Anyone run PRs off of just consistent high mileage and no workouts?

*don't have* the recognition to realize

william3rd wrote:

Looking to hear from anyone who ran some great races off of consistent easy mileage with barely any workouts. Is it possible?

To me, this is the $99,000 question. I hate track intervals. Somehow, running faster then slower just gets to me. Running continuously does not seem to have this effect. Sorry if I am clear as mud here. It puzzles me, too.

One of my teammates in high school ran almost exclusively long runs and tempos (while the rest of us would be doing 400s or similar) for whatever reason. His senior he had a breakthrough and ran a 9:56 for 3200, 4:31 for 1600, 2:02 for 800, and around 55 sec for a 4x400 split. It doesn't sound like a breakthrough by most peoples' definitions, but no one would have predicted any of the aforementioned times from him. So to answer your question, it is definitely possible but a lot of it has to do with your own body/legs, and you should still incorporate faster-paced tempo runs.

I do not recall doing any workouts in the winter of my sophomore year of college when I amazingly had a string of 9 injury free weeks where I averaged 60 mpw, gradually increasing from 50 at the start, and yet my times came down sharply in the 5000m (by 41 seconds) and 3000m, and down some even in the mile. We may have run some progressions and we often ran in the mountains up in NW Mass and Vermont.

Two years ago (as a 27-year-old female) I ran 75-80 miles per week in the summer with no workouts, and just a few races. All of it was at a conversational pace with a friend or friends, 7:30-8:00 pace, with doubles two or three times a week. At the end of the summer I ran 1:22 for the half marathon, which was a PR by over two minutes.

That fall, I "got serious" about my training, upped the mileage to 85-90 with hard workouts, ran mostly alone, overdid it a little bit, and ran 1:21 for the half marathon.

I am now trying to replicate my success of that summer by running consistent 70+ mile weeks and not worrying about workouts until a few weeks before I start racing.

Nice work and good runner's intuition here.

Having followed trends and the way people describe training now I'm not sure how many people "get" the purpose of runs other than reps, hills, etc.or don't. The language has changed. Once any run was a workout. As that term became limited to only intervals, hills, time trials, etc. we got into this mantra of a "long run, interval session and hill session" with the other runs treated as filler or recovery; something of considerably less importance.

I don't know what other runners know about this but malmo's and GlobalView's point, that each day's running matters is correct and worth emphasizing on a forum like this because, you know, not everyone may be as smart as you.

It isn't a matter of "my intelligence". Putting in the mileage as a cornerstone to training was just emphasized to me in college and HS. Experience further drove the message home. To suggest that runners who refer to tempos, hills and intervals as "workouts" don't understand their training is an unfounded leap to a conclusion. Calling someone out on it when you knew what they meant is trite.

Periodize, periodize, periodize! There's a time for everything.

"Trite?" I don't think so. Why would you assume that everyone was exposed to the same cornerstones that you were and is as experienced as you? And even if it is trite what harm does it do?

At what point did I assume that everyone was exposed to the same cornerstones of training I was? Point that out... My entire point was that many runners refer to certain types of training as "workouts". For most of these runners it's purely a term, not a lack of understanding of the importance of mileage. Might younger runners not get that? Sure, they need experience. But for some posters to assume some runners use terms differently signifies a lack of knowledge is pretentious and yes... trite.

I ran 15:54 in high school off low mileage (20 to 30) and lots of workouts. Sophomore year of college I decided to do 10-16 a day. Off of 6 weeks of just 630 to 8 min pace runs with only 2 tempos I ran 15:34 (going out in 4:36). Unfortunately I was unable to stay healthy and went back to low mileage in college (20 to 40).

I can't find any reason why anyone would just run high mileage without at least running some portion of it fast. You don't train strength and speed, when you don't use strength and speed.

High mileage without intensity is like air without oxygen.

The real problem is how do you get to a point where you can run high mileage WITH intensity (i.e. workouts).

insecure runners wrote:

Why don't you want to run any workouts?

Many of us do workouts, that don't really want to do a workout.

