Are 80 mpw runners with 16-20 mi LR "perma-trained" for the marathon?

I more or less tested this out earlier in the year. Had consistent 70-80mi weeks with 17-18mi long runs each week. After 1 particularly good long run, decided to hop in a marathon... a decision made about a week from the race. I did alright but I had a pretty rough last 8mi or so. However, the confounding factor is that it was my first marathon so I think I made some pacing and hydration mistakes that cost me the most.

Personally, 75-80mpw is about the most I'm willing to do to keep a reasonable work-run-personal life balance, so the only thing I would do differently if I was actually training for a marathon would be more marathon-specific workouts and slightly longer LRs. And I do believe I can run a good marathon off of that eventually. So yes I think think that if you're consistently running 80mpw you should be able to reasonably hop in a marathon and perform well. After all, that's way more than most people are doing.

As far as how close you can come to your best? Who knows. If I had to guess, I'd say even with my blowup, I was within 15min of my best possible marathon for the amount of miles I'm willing to run. If I had the time or energy to run 100mpw, that might be a different story.

If you're doing a portion of that mileage at or around marathon pace, you'd probably do ok. Volume matters, but so does specificity.

If you can establish the mileage and keep it up for a few years then yes you could pop a decent marathon after 10 days of taper. Not your best but reasonably close.

forthekeeeuds wrote:

If you can establish the mileage and keep it up for a few years then yes you could pop a decent marathon after 10 days of taper. Not your best but reasonably close.

Correct, done it myself multiple times. Usually 3-5 minutes slower than if I'd had a 12 week marathon specific training cycle.

An 80 mile week is the taper

Yeah right, Mr Shorter.

fred wrote:

An 80 mile week is the taper

fred wrote:

An 80 mile week is the taper

Yes. But to the OP, of course you could run a "decent" marathon on what your'e suggesting depending on what's "decent" for you. The main thing you need for marathons is mileage and at 80 you're probably doing more miles than 90-95% of the other people in the race are doing.

HRE wrote:

fred wrote:

An 80 mile week is the taper

Yes. But to the OP, of course you could run a "decent" marathon on what your'e suggesting depending on what's "decent" for you. The main thing you need for marathons is mileage and at 80 you're probably doing more miles than 90-95% of the other people in the race are doing.

Really, is it that bad now?

Why do they call it a race?

There are still some guys that are actually training:

https://www.strava.com/activities/736539994/overview

Interesting--to me--thing I'm reminded of by this discussion: A few months back I stumbled on a copy of the 1975 Marathon Handbook, that Runners World used to publish. It's got training advice in it based on Ken Young's "collapse point" theory, which dictates that you need to average a third of the race distance per day in order to cover it without breaking down. I'm not sure how that extrapolates to a 5K--one mile a day?--or longer ultras, but with marathons, that would be about 9 miles per day, or 63 miles per week. They suggest allocating that mileage as prescribed in Tom Osler's The Conditioning of Distance Runners--basically one long run, two medium long runs of half that, then four very short efforts. It ends up looking a bit like a more polarized version of Lydiard's marathon conditioning schedules.

Did you say Lydiard.

John Molvar from Bunnhill.com:

"On the next page it says starting from nothing, “it would not be many weeks before he could run 10 miles, even if he could not run at all when he started.” So what is “not many weeks”? It is about 5 weeks. We are not talking months here. Two pages later he goes on to say “You can soon learn to run 20 miles if you want to.” Well, if it takes about 5 weeks to get to 10, then “soon” would be another 4-5 weeks. Add it up and you get 9 weeks. Lydiard did not say 9 weeks of course, but if you read what he says and piece it together it is about 9 weeks for a sedentary office worker to 20 mile runs.

On page 61 of his book, he talks about a new pupil and gives an example of an 800 guy Tony Blue who ran 5 miles a day, 5 days a week prior to starting Lydiard. He is getting him ready for the New Zealand cross country season. There is not months between the track season in NZ and the cross country season. Lydiard says “The semi-trained runner can achieve this mark (100 mile weeks) much faster but even for the beginner it need not take long.” “Need not take long”, I would say he is talking about 9 weeks.

In his ’84 book on page 30 he talks about the assent from zero to 100 mile weeks. He says “In only a few weeks, you’ll find that what seemed impossible is becoming progressively easier and more enjoyable.” My estimation that “only a few weeks” is about 9 weeks.

In No Bugles, No Drums, Snell says he went from 0 to 100 miles in 3 weeks, see page 25 of his book."

