Okay so the poster boys for mega miles that I can tell are
Cam Levins
Brian Sell
McDougal (not a great poster given his breaking)
There is also a slew of 100-120mpw types like Solinsky, Rupp etc so let's make the cutoff 120mpw and above.
But surely there are people we don't know of at all who ran 120+, if you are one can you chime in and share your experience? Improvement? Burnout? Injury?
I'm most interested in hearing about people who ran over 140.
i ran 120-125 for a while in college. Hit 131 once. Improved from 27:00 to 25:30 over 8k. had injury / burnout issues after that, though that had more to do with a lack of overall strength and undereating (mostly unintentional). Doing mega-miles requires a durable body and a good understanding of what it takes to stay healthy while doing alot of running. For me that was a lot of rehab-style strength exercises and eating a lot and sleeping a lot.
anon internet runner wrote:
i ran 120-125 for a while in college. Hit 131 once. Improved from 27:00 to 25:30 over 8k. had injury / burnout issues after that, though that had more to do with a lack of overall strength and undereating (mostly unintentional). Doing mega-miles requires a durable body and a good understanding of what it takes to stay healthy while doing alot of running. For me that was a lot of rehab-style strength exercises and eating a lot and sleeping a lot.
This is pretty interesting. What sort of mileage had lead to your 27:00?
another poster boy is Bill Rodgers for sure, I've experimented with high mileage but only for a 2-3 months at a time and it broke me. I improved a lot when I dropped my mileage and focused on quality. I think the high mileage is ideal for marathons and ultra marathons. In less than a marathon distance, it depends on the individuals. For example, some people high mileage is good for 5k/10k but for most people its not necessary and I happen to be one of them. 50-60 mpw is better for me for 5k/10k than 100+ mpw
Didnt Ian Edwards hit 200 miles a week?
When Solinsky had his breakthrough didn't he up the up to like 150mpw?
doo doo wrote:
Okay so the poster boys for mega miles that I can tell are
Cam Levins
Brian Sell
McDougal (not a great poster given his breaking)
There is also a slew of 100-120mpw types like Solinsky, Rupp etc so let's make the cutoff 120mpw and above.
But surely there are people we don't know of at all who ran 120+, if you are one can you chime in and share your experience? Improvement? Burnout? Injury?
I'm most interested in hearing about people who ran over 140.
Dave Bedford ran up to 225mpw at times and liked to be in the 180's. I cannot fathom running mileage like his.
I have got to the high 130's at times without breaking down and I probably could go farther if I wanted to but it would be too tiring and I would lose out on workouts. I find my sweetspot to be in the 110-120 range.
Horses for courses wrote:
Didnt Ian Edwards hit 200 miles a week?
Yeah he did one week. He got injured a lot subsequently though.
I generally run between 140-160 MPW in my build-ups over the last two years. I have a 2'16'59 marathon PR.
I post all my training publicly at
http://www.strivetrips.org/category/tylers-training/
I was an 18'30 5k XC runner in HS off of maybe 20-30 MPW then got the running bug, ran up to 120-130 MPW in college (building gradually over 5 years) and ran 30'22 for 10,000m.
After college, I upped my mileage even more to 140-160 and transitioned into more marathon specific workouts and that's been my best event so far. I'm very careful about recovery and "other things" (sleep, food, cross training, etc.) and have luckily had very little injuries.
Definitely not for everyone (I had a teammate who was a 4'0x miler but would get hurt if he ran much more than 40mpw), but if it works for you, you can see a lot of improvement with consistent training.
Awesome stuff! Congrats on making the trials. Will follow with interest.
I am in similar position to you but we do not have any trials in my country. We have to run the A standard and the fastest times are selected for Rio. I will have to run 2:10 to 2:12 to have a chance and I am a few minutes away yet. Good luck!
