People making up weekly mileage?

I always say people's mileage accounts are a lot like their drinking accounts.

People tend to think of the biggest week they ever had, and act like that's their "average."

i.e. 'I had like five beers at that birthday thing on Thursday and a six at Mike's on Friday. I didn't drink anything on the weekend, just because I was with my girlfriend and she doesn't like to drink, but but MOST weekends I drink about 12 beers. I average about 23 beers a week' NO YOU DON'T. Same with miles.

If people actually look at their logs and divide the number of miles they ran in the year by 52, with no dropped weeks for recoveries, tapers, vacation, etc, and no credit given for planned miles not run (yes, some people do this) I think real mileage would be about 70% of reported mileage.

Yeah and I have ran more than 40 miles, in fact over the summer i did as much as 60 in one week, but I seriously cannot imagine running that much now with school and cross country meets and stuff.

I think many runners try to downplay how much they are running. In particular if they are slow. People typically run more than they claim to look more talented than they really are.

well, imagine it. My hs xc team does 60-70 through October, and in college most of our top guys are averaging 85-95.

People really count miles they planned to run but didn't?? That's asinine.

I would agree with what the other poster said that people tend to state the highest week they ever did, or maybe the highest they hit on a semi-regular basis and state that as the average.

I think that this is part ego, part wanting to show off, and part not wanting to let the competition know what you are doing. Runners/coaches tend to be like chef's, or fishermen, they never want to give away exactly how they did something, just vague innuendos intended to hide the truth, like the way they do it is some super secret formula.

Also, stories tend to get exaggerated over time, it's like the telephone game. I remember one year in high school as one of the better runners in my conference talking to my coach at a meet about a particular week during the summer where I had gone a little overboard. I was finishing up one run and my legs started to give out underneath me, all wobbley and weak, so I started to walk, and it wasn't any better, so I just sat down for a little while, and then walked home. This was a one day occurrence and I promptly backed off and recovered. Anyway, apparently another runner from a rival school overheard this, and pretty soon this was what I had been doing all summer. I was later approached with this and had no idea what the other person was talking about, until I remembered the conversation with my coach and connected the dots.

On the other side lots of runners understate their mileage. That was the way my college program was. We wrote mileage in a similar fashion to the Badger mile philosophy. A lot of times during the summer when I'm going out and running 5:30 to 6:00 pace every day with no workouts I would write down 75-85 and it was in reality much closer to the 85-95 range. The highest I've ever logged is 105, and I've only written down 100+ twice, but that 105 week was probably 115, and I've written down lots of 95s that were really 105. Why? I have no idea.

Training post-collegiately I knew lots of people who hit 120 miles or so on occasion, but maybe one or two that broke 100 week in and week out.

I guess the bottom line is that to take anything people say about their training with a grain of salt, unless you know them really well and actually are familiar with what they do.

60 - 70 miles per week in HS is really not excessive. Even on race days my guys get in 9 - 10 miles just by jogging the 5k course before the race, racing it, and then cooling down by jogging the course again.

tough to say. I won't go into absolutes. The truth is somewhere in the middle. The problem is all the posters before me all make sense. If that makes any sense to you. Too many factors to consider. The guy's personality, confidence. Read somewhere, during the epic days of Shorter Vs Boston Billy, and a few other top guys. These guys met at races, but never uttered a word of what training and how much they where running. What does it means? Maybe the they're Pros and don't wanna give the other guy an edge. Your guess is as good as mine's.

You may be right about people stating their highest week, but I did 85-95 average in late HS, no exaggerations. People on my team did similar stuff, with lots of guys in the 60s. 85-95 is really not as crazy as you may think, just 12 miles on easy days, more for long runs, less for race days.

6:30s pace is definitely not unusual. Speed-oriented guys can run faster than that comfortably (provided we're discussing the good HS runners). I stuck with 7:30s pace during most of those high mileage weeks, but after a season of fitness, I ran 6:30s-6:50s on easy runs. Give it time; those paces come with long-term fitness.

