles where as an interval trained runner will go out at their race pace, then be forced to slow clear to anaerobic threshold pace to recover (like an interval workout) and have a strong finish.

Before we switched our training to play towards this philosophy, we were low mileage (30 to 40 mpw) with 2 interval sessions and a race.

At the pinnacle of our season our top runner ran his 5k race at these splits: 5:18; 5:39; 5:46; :37 for a 17:20. This was the basic race pattern of all the runners on the team.

Now, after switching our training, our races look like this: (2009 state meet)

1.) 5:19; 5:19; 5:17; :35 -- 16:30

2.) 5:24; 5:30: 5:27; :36 -- 16:57

3.) 5:24; 5:31; 5:30; :37 -- 17:02

4.) 5:25; 5:31; 5:34; :37 -- 17:07

5.) 5:29; 5:34; 5:33; :36 -- 17:12