140 Miles per week

How many? Probably very few. But I do know of one. A friend of mine consistently ran high mileage after college and was able to run a few sub 2:20 marathons by his late twenties. He shared some of his training logs with me and he was usually in the 120s but he had a few weeks of 140 or more.

it's difficult to fuel someone who isn't professional and has to set themselves on a diet for running 100+ miles a week. anything above 80 mpw is really when you begin to get intestinal problems and deficiencies if it isn't carefully monitored.

not to blow your mind but I am 52

this summer I have run

200, 170, 127,180.... (ave 130 for the last 16 weeks)

212 was my highest 7 day total

and I didn't die...I got really tired, but that is expected

I'm not an ultra marathoner

or even a marathoner really (though I have done one)

it is not what I am training for (2m - 1/2 marathon Is my target)

You should know back in the day, runners regularly ran over 140 miler per week - the good ones, that is. I maxed out a 100 in college.

johnny bean wrote:

it's difficult to fuel someone who isn't professional and has to set themselves on a diet for running 100+ miles a week. anything above 80 mpw is really when you begin to get intestinal problems and deficiencies if it isn't carefully monitored.

Can you explain more of what you mean by this? I recently increased my mileage to 80+ a week and have been noticing some GI discomfort. What should I be looking out for and how do I monitor it?

Thanks

It's 20 miles per day or less than 2.5 hours in total work per day. Hard, but not exactly superhuman. Certain HS programs used to have guys as young as Sophomores run 100+ after only a year of running. It's not much of a stretch to get to 140 if you're a mature adult with more running experience. Go talk to athletes in other sports (swimming, cycling, tennis) and 2.5 hours per day doesn't seem unusual or even high.

Runnertrotts wrote:

johnny bean wrote:

it's difficult to fuel someone who isn't professional and has to set themselves on a diet for running 100+ miles a week. anything above 80 mpw is really when you begin to get intestinal problems and deficiencies if it isn't carefully monitored.

Can you explain more of what you mean by this? I recently increased my mileage to 80+ a week and have been noticing some GI discomfort. What should I be looking out for and how do I monitor it?

Thanks

Johnny Bean is blowing smoke. Running high mileage doesn't cause GI problems.

I'm currently 135+. Have topped out in the past at 145.

It's not that big a deal. 7 miles/~50 minutes in the morning before work, 80 minutes easy or 12-15 miles of workout in the evenings, and a long run.

The sequence is pretty easy to put together. Run 100 mpw early in college, 110-120 over the summer of your later years. Just keep building really. Don't worry about putting together whole weeks of big mileage at first, just try to string together three or four 20 miles days in a row, and back down to what you're used to. Like going:

-7 am/4x5k + 5 warm up/cooldown pm

- 7am/10pm

- 7am /12pm

- 20M long run

and then doing your regular thing the next three days. 10M run, some fartlek, hills, whatever, not caring about the big milage.

Big thing really is just to suck it up and double almost every day.

Nice. Have you improved upon college PRs since you bumped up the mileage?

it's mostly mental wrote:

It's 20 miles per day or less than 2.5 hours in total work per day. Hard, but not exactly superhuman. Certain HS programs used to have guys as young as Sophomores run 100+ after only a year of running. It's not much of a stretch to get to 140 if you're a mature adult with more running experience. Go talk to athletes in other sports (swimming, cycling, tennis) and 2.5 hours per day doesn't seem unusual or even high.

Well none of those sports come close to the impact that running has on your body. Swimming and cycling are much easier on you, because the impact forces are massively lower, if present at all. Additionally, because of the nature of cycling, it's much more common to go longer- they have to prepare for extremely long races for multiple days in a row. It's not as hard to recover from as running. Example: a friend of mine was a collegiate 800/1500 runner at really low mileage (got injured over 35). Now she rides a ton on the bike. Sometimes 50+ miles a day.

With tennis and other skill-intensive sports the work style is very different. When I was younger I worked pretty hard at both tennis and running. A lot of tennis workouts are isolating one skill at a time and doing different drills, returning balls from the machine, plus some running, and strength work. So the forces and stress on the body are constantly changing (running is pretty much a continuous repeated strain) and there are more periods of low intensity.

Let's not pretend 140 mpw is not a sh*tload. IMO, run 140 mpw if you want to, but you're not getting much you couldn't get from 100 mpw, except an increased risk of injury/burnout.

Thinking like this is what keeps American distance depth form approaching the levels in Kenya and Ethiopia. EPO aside.

snow blow wrote:

Nice. Have you improved upon college PRs since you bumped up the mileage?

I have. College coaches were great, I was happy with what I did then, and I'm happy with what I'm doing now.

For me, I'd say the most important thing after college is to do what feels good. It started by just doubling every day, and building from there. For most people, the hardest part is staying with it -routine, self motivation, healthy habits-, not the actual training. Very few people are out of it physically after college, and don't realize what they need is thorough training that engages them.

I'll confess I don't know much about the marathon and was speaking in reference to my experience with middle distance. Also: nothing I think has any effect on the depth of American distance runners.

XCool wrote:

random poster #1525255252 wrote:

Thinking like this is what keeps American distance depth form approaching the levels in Kenya and Ethiopia. EPO aside.

I'll confess I don't know much about the marathon and was speaking in reference to my experience with middle distance. Also: nothing I think has any effect on the depth of American distance runners.

Then why say anything at all? Your opinion on 100 mpw vs. 140 mpw is not informed by anything but speculation.

XCool wrote:

Let's not pretend 140 mpw is not a sh*tload. IMO, run 140 mpw if you want to, but you're not getting much you couldn't get from 100 mpw, except an increased risk of injury/burnout.

Do you know this from your experiences of running 140 miles a week? As others have pointed out, a lot more people used to do that sort of volume than do it now. It is a lot of running but there have been people who have run more, there's even one on this thread. I did it at times for several years in the 70s and while it never got me to my fantasy times I did end up much faster than I'd have believed was realistically possible. And I really enjoyed it though it was demanding. Part of the enjoyment was just meeting the challenge of doing that much running each day and doing it was always satisfying.

I ran 201 in mid June of this year. Highest ever was 214 last summer.

Standing up ovations! I applaud you... Well spoken. :)

For various reasons, I don't run high mileage anymore, but I had a decade of 5000 mile years including 5 over 7000 and 3 over 8000. It's not hard just so long as you have only one other big thing in your life. For me at that time it was my career. If you have two or more, say career, children etc then 20 miles/day is too much. But I worked about 50- 60 hours/week, ran 20, slept 70 and still had 10 or more to waste.

And, as others have said, while it isn't common now, high mileage (over 100 if not 140) was super common 30-40 years ago. You know. When America had high quality and depth. Wasn't such a bad thing.

No way buddy! And I know what I talk about coaching Kenyans and chatting with a lot of the very best like Kiprop, Kamworor,Cheptengai (Uganda,silver 10000m WC) and so on. Most of them stay at an weekly average around 80-100 miles . 140 mile weeks is for people who have the time and just want to run a lot at a relatively slow pace, not to reach their very best race results.

It's only two times 70 minutes at 7 min/mile pace per day.