Let's see, your logic comes down to this. "I run 40 miles per week. Someone else says they do 60. Therefore, they must be exaggerating."

Got it. That makes perfect sense to me.

It has never occurred to me the someone might be exaggerating their mileage, and if they had, I wouldn't care a bit, especially if the exaggeration is a pathetically low amount like 60 miles!

malmo wrote:

Let's see, your logic comes down to this. "I run 40 miles per week. Someone else says they do 60. Therefore, they must be exaggerating."

Got it. That makes perfect sense to me.

It has never occurred to me the someone might be exaggerating their mileage, and if they had, I wouldn't care a bit, especially if the exaggeration is a pathetically low amount like 60 miles!

Are you always this nasty? The OP comes across as reasonably sincere and asking an honest question. And you blast him? WTF?

Who the heck knows wrote:

Are you always this nasty? The OP comes across as reasonably sincere and asking an honest question. And you blast him? WTF?

He deserves it. He's sincere about calling someone else a liar with no evidence? That makes sense to me.

As the saying goes, "just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they're still not out to get you."

agree. it was completely unfounded to imply they were lying about their weekly mileage. Flawed logic as well.

malmo wrote:

As the saying goes, "just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they're still not out to get you."

Thank you so much for qualifying the just because/doesn't mean statement with the necessary it. People incorrectly use that format more than I can handle.

Lying is such a harsh word. malmo I respect you for at least answering the question that I asked. I would have to disagree that everyone is 100% honest about what they do for training.

malmo wrote:

Who the heck knows wrote:

Are you always this nasty? The OP comes across as reasonably sincere and asking an honest question. And you blast him? WTF?

He deserves it. He's sincere about calling someone else a liar with no evidence? That makes sense to me.

As the saying goes, "just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they're still not out to get you."

Malmo, he didn't call anyone a liar, stop being a prick. The OP seems naive and honestly curious if people run that much.

The answer is yes, people really run that much, and a lot more, some do it in high school, a lot do it if they run in college. 60 miles is not a lot.

The other answer is yes, sometimes people lie or exaggerate what they are doing. I would advise you not to worry about it, it doesn't make any difference to you what other people are doing. Just train hard and race hard.

eojtlc wrote:

Malmo, he didn't call anyone a liar, stop being a prick. The OP seems naive and honestly curious if people run that much.

Of course not.

Quality Runner wrote:

How much would you say people exaggerate their mileage when they say they do like 60 miles or higher?

I just want to know if you think a lot of guys make up what they run.

My experience is that distance runners who lie tend to exaggerate how much they are training. E.g., "Yeah, last week was kind of a down week so I only did 200 miles." They want everyone to think that they are a real tough guy. Sprinters who lie tend to low-ball their training. E.g., "Yeah, I only train like once a week, if that." They want everyone to think, "Man, if he really trained he'd run like 42 point."

But seriously, I don't think most people lie about their training. If they just give some vague figure as an average that is probably because they assume (probably rightly) that most people don't want a week by week, day by day break down of their training. To counteract this, if I'm asked I just give a range; I just say something like "30-100 a week, depending on where I am."

The one type of dishonesty that I have seen that almost all runners engage in is having courses that are "10 miles," or "20 miles," that are really like 9 1/2 miles or 19 miles. I know in college we had one course that was supposed to be eight miles, but people would often do it in like 41 or 42 minutes. One day two me and two of my teammates went for a run on it, and one called it 6, one called it 7, and the other called it 8. That is an extreme example, but almost everybody has at least a couple of these courses. Some people even have courses that are too long. So 100 might be 95, or it might be 105. It is very unlikely that someone does 50 a week and says they do 100.

malmo wrote: Let's see, your logic comes down to this. "I run 40 miles per week. Someone else says they do 60. Therefore, they must be exaggerating."

In my experience, on average, runners in high school inflate their mileage totals, runners in college most accurately state their miles and post-collegiate runners understate their mileage totals.