140 Miles per week

COACH J.S å ä ö wrote:

runnomad.com wrote:

I ran up to 150 in college, as a 442 HS miles I went on to run 2934 in the 10k.

https://runnomad.com/why-not-going-to-the-university-of-oregon-was-the-best-thing-that-happened-to-me/

I myself ran 29.51 at 10 k on only 50 miles per week ! 17 sec faster for you with a lot of more hours spent out on the roads. Up to the reader to decide what looks best to do. Is all that extra mileage worth it?

COACH J.S

It's a reasonable question and I hope you aren't implying an answer. But I don't think the ultimate performace someone gets is where to look for the answer. I got up to 140-150 mpw because I wanted to know what would happen if I did. I'd kill for it to have gotten me to either 2(:34 or to 29:51. It did neither but I'm satisfied because I don't have to wonder what would have happened. I'd love to have gotten 29:51 on 50 mpw too, but if I were in your place now it would bother me that I'd only done that much because I'd wonder what would have happened had I trained like, say, Bedford. So I could turn the question on you and ask if the uncertainty of not knowing what would have happened had you run a lot more is worth it?

Cheesy wrote:

I just saw a thread where someone mentioned that they ran 144mpw and my first reaction was to call them out. However, it got me thinking. How many non professionals really run over 140 miles/week? I'm a D1 runner, and I've only met one guy that claimed he had, and even then I didn't really believe him.

By the way, this has been done here before pretty extensively:

I am in my mid 40s and run over 140mpw fairly regularly. Have done many 200+M weeks - 266 is my highest.

All the "not buying it, you'd be injured posts" are hysterical.

A few thoughts:

1) You may not be able to do it now, but that doesn't mean you couldn't. My 1st 100M week destroyed me, but that was over a decade ago. The body adapts.

2) I cope by running slowly. My recovery doubles are typically with a HR sub 100bpm.

3) I think high mileage with low intensity is the best way to PREVENT injury - a few 200mpw weeks with some decent elevation and I can come back down to 150mpw with some decent workouts and be super strong (for me). I have not been injured for years and years, but it is faster running that always pushes me close, not mileage.

4) The reoccuring presumption that I see often on this thread (and elsewhere) is that it is better to do less mileage if you can get the same results. I like running. It is my therapy, my quiet time. Why would I want to do less?

5) Most runners are still under the illusion that they need high protein diets to recover well - you actually need very little. The issue with soreness and recovery is not a deficiency in protein but inflammation. The key to recvery is not your macronutrients, but your micronutrients. Fruit post-run, not chocloate milk. When you get older , you notice the effect of such changes much more.

Are you using testosterone replacement therapy or anything like that? If not, maybe because you're in your mid-40s and can still recovery adequately and minimize injury. I'm a late-50s stiff and more & more guys in my age-group I chat with are telling me they're doing TRT in order to get through high-mileage training programs, reduce & recover from injuries, etc. In fact, one cat gave me a business card of the low-T center he goes to!

Injury-Prone Old Stiff wrote:

Are you using testosterone replacement therapy or anything like that? If not, maybe because you're in your mid-40s and can still recovery adequately and minimize injury. I'm a late-50s stiff and more & more guys in my age-group I chat with are telling me they're doing TRT in order to get through high-mileage training programs, reduce & recover from injuries, etc. In fact, one cat gave me a business card of the low-T center he goes to!

Nope. Lots of fruit and greens.

I don't even have painkillers in the house. I would only take pharamceuticals / medicine if my long term health / life depended on it. Wouldn't dream of TRT.

Guy in his mid-thirties I coach grinded out nine 125+ mile weeks in a row. As long as his ferritin is over 100 he can seem to handle it. He's done as much as 160 at an altitude camp, but 120-130 is about the limit week after week. Over the past year he's made about 6-9 second per mile improvements, which obviously is huge.

Ta-da!

well said..well said.

man, that is impressive. i am 47 years of age and by no means i am capable of running more than 50 miles p.w. without having to pay a huge toll. i like some of your posts about tempo runs (the best stuff here on letsrun next to malmo).

if i am right you have changed your philosophy. once you advocated low mileage, considering your pbs on just 4 days of running per week (35-45 miles).

hope all this brutal mileage will pay off. good luck.

