Thoughts on Running Less to Run Faster

If you slog 40-50 miles per week at 9 to 10 minute miles, this book will take you from a 4 hour marathon to a 3:30.

It won't take you from a 3:30 to a 3:00.

That being said, at 49 years, I can't take the pounding of 60 or 70 miles per week. The book ain't bad. It can be summarized as focused quality with impact reduction cross training beats LSD.

Shawn H wrote:

...No, they do a particular body part intensely just twice a week, and NEVER more than three times a week. And yet we runners exercise the same body parts EVERY day, and we so often get injured.

Difference is we aren't "exercising a body part" - the majority of running time in any program is geared towards aerobic conditioning.

I've known people who cycle a LOT to do a single, very hard quality session a week and run "decent" times (sub 1:30 half). For most distances you need a strong aerobic profile + race specific conditioning. In an ideal world your aerobic profile would be gained via slow running as that also confers other, running specific benefits (strengthening muscles, tendons) but can also be gained through other training. If your choice is less miles and being able to race consistently, or more miles and more missed races due to injury, it's a no brainier.

However, I don't think a runner who is doing good, sustainable volume at appropriate paces would get faster by running less over the whole cycle, excluding tapers and rest weeks.

Difference is we aren't "exercising a body part" - the majority of running time in any program is geared towards aerobic conditioning.

Just to clarify my first point - you don't run to workout your quads for example, that's not the purpose of most mileage. You might do a single hill sprint session once a week that is analogous to a body building, but no right minded runner would do this every day and not expect to run in to problems at some point.

Sub 2:40 marathon on 30 miles a week. I just make sure they're fast miles.

No core, no stretching, no weight lifting, no workouts. Drinking encouraged.

This sort of thing comes up all the time and I can think of three responses.

The first is that running is not weight lifting. If you want to know what will bring your best running results why would you imitate weight lifters and not runners?

The second is that you should never trust what Runner's World is pushing these days. They have an interest in getting as many people involved with the sport, and buying their products, as possible. For decades now they've done that by trying to convince people that they can be "serious" runners while doing very little actual running. That's not necessarily a bad thing and yes, people have run decent marathons on 3-4 days a week of running. Heck, in the really old days that was a pretty common routine for guys like Les Pawson, Old Kelly, and so on but it's not a routine that's going to get you the best marathon you're capable of. On the other hand, if you can manage a 3-4 day a week routine but think that trying to run 6-7 days a week would push you out of the sport then obviously you're better off on 3-4 days.

The third is that at times you will be able to run faster by reducing mileage because you'll likely run faster on those fewer miles even if your effort is the same as when you were running more. But the trick is REDUCING miles, i.e., 60 mile weeks done after a few months at 90 is not the same as 60 mile weeks done after a few months at 40. My best races always came at a time when I'd reduced my mileage a bit. But after a time at the reduced miles it was necessary to go back to bigger volumes for a while and then reduce again, etc.

Hmmm. I think I need to clarify my thinking a bit. Here's my own weekly running schedule that I used for about three months. Same schedule, every week. I ran a 4:10 mile time trial on this schedule. Now, of course this was several months after my first terrible college cross country season when I was injured, but I guess I had a pretty good base to work with, but you'll notice how easy my easy days were, and how quality my quality days were. And yet the overall mileage was quite low with a maximum of 43 miles. This is what I mean when I'm talking about running less to run faster. Like a weight lifter--hard days, followed by really easy or nothing. And it worked. I want your thoughts.

Monday: 10-mile mountain run, with 6-8 long hill repeats.

Tuesday: 3-4 miles easy on dirt roads.

Wednesday: 4-5 miles total, including a one-mile or two- mile time trial.

Thursday: 4-5 miles, with 10 X 100 meter leg speed drills, at 98% effort, with good recovery.

Friday: 3-4 miles easy on dirt roads.

Saturday: 8-10 miles total on rolling hills and dirt roads, including 3-5 high quality miles in the middle.

Sunday: Total rest and light stretching.

The article you linked to was more about marathons I believe, I skimmed it, didn't analyze it, than miles so my reply was geared more towards longer races. Lots of people have run pretty decently at the mile on not much mileage. Bowerman reportedly had someone do it on about 25 a week which is about what Bannister did. I don't think Kip Keino ran much more than you're doing here and he was very good even at 5,000 meters. On the other hand, a few years ago Track and Field News had an article exploring the decline of 1500/mile performances in the US. Marty Liquori and Steve Scott both blamed it on milers no longer doing Lydiard style base work so maybe you'd be even faster if you'd done more, but maybe not.

One question that comes to mind is how much running went into that "pretty good base" you had for cross country. That sort of thing doesn't go away. A lot of people will change their training a coupe months or so before they have a really good performance and think that the work in those months was the reason they ran well. And it is, but only partly. It's the work they did in those two months and in the years before combined.

