Do you remember your first 100 mile week?

January of 2010 in upstate NY with my college training partner. He finished his weeks on Sunday at the time, while I finished on Saturday. Ran a race on the Saturday and got a 7 mile cooldown to finish up, then did 19 the next day with him so he could get his 100. Absolutely surreal feeling the last 5 miles of his run. Can't put words to it - have never felt that way running (training/racing/anything) since, even during subsequent solo 100+ mile weeks.

The first time I hit 100, it changed me as a runner forever. I had been hitting 90's so it wasn't a huge deal from a physical standpoint, but as someone mentioned earlier - the mental shackles were far stronger than I had anticipated. Once they were broken, I was completely convinced I could do anything. Of course, I was just a kid going into my senior year of high school, so back then your mind doesn't really know the limitations of reality that tend to set in during your college years and beyond.

Best summer ever. Thanks for bringing back that memory, OP.

cien milles wrote:

The first time I hit 100, it changed me as a runner forever. I had been hitting 90's so it wasn't a huge deal from a physical standpoint, but as someone mentioned earlier - the mental shackles were far stronger than I had anticipated. Once they were broken, I was completely convinced I could do anything. Of course, I was just a kid going into my senior year of high school, so back then your mind doesn't really know the limitations of reality that tend to set in during your college years and beyond.

THIS.

It is funny, though, since a "mile" is a completely arbitrary distance, and 100 is a completely arbitrary number. (If we lived in Australia and had 12 fingers we'd be talking about 144-kilometer weeks as the barrier.)

I remember mine. I got up there and was like, "Wow that wasn't bad at all." I remember being amazed at how good I felt (I was building up at the time high low like 85 then 70 then 90 then 75, etc).

A few weeks later, i was like totally exhausted and had to take like 5 days totally off as i was totally overtrained.

I realized there is a big difference between running a 100 mile week and maintaining it.

This thread is making me think I should have celebrated more when guys had their 1st 100 miles weeks when I was coaching them at Cornell.

"There is only one first time."

Rojo brings up a great point about the difference between running a 100 mile week and maintaining 100 miles/week. I'm particularly interested in thoughts about maintaining high mileage vs. hitting high mileage. How did you feel early on when you tried to maintain 100+ a week or even 80+ or 90+? Were you successful in keeping it there?

id like to hear this too.

Great Point wrote:

Rojo brings up a great point about the difference between running a 100 mile week and maintaining 100 miles/week. I'm particularly interested in thoughts about maintaining high mileage vs. hitting high mileage. How did you feel early on when you tried to maintain 100+ a week or even 80+ or 90+? Were you successful in keeping it there?

86

10 min miles

ladies with dogs and stroller passed me

when you run that slow people ask you to do stuff:

push their car or take their picture

Summer 2007, eighteen years old. Nothing magical about it—A 100-mile week is just a little more than 90, which is a little more than 80, and so on. It's really not that big of a deal.

Yep, I had never broke 60mi before, then I ran TransRockies 6-day in 2011. 125mi in 7 runs in 7 days, 10,000'+ of climbing, never below 7,000' in altitude. Feet, ankles and knees all swelled up and day 6 was a disaster. Took 6 months to recover. To quote the great runner F. Gump, "I'm not a smart man."

It was literally a punishment.

Ran Bobby Crim 10-miler. So frustrated/disappointed with the result that I decided to thrash myself with a 100-mile week to follow. Late 90's I think it was. Drove to Sandy Pond in upstate New York after the race for a week of vacation, where my wife's family had a cottage. 2-a-days every day except Wednesday, when I did a 20-miler. Actually had some surprisingly good runs where I felt pretty strong.

Typical daily routine...up for morning run, eat breakfast or early lunch, lay on beach and usually passed out, 2nd run before dinner, tired at night, to bed fairly early, repeat the whole thing. Ended up at 101mi to be able to say I went over. Silly thing, I know.

