Cam Levins just ran a 190 mile week

Also he tweeted

37 miles today! Plus still had time to see "Skyfall" with my girlfriend. #success

Baller.

why on earth is he running that much?

was 150 not cutting it anymore?

christ

you'd have to think the quality work isn't that high

I'm assuming he's maintaining nowhere near this mileage for periods of time right? If he's 23 and going pro and wants to continuing improving I would think he would increase mileage progressively. Maybe 15+ miles per year. Not 40. It's hard to imagine him doing 250 MPW without mentally breaking down.

I suppose he knows what's best for him though.

We don't really know the context of this week though.

Its high but he's not averaging this many per week. Plus he's probably still in some form of base phase so he probably isn't hitting the quality too hard

I think Jos Hermens got up to 200 before his Achilles ruptured in a race and his career ended.

Why does he have to keep increasing mileage? Can't he just increase the intensity. I remember him saying he adds stuff year after year, and doesnt get rid of anything.

t94bell wrote:

I'm assuming he's maintaining nowhere near this mileage for periods of time right? If he's 23 and going pro and wants to continuing improving I would think he would increase mileage progressively. Maybe 15+ miles per year. Not 40. It's hard to imagine him doing 250 MPW without mentally breaking down.

I suppose he knows what's best for him though.

What are you even trying to say? Where do you get the idea that Levins has increased him mileage by "40" in a year? Running 190 miles in one week tells you nothing about the other 51 weeks. Look back on some of his interviews, when he was in the NCAA he was running as many as 150 miles SOME weeks, not ALL weeks. Look at this bit of Bill Rodgers' log:

While he runs as many as 200 miles a week, he also hits a whole bunch of double digit weeks. His mileage is all over the place. I would guess Levins' schedule looks something like that.

most fail to realize this is how most african (elite runners) get real good.

they run 3 times a day getting in high milage....then sleep and eat. That is their secret.

Some of the stuff in the Bill Rodgers log is pretty funny.

"4 - Tue 11 miles @ noon - OK pace, flat, 16° Cold as a farty New England dog sht day can be! 9° at 7:30 AM and 16° went(sic) I ran at noon for 1 hr 15 mins - about 11 miles at OK pace over flat course - have chest cold & hacking cough so did not run in the PM! Shit!

5 - Wed 0 Snowed like shit - 1 foot of the slime. Naturally the asholes didn't cancel school! cold became much worse and 101° temp. is good to have a few days before racing..."

even as a single week, 190 miles is just plain silly.

doing the volume gets highly addictive plain and simple.

the biggest reason he would look to do more is that

he never approached his training from a quality orientation

so he knows no other moves to play.

the biggest barrier to sub 13/27 is speed side but here, also his reluctance to cap his volume at something moderate enough to allow for

quality work.

dsrunner wrote:

even as a single week, 190 miles is just plain silly.

doing the volume gets highly addictive plain and simple.

the biggest reason he would look to do more is that

he never approached his training from a quality orientation

so he knows no other moves to play.

the biggest barrier to sub 13/27 is speed side but here, also his reluctance to cap his volume at something moderate enough to allow for

quality work.

Ever hear of periodization?

10 more miles and he will tie ian edwards 200 mile week pr.

Not really impressive. I can jump on my bike and ride this far in ONE SITTING. And I'm not a famous athlete, I'm a nobody. Tweet when you break 12:50 or something.

Perhaps Mr. Levins is just messing with people by tweeting about super-high mileage. If I were in his position, I'd be sorely tempted to do just that.

I love how people are calling him stupid for running that much when he has been going from pr to pr all last year running 3 seasons and then the Olympics. But of course the LRC knows how he should change his training to be even better!

I got the impression from some of his interviews last year that he was doing a lot of speed work and a lot of quality. I don't know that you can look at the way he mowed down great runners all year and say he lacked speed.

Also thanks to whoever posted those training logs. Man, Bill Rodgers was a boss. Can you imagine any runner today getting really sick and missing two days of training and still going down and running like a boss at an xc meet a few days later?

when they start giving medals for being an animal, he will be competing for the gold!!!

someone had to do it wrote:

From his twitter:

Cam Levins ‏@CamLevins

Just finished up running 190 miles this week! New record! #timetosleep

https://twitter.com/CamLevins/status/267877926232530944

guy is an animal

Even better, this might be even a bigger jump for him.