Miles per year?

3000+

My biggest year was 5400 something. I think I was over 5,000 per year from 1974 to 1978 and then dropped into the 4,000s. I know of some guys who had several years of 6,000 plus. You'd have to define "strong marathons year after year" a little more specifically though. I'd think you could spend 3-4 months doing good miles to get ready for one marathon, spend 3-4 months doing maintenance mileage, then 3-4 months doing big miles to get ready for another marathon. Or you probably could do one marathon a year and just have maybe 4 months of serious training for it and do much less for the rest of the year. I think the answer could be anything from about 2,500 to 6,000 plus.

It's just that MPW is more conducive to thinking in terms of training cycles. 3 weeks on 1 week down, building up from last month, etc.

MPY is almost a useless metric in that it's a lot harder to tell the whole story. I could run identical years in a row at 4000 miles each, only 1 year I could manage mostly 80 mpw, and the other year I could manage mostly 100 mpw but that could be with a 3 month break due to injury.

Which year is better? Are they both the same? At the end of the day, only race times are going to matter in answering those questions.

Amazing.

[quote]Live to run wrote:

MPY is almost a useless metric in that it's a lot harder to tell the whole story./quote]

I disagree that it's useless, but yes, it doesn't tell the whole story. I use 3000+ as a good number because that's an average of about 60 mpw. Indicating that you're putting in 10-15 weeks ~40mpw of maintenance and recovery mileage you're also putting in 70-80mpw during at least one marathon buildup. With the obvious caveat that more is better. So that's my baseline of the best chance at marathon success. Regardless, if you're putting in 3000+ you're getting in consistent mileage which is critical to marathon training. But to your point, 10 weeks off followed by 10 weeks of 90+ isn't a good idea.