Ran peaks of 70-80 in HS: 4:27, 9:32
Ran peaks of 120-140 post college. Best year was over 4700 mIles wIth a 500mI february (non leap year). 1:09:40, 2:32:45
Alan
Horses for courses wrote:
Didnt Ian Edwards hit 200 miles a week?
lolololololol
do you guys mean you run 120+ every single week?
Don't you have hard weeks and easy weeks? In skiing and running it would be foolish to have every week be the same effort level. It would be much harder to get the advantages of super compensation.
Xcskier66 wrote:
do you guys mean you run 120+ every single week?
Don't you have hard weeks and easy weeks? In skiing and running it would be foolish to have every week be the same effort level. It would be much harder to get the advantages of super compensation.
No, I don't mean every single week, but the bulk of training.
Someone running 140, 140, 70 (easy week) and repeating that cycle would qualify.
To the guy who ran 18:+ and now runs 2:16, wow. Just wow. Good job you badass.
I know a dude who runs 100 miles per week and barely broke 17 for the 5K and 2:50 for the marathon. I ran 30-40 miles per week and ran 17:16 and 2:52. I'm OK with that.
NahSon wrote:
I know a dude who runs 100 miles per week and barely broke 17 for the 5K and 2:50 for the marathon. I ran 30-40 miles per week and ran 17:16 and 2:52. I'm OK with that.
Tons of people run 30 miles a week and break 16, some even can break 15 off that.
I'm interested in improvement curve, not actual times, which are largely talent based.
What was that guy running for 5k before he ran 100 miles a week?
Right - I think the idea of talent curves is extremely interesting and generally not very well understood. It seems to be the accepted paradigm that to run fast you have to run fast in HS (and college).
I ran D3 and was never even a D3 All-American (11th at track nationals 10k was my best placing). But I got better every year and focused a lot on what I found in my training was working and what wasn't.
Especially in the USA, there seems to be this idea that most runners don't get much better after college, so many of my teammates were really surprised when I continued improving (a fair amount) after graduating.
A lot of that has to do with just training better/smarter (my college coach didn't really have a good understanding of how to train distance runners outside of a very specific type of athlete), but I think a lot of it also just has to do with time and consistency. I really believe that most people's ceilings are MUCH higher than they realize, but so many people get discouraged because they don't see results immediately (or even in a year or two) that they think they've hit their limit.
I've always been interested in finding my own limits and every time that I think I've found them or others are telling me hit my ceiling, I've somehow continued to improve.
Maybe I'm a freak, but I like to think that there are tons of people who are way more "naturally athletic" (my mile PR is 4'29 and I've never broke 59 in the 400m) with much more athletic potential than me.
Anyway, a very interesting conversation - I'll try to check back in on this thread.
I worked up to 100-155 in about two years. I went from 11:05 for 2 miles to 9:56, 18:08 for three miles to 15:33 five thousand, 39:00 six miles to 32:20 ten thousand, 66 plus for ten miles to 54:48, marathon from 4:34 to 2:35.
It was a blast. No injury troubles. Every few weeks I'd get some stomach thing that wiped me out for a day or so.
HRE wrote:
I worked up to 100-155 in about two years. I went from 11:05 for 2 miles to 9:56, 18:08 for three miles to 15:33 five thousand, 39:00 six miles to 32:20 ten thousand, 66 plus for ten miles to 54:48, marathon from 4:34 to 2:35.
It was a blast. No injury troubles. Every few weeks I'd get some stomach thing that wiped me out for a day or so.
That's pretty sweet improvement, what was your mileage when running the slower times?
doo doo wrote:
I'm interested in improvement curve, not actual times, which are largely talent based.
I think the point you're missing here is that the ability to run and withstand mega miles is itself a talent. Letsrun has this idea in its collective head that running mileage is the key to hacking your potential. Having the hardware to run those kinds of miles is like having the hardware to run a sub 14 5k or a sub 220 marathon. Desperate, misguided kids attempt it, fueled by anecdotes like Brian Sell and whichever Pre quote their coach decided to put on the team shirt that year. Most of them end up getting done in by some complications of CNS fatigue.