Smoove wrote:
It seems that either you do not understand that miles and smart training are not mutually exclusive, or you are willfully ignoring that fact in an effort to make it seem like you know something new that no one else in the world knows.
Let me state this simply: If you do not negatively impact your health or readiness for workouts, more mileage is better than less mileage for distance running.
You raise the question of where that line is, and how you know where it is. The simple answer is that your athlete needs to listen to his or her body, you need to get feedback from them, and you need to consider their past experience with mileage, injury and performance.
To be clear, I am not sitting here and saying hit 100 miles per week. I have done that only once in my life. My best 14 week stretch of mileage was for my 2nd marathon, and I averaged 75 mpw for that stretch, which included that 100 mile week. For my subsequent marathon, I averaged 70 mpw for that same stretch, topping out at 90.
And you know what? Those miles were all run at specific paces (or specific perceived efforts) for specific purposes.
So don't mischaracterize the position that "other things being equal, more is better" as "you have to run lots of miles" or "the quality of your miles is secondary to the number of miles run."
If you want to have a thoughtful training conversation, then have at it. But stop with the constant self-promotion disguised as secret knowledge which is delivered with condescension.
Amen! Jan is not a good coach, anyone can produce short term results, all of her athletes will fail to keep improving long term. You would have to be a fool to hire her as a coach!