Karamazow wrote:

I can't find any reason why anyone would just run high mileage without at least running some portion of it fast. You don't train strength and speed, when you don't use strength and speed.

High mileage without intensity is like air without oxygen.

The real problem is how do you get to a point where you can run high mileage WITH intensity (i.e. workouts).

So I got to this point last summer. Had quite badly injured my Achilles. After a couple of weeks off sulking I decided that if I could walk, I could run at some sort of pace.

So I headed out and after not having run for two weeks I did 70 minutes. Admittedly it was at close to 11 minute miling but still - best part of 7 miles!

I ramped up quickly and was hitting 80/90 mile weeks but all at 9mm or slower. Gradually achilles had improved enough for me to do a couple of races and whilst I wasn't in phenomenal shape I still ran better than I had done in the year previously - was running 5:20 odd miles in races feeling pretty good.

I have something to add to this conversation. I went back to my training log to confirm this information.

A couple of years ago, for over a period of three months, I decided to increase my mileage drastically. At this time I had been regularly running 80-85 miles a week for probably 5+ years and decided to see what I could handle. I have never been a slave to workouts and on many occasions, when I haven't been feeling it, I would bag a workout and just run longer. I increased my mileage to the 125-130 miles range for 3 months in the winter. It was a cold winter (avg of -5F) with lots of snowy/ice covered roads and trails. I essentially ran 40-45 minutes in the morning and 80-90 in the evenings. I tripled once. I'd run 3-4 accelerations of 15-20 seconds at the end of runs a couple of times a week. I wanted to do this more often but, to be honest, I could rarely muster the courage. Once a week I would run anywhere from 2h to 2h20. The bulk of this running was at 7-7:30 mile pace. In total, during this period, I counted that I ran 12 defined "workouts".

Here they are:

1) 10 x 60 seconds hills jog back rest

2) 25 minutes tempo

3) 10 x 60/60

4) 14 x 50 seconds hills

5) 2x 600m + 2x400m (long rest 3-4 minutes)

7) 6 x 1km (3:02-3:03-3:02-3:02-3:04-3:01) off 60 seconds rest

8) 400m - 400m - 800m (long rest 3-4 minutes)

9) 20 minute tempo

10) 6 x 4 minute tempo 90 seconds rest

11) 3 x 10min (3:15 avg) 90 seconds rest

12) 40 minute tempo

These weren't part of any program and they weren't spaced out equally, say, one a week, The first four were run in a ten day period and then I didn't run a workout for 4 weeks. I basically jumped in on workouts with my friends. I was surprised when I ran the 6 x 1km as it felt like I could run another 6 at the same pace and I hadn't done any structured workout in the previous four weeks. The last three were done at the end of the cycle as I decided to race a half marathon and figured I should do something specific to prepare.

I remember very clearly that I felt pretty tired most of the time (just a tad more than a recent period that I took a hiatus from running). I also remember that as it progressed I would occasionally "run to the barn" as Malmo would say. This was surprising for me as I was always a slow plodder type runner and rarely intentionally picked it up on runs. These quicker paces just came naturally and I didn't push it but had to hold myself back sometimes as I would really start to get after it. I remember, quite clearly, 5-6 times that I felt like I was in the best shape of my life.

After this, I ended up running 1:08 for the half, which was a pb of over 2 minutes. It was significant because my previous pb had been from a particularly hard bout of training (consistent 80-85 mile weeks in doubles with 2-3 workouts and a long run of 90 minutes).

Ran the same 1600 time 5 times straight during track. Ran 75 mpw for 2 months pr'd by one seconds

this is wild stuff - I was going to do mile repeats today but maybe instead I'll just go run 12 miles.

don't be pedantic wrote:

malmo wrote:

I think we all know what I meant. All runs are workouts. My most important workout? 7am Dark, rainy and cold. 5-10 miles easy.

Semantic quibbles.

We all know what HE meant.

We knew what HE meant... and in HS I remember a "workout" being hard/speed of some sort. Hills, 400s, miles. A run wasn't a workout. Can't remember college terms.