Injury-Prone Old Stiff wrote:

Are you using testosterone replacement therapy or anything like that? If not, maybe because you're in your mid-40s and can still recovery adequately and minimize injury. I'm a late-50s stiff and more & more guys in my age-group I chat with are telling me they're doing TRT in order to get through high-mileage training programs, reduce & recover from injuries, etc. In fact, one cat gave me a business card of the low-T center he goes to!

reading this article is just horrible. is it that easy to get a low-t treatment? if there is a clinical need to use a low testosterone therapy - alright then. but those using it to cheat are so pathetic. how many are out there, inflated with testosteron in disregard of heavy risks, just to perform in a local 10k three minutes faster than under normal circumstances and never get tested?

I know a guy at the gym who went to one of those low-T centers (he's an avid cyclist). He said they did some blood work but never checked his T levels. He said he saw the M.D. for maybe 5 or so mins and mainly discussed shots vs gels, etc. The feeling he got there was that if you've got "dough" you're in the "show."

Low-T centers heavily advertise in my area. One center even has a retired pro-football player doing promos for them.

Better get used to it...I think it's the future wave for middle-aged master athletes & fitness enthusiasts.

Hi,HRE! I always enjoy your experience and interesting comments and questioning . :) You see, the thing is that I have tested it all ! I even tested out to train like Dave Bedford, one of my idols, 4 training sessions per day! At most 175 miles( 280 km) per week!! But my racing times then were not so good. My personal "big" breakthrough came when I at age 26 read about "Exact paces " in Runners World, and the great coach Jack Daniels. Since that day I changed my training to 6 training sessions per week at my individual best paces , and it didn`t take long before I broke all my former records. Why didn`t I ran even faster than 14.20/ 29.51 at 5k/10k ? Up on what I today know is that my threshold workouts should have been even faster than I did . I used to do them at 3.15 min/ km and often ran sustained up to 10 km on track at that pace but today I know I should have run them mostly in the form of cruise threshold intervals at for me then 3. 05-3.08 min/ km. Now the runners I coach take advantage of that experience and knowing instead, and they do remarkable fast progress when I take over their training. All runners I have coached so far have improved their race times. And one of the good things for todays runners out from this is that they don`t have to find out threw trial and error what is best for them when it comes to big mileage or moderate mileage , just enough to back up the quality workouts.

It`s kind of magical. :)

COACH J.S

Wow, thanks for the input. That's impressive!

Sorry to bother but may I know how long you had been running prior to your 32:12 old p.b and what your mileage was back then?

And with that big jump mileage over the years, have you developed any overuse injuries and if so how do you cope with it?

I am planning to increase my mileage as well, albeit with a much more modest p.b. (17:03 5k, 35:33 10k), but injury is my concern.

i love running high mileage and i get great results but i can only sustain it for about 3months before my ferritin drops too low and i crash. even if i use iron supplements and eat more red meat i cant seem to keep my ferritin and therefore haemoglobin high enough to cope with this volume.

Good reply. I will say that I think there's difference between coming down to a mileage level and moving up to it. After a few years I wasn't getting any faster with the 120-150 weeks so I "semi-retired" and dropped to one run a day which had me in the 75-90 mpw range. I got one last little burst of PBs in that time. BUT, years earlier when I had worked up to that level I was much slower than once I'd gotten up to 140 or so. But again, I'm glad I did the 140-150 stuff so I don't need to wonder. I'd be interested in knowing how you decided that the lower volume was what worked for you rather than the lower volume coming after the high volume. And I did search again for you on Facebook with no luck.

Pantman, great to see that you're still around and cranking out the miles.

Patti, thanks so much.

Pantman wrote:

5) Most runners are still under the illusion that they need high protein diets to recover well - you actually need very little. The issue with soreness and recovery is not a deficiency in protein but inflammation. The key to recvery is not your macronutrients, but your micronutrients. Fruit post-run, not chocloate milk. When you get older , you notice the effect of such changes much more.

Some interesting info here, leads to the question whether you drink and/or coffee? What is your view on them when trying to run high mileage?

curious one, there wrote:

Some interesting info here, leads to the question whether you drink and/or coffee? What is your view on them when trying to run high mileage?

meant "tea and/or coffee".

No tea or coffee. Or caffeine at all.

I'm finding out the same thing. I chucked the chocolate milk and have lemon and kiwis instead.