My recollection was it always seemed like I was recovering from a run or prepping for a run. All the runs kind of blended together. The 20-miler day felt like a day off/break because I only did a single that day. :-)

Injured a week or so later...

I don't really remember it. I could look at my log and maybe I took good notes.

No but I remember my first 150 mile week.God runners are soft these days.

Watchsocks wrote:

Was there anything that made it particularly memorable?

winter 2013. following a breakout cross country season (went from 28:59 to 27:58), i was really motivated for the upcoming outdoor season. if i wasn't running, i was either eating or sleeping. unfortunately, my reckless training habits resulted in a bout of posterior tibial tendinitis,forcing me to take a red shirt year.

-heading in to my final college xc season, i plan on maintaining 80mpw with only a few 90mpw. 80 mpw allows me to run workouts/easy runs at a solid pace.

Nope I was on Molly

Great Point wrote:

Rojo brings up a great point about the difference between running a 100 mile week and maintaining 100 miles/week. I'm particularly interested in thoughts about maintaining high mileage vs. hitting high mileage. How did you feel early on when you tried to maintain 100+ a week or even 80+ or 90+? Were you successful in keeping it there?

Fine for the most part, though there were days when I'd literally run across the street, then turn around and go back inside because I was so exhausted. After a couple of weeks you'll be sore and tired, then that passes and it's just normal. I found it became kind of a drudge after a while -- "oh sh!t, I only ran 4 miles this morning instead of 7, maybe I can add a mile today, then tack on another on Wednesday, and I can go 8 instead of 7 tomorrow, blah blah blah".

Definitely remember.

Winter break senior year of college. I'd been in the mountains skiing and 'only' put in a 70 mile week, mixed in with 8 hours of DH skiing a day. Flew to Houston of all places to train in warmer weather along with one of my teammates and we stayed with the swim team. I put in something like 110 that first week, a lot of 5 and 10 mile doubles with maybe a 20 miler at the end of the week. Something like that.

Two things I remember--even though it was January Houston was very humid and I nearly collapsed half way through a run on about my 2nd or 3rd day. I got really dizzy and had to walk back. The other was that my teammate put in a 200 mile week (20 in the morning and 10 in the afternoon for 6 days a single 20 on Sunday) and all the swimmers (doing 10,000 yards a day or whatever) thought I was a lazy ass for only doing barely half of what he'd done.

'Twas the last week of December 2012. Don't really remember the week so much as the season. I didn't maintain 100's, but was instead varying my volume, so looking back at my log, the volume for the season went

71, 80, 82, 73, 91, 53, 91, 77, 72, 67, 101, 80, 51, 100, 75, 98, 65, 81, 87, 84, 103, 53, 86, 86, 67, 41, 45.

As arbitrary as this looks it was deliberate, though also influenced by what I felt like doing in those given weeks. There was also a decent amount of nordic skiing and other work that isn't accounted for in some of those weeks. I felt fantastic the whole season and I'm surprised more people don't vary their volume a bit more. I think it allows for better adaptation.

Certainly.

Looking back, I relied heavily upon aerobic fitness from my youth in the pool to carry me through XC and my mediocre MD-LD track races in high school and the first year of college. The summer prior to sophomore XC, I was pretty bummed in having my ass handed to me during outdoor, thinking "man, I already run a lot, what gives?" and built up from 70 to ~90/95 by October.

Not having qualified for NCAA's, I was still healthy through the fall, and decided, "hey, let's see where this goes", and popped out my first hundred mile week the first week of November, 2001. I topped out at 124 in the new year and stayed in the 90-110 range for almost two years before thinking that I was invincible got the best of me.

There really wasn't all that much different between 80 and 110. I still had to get in doubles, they were just a little longer. The greatest difference was the pre-hab/re-hab needed to feel normal when over 100-110. Looking back, I wish I would have spent a little more time in the weight room and on dynamic mobility; everything wacky with my running (stride length, hip flexibility, alignment, etc.) was put under the magnifying glass in higher mileage, and it cost me in the end to ignore these facets.