Thanks all for continuing the discussion. It's very helpful. Because my underlying question is a bit deeper. You know how some weeks you will immensely, effortlessly strong and fast, and at other times struggling?

My belief is that a perma-trained marathoner on a good week, or good months, who picks a race just a few weeks in advance and sharpen for it may have better result in PR

than

Your typical 12-18+ week prep which often leads to premature peaking, staleness, fatigue or just demotivation fueled by a fixed date in the future for some big time race that also requires some travel.

At least that's my theory. When the 2012 NYC marathon got canceled, instead of running Philly like others I picked a 300 participants half, not known, but a few more weeks after (5 or 6), sharpened for it, and had one of the greatest races and experiences I've ever had. Because I had the luxury of time, and picking the right moment. Just a thought.

Everytime I train for X race in the Fall I end up feeling like crap 6-8 weeks out and just wish it were now! But perhaps I'm away from my original question.

Come on. You know full well that in a 10,000 person marathon field nowadays over 9,000 of the entrants have rarely, if ever, seen the high side of a 60 mile week. And even in yours and my day, when 100 mile weeks were so common they didn't attract attention, there were people who ran good marathons on considerably fewer miles than that. So if the OP is doing 80 consistently he should be able to run decently in marathons even if not as decently as if he ran a lot more and tapered at 80.

I think it really just varies from person to person. I have to run at least 60 miles a week to feel somewhat strong as a runner. But if I'm training 80 miles would be my bare minimum with my best results at 100/week and that's for 5k. I have no speed but when I'm fit I'm fairly strong and do well w tempos and longer intervals. I do not think that I could run a decent marathon at 80 miles a week. It's possible but I don't know. My highest years I averaged a little over 60 miles a week. I am just not getting back to running after several years. I am doing runs of up to 20 miles but I'm not runninrg seven days a week yet so I'm usually hitting about 60 miles in five days. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to train again or just run for fun and fitness. This thread has piqued my interest in maybe just running a marathon on a whim though.

HRE wrote:

Come on. You know full well that in a 10,000 person marathon field nowadays over 9,000 of the entrants have rarely, if ever, seen the high side of a 60 mile week. .

No way, I didn't know that. That is amazing.

HRE wrote:

And even in yours and my day, when 100 mile weeks were so common they didn't attract attention, there were people who ran good marathons on considerably fewer miles than that. .

Sure, Durden ran 90-95, and Steve Jones ran 100.

fred wrote:

HRE wrote:

Come on. You know full well that in a 10,000 person marathon field nowadays over 9,000 of the entrants have rarely, if ever, seen the high side of a 60 mile week. .

No way, I didn't know that. That is amazing.

Honestly? I find that hard to believe there's not a touch of sarcasm here but OK.

Perma-rathon wrote:

Thanks all for continuing the discussion. It's very helpful. Because my underlying question is a bit deeper. You know how some weeks you will immensely, effortlessly strong and fast, and at other times struggling?

etc etc

If you're feeling that bad during your training cycle, you're doing something wrong. You should be able to run 80 mpw for months at a time while doing workouts without breaking down like that.

Perhaps you're not resting properly? Running easy days hard for example.

fdfasdfsadf wrote:

Perma-rathon wrote:

Thanks all for continuing the discussion. It's very helpful. Because my underlying question is a bit deeper. You know how some weeks you will immensely, effortlessly strong and fast, and at other times struggling?

etc etc

If you're feeling that bad during your training cycle, you're doing something wrong. You should be able to run 80 mpw for months at a time while doing workouts without breaking down like that.

Perhaps you're not resting properly? Running easy days hard for example.

True but I'm also an average guy with a much above average demanding job. For example this week I flew 5 times, 3 cities in 2 continents. That's not a lot of sleep, so no way to keep high mileage up and workouts yearlong.

I'm also training to go sub-3 in the next 9-24 months. So my average training pace is above 8 min/mi (I've run high 1:23s for the half, but run most days slow), so that for me, my 60-65 mpw is already 9 hours.

I know these are excuses, but they're real components of life! As you say that affect ability to recover, and therefore ability to run more. I ran 3 marathons on 30-45 mpw. This year I've average 60 mpw for 10 weeks, and took 2 down weeks at 50 given travel. I felt like I should have run my marathon 2 weeks ago instead of having 5 unproductive more weeks.

In the future I want to perma-build towards 70-80 mpw with a real long run weekly, so that I am more year round ready and not as affected by travel.

Sorry to blabla on my life. M/35/Slow here, a bit different from you guys.