The point is, who is Shawn H and why should we care? I don't get he point of your post. You are a nobody. "Hard days followed by really easy" is not exactly a new concept. That's pretty much what EVERYONE does.Let's see your marathon time on that mileage. Who cares about a 4:10 time trial?

I think it works especially well for beginners.

When I started running a year ago I was a new mom. With a 6 month old it was near impossible to run 6 days a week. So I ran 3 days and made one of them a tough workout. I did about 12-15 miles a week. After 2 months of this I was able to pull out a 26 minute 5k. I know that doesn't sound fast, but when you are still waking up 1-2 times a night to feed an infant, it's a decent time. I was 5/70 in my age group, and probably the first woman with an infant under age 1.

I'm pretty sure if I was just slogging slow miles 6 days a week I would have either been injured, dead from exhaustion, or slower.

But in the long term, for a non-beginner who is healthy and has TIME, more running is better.

For beginners for sure. Too often beginning runners are just worried about doing their daily 4-5 miles at the same pace over the same course. Heck even experienced runners can fall into the trap of only running a daily slog instead of doing some actual workouts.

You dumbo wrote:

The point is, who is Shawn H and why should we care? I don't get he point of your post. You are a nobody. "Hard days followed by really easy" is not exactly a new concept. That's pretty much what EVERYONE does.

Let's see your marathon time on that mileage. Who cares about a 4:10 time trial?

[/quote]

Well, if we want to ask "who is" somebody and "why should we care," we'd have to discount what 99% of the people who post here have to say because most of us our equally nobodies. And maybe by asking my question to a bunch of nobodies, I really prove that I AM a nobody, because why would anybody who IS anybody care what a bunch of nobodies might reply? You get what I'm saying, dude who goes by the nobody name of "You dumbo"?

Now my whole point is that the concept of that book is really that by running just three or four times a week and making it all higher quality, you can run faster. In my own experience, as a nobody, I think that's true for most of us nobodies, at least. My best performances came more than three decades ago when I actually got smart enough to learn that by running no more than four harder/higher mileage sessions a week, and making the other days nothing or almost nothing, I improved a LOT more than I ever had by just trying to put in a lot of mileage. Does that make sense to all of the nobodies here? And if there's anyone who reads this forum who is actually a somebody, what do YOU think?

Fellow nobodies, it all,comes down to what works best for you.

I felt a base mileage has to be done before I could drop miles per week to work on fewer days a week runs and to train faster.

Everyone has to find their best fit for training.

T-Rex wrote:

Fellow nobodies, it all,comes down to what works best for you.

I felt a base mileage has to be done before I could drop miles per week to work on fewer days a week runs and to train faster.

Everyone has to find their best fit for training.

Thank you, T-Rex. A voice of reason. The book supports one theory that has apparently worked for a lot of people. My own non-scientific theory, based only on my own experience of WHAT WORKS BEST for me, is that by running quality miles (speed, hills, tempo, a time trial, or a long run) just three or four days a week while doing nothing or almost nothing on the other three days you can improve a lot more than if you are a mileage hound or a speedwork freak like I was in high school. Of course, a 4:10 mile doesn't make me a somebody, but I think it's relatively successful, and it helps support my own theory of "run less to run faster." And I think this just might hold true for ANY distance from the mile to the marathon, at least for us "nobodies," who constitute most runners in the world.

It's definitely worth trying if you are struggling to break 4 hours.

R2D3 wrote:

It's definitely worth trying if you are struggling to break 4 hours.

Right. And it's definitely worth trying if you are an older runner who doesn't recover as fast as you used to, or a younger runner who is always getting injured by just pushing yourself to the max all the time with no one to teach you any different, like I did.

I can do it wrote:

Sub 2:40 marathon on 30 miles a week. I just make sure they're fast miles.

No core, no stretching, no weight lifting, no workouts. Drinking encouraged.

Running a 2.40 marathon on just 30 mpw week is just a waste of talent. A marathon deserves more respect than that.

Didn't the USA try the less is more. Quality over quanity in the 80's and early 90's and our distance runners dropped out of the world ranks?

I don't think it was less mileage that made USA drop out of the rankings. I think it was the change in attitue amongs African runners, they took the sport to a new level and the distance runners in the rest of the world lost their confidence to compete with them.

There are no free lunches in aerobic training. More is better and faster is better. That said, some people get hurt from high milage or speed, or both. If you get hurt, more training is actually less training since you lose your training effect while you can't train due to injury. Also, if you drastically change training you may get new benefits. For example, running 50 mpw at easy pace every month will stop improving you after a few years. Changing to 40 mpw with hard speed work will elicit new adaptations if you have not done it before.

As you probably know, many / most runners can train more than they actually want to. This is a simple question of priority. Even if you *can* run 100 miles a week, you may not want to. it takes a long time and you will feel tired all the the time. You'd race better though.

Run less run faster will work for people who have never done much regular speed work, esp if they were not at much higher milage. 30 miles / week with lots of speed is better than 40 mpw with no speed. It's probably not better than 60 mpw. It's definitely not better than 60 mpw with speed!