100 mpw is just 7 am and 7 pm per day.

Who cares? All that matters is how fast you run on race day. Doesn't matter how you get there.

If you're a college coach assessing recruits, then yes, you'll be interested to know how much mileage your recruits are running.

And if you're a young talent, then yes, at some point you're going to add mileage to your training as you push the envelope.

But otherwise who cares whether you hit 65, 80, or 100, if the results are there?

dsfsf wrote:

Who cares? All that matters is how fast you run on race day. Doesn't matter how you get there.

If you're a college coach assessing recruits, then yes, you'll be interested to know how much mileage your recruits are running.

And if you're a young talent, then yes, at some point you're going to add mileage to your training as you push the envelope.

But otherwise who cares whether you hit 65, 80, or 100, if the results are there?

Because, when you can't win races, you need an arbitrary number to prove your better than everyone else.

i am 70 years old. ran 85-90 miles per week for 8 years in my mid 30s. no college running so i needed the mileage to improve (best marathon 2:32:12, 5 miler 26:10). so i was accustomed to fairly high mileage (i always worked full time) one week in august 1983 i ran 101 miles in a week and found it very very difficult. never did it again. i had running partners who routinely ran 120 mpw. take my hat off to them. i think you have to try it on a good base to see how hard/easy it is.

ron

doing a 7 mile run is gonna take at least an hour if you take into account changing clothes/showering. Doing that twice would be 2 hours a day, but it'll probably be more like 3-4 hours if you're doing proper workouts with intervals + wu/cd and not rushing your daily routine like a crazy person.

Joe Henderson's LSD book misleads runners in thinking that to run fast times all you need to do is run a lot of easy miles. WRONG!

When you take a closer inspection under the hood, you'll notice that all of those guys raced frequently.

Running 100 miles week standard was started by Lydiard. The 100 miles had to be quality running... not easy running. Sure, he said run as slow as it takes to run 100 miles but if it is so slow that it is not high end aerobic then it doesn't count for the holy grail of 100. Most hobby joggers can't run 20 miles per week at high end. Most hobby joggers PR's are what they should run 100 miles a week at if they want to be up their with Lydiards rationale. I think Lydiard was trolling when he chose 100 miles per week. "Go run 100 miles per week and get back to me."

suga wrote:

Joe Henderson's LSD book misleads runners in thinking that to run fast times all you need to do is run a lot of easy miles. WRONG!

When you take a closer inspection under the hood, you'll notice that all of those guys raced frequently.

Oh, those guys. Yeah, sneaky little buggers

high mileage isn't hard wrote:

EZ10Miler is missing every point entirely.

First, no one says you should only run easy pace if you're training for 5K. That was a hypothetical side discussion.

Second of all, since 100 mpw isn't that hard, it doesn't make sense to say the payoff is "only" a 15 minute 5k or so. 100 mpw isn't much harder than 70 once you get used to it, and in some ways it's easier because the hard sessions become easier and you recover quicker.

Third of all, you don't get bonus points for running the same time on less mileage. Of course if ez10miler doesn't care about being fast and would rather lose races knowing he ran less, that is up to him. However this board is primarily for competitive athletes.

TRAINING at 100 is much harder than 70. I don't think you've ever run 100 for very long.

100 mile weeks are tiring

Source: I ran 100+ most of July, August, September, January, and February when I was in school.

Didn't read all the other posts, but..........that's only 98!

Multiplication wrote:

Didn't read all the other posts, but..........that's only 98!

You didn't even read the first post.

I run therefor I am

My calf hurts when I run 3 miles four times a week.

People don't spend 5 hours a day watching TV. They spend 5 hours a day Chillin'. Because 5 hours is the qty of Chillin' they need, so they can Deal.

If now all of a sudden they replace 2 hours of Chillin' with jogging, then how are they going to Deal? How does that work?

No one is misleading anyone and you have no idea how many times I've checked under that hood, often with Joe looking at the same time . The comment was that no one has ever run under 16:00 for 5 km on nothing but easy training. That's what those guys did. Yes, they raced pretty frequently at least by current standards. Pretty much everyone back then raced a lot more than is common now but the point is that they were able to do it on easy training. How else will you know if you can race a 5 km in under 16:00 on ANY training if you don't race?

Ballsface wrote:

I'm also wondering, if high mileage is so easy, then why even bother doing it? It goes without saying, for most athletes, that you practice as hard as you can to make yourself a better athlete. You don't usually hear anybody bragging about how easy practice is.

I guarantee, when you listen to the Super Bowl winners being interviewed, or the NBA champs, or any Olympic champions, they'll mention how hard they worked to achieve what they did. I haven't ONCE heard a successful athlete brag about how easy their training was.

Maybe the point is that a lot of people overestimate how hard running 100 miles a week is and if they really want to train hard should be doing more.

If you are single, no kids, etc..., 100mpw is cake. Even with full time job.

HRE wrote:

No one is misleading anyone and you have no idea how many times I've checked under that hood, often with Joe looking at the same time . The comment was that no one has ever run under 16:00 for 5 km on nothing but easy training. That's what those guys did. Yes, they raced pretty frequently at least by current standards. Pretty much everyone back then raced a lot more than is common now but the point is that they were able to do it on easy training. How else will you know if you can race a 5 km in under 16:00 on ANY training if you don't race?

It's a mistake to ignore the impact of racing on training-- Your body doesn't have a switch that lets it ignore such a massive stimulus just because it's a race. What I think the OP was getting at was the people who go out and jog high mileage, never racing or doing any hard running, for months on end, in order to hit some high mileage goal. It's usually people who've read those "run more miles, but easier" articles, so they're actively avoiding going hard.

Maybe some people will run well off that type of schedule, but a lot won't.

Of course it's a mistake to ignore the impact of racing on fitness. But again, someone who does nothing but easy training is doing nothing but easy training no matter how much or how little he races so if you have 5-6 guys in that book who ran that fast on nothing but easy training that's what they did which contradicts the post about "no one" ever running under 16:00 on nothing but easy training.

And the thing is, you can do nothing but easy training for a good while and not race and then get race ready with a race or two. In the book, Deines comments that regular racing keeps him sharp but doesn't think it's necessary saying that if he goes a long while without racing his first race back may be a mile in 4:27 but his next one will be 4:17.