Why Increasing Mileage Improves Performance

One of the more hotly debated topics is that of weekly mileage. Does increasing weekly mileage result in improved performance? If so, why? This article reviews the research on this important topic in an effort to provide some additional insight. There is a link to the article in the "new and updated" section on the front page of my web site at

www.powerrunning.com

(I should warn you in advance though that it is a long article.)

If you want your online opinion pieces to read like real journal articles, you'd do well to strip out all of the misleading qualifiers. Take your first paragraph:

"One of the most dominant beliefs of conventional training wisdom is that increasing weekly mileage results in improved performance. Numerous runners have anecdotally reported that when they increased their weekly run mileage that their performance improved, sometimes significantly. Additionally, it is commonly believed that the fastest distance runners in the world, the elites of the sport, generally all(Ed. note -- what does "generally all" mean?) train with relatively high weekly mileages. It is not unusual for elite runners to report running 100 or more miles per week. Finally research studies consisting of runner surveys generally find that the faster runners tend to run higher weekly mileages than do slower runners, which has generally been interpreted to mean that the higher mileage produces the faster runners. These observations - personal experiences, anecdotal data of elite training mileages, and research surveys - have been sufficient to convince many runners that increasing mileage not only results in improved performance but that it is the best way to do so."

It is wrong to conflate facts with "beliefs" - creationists do this all the time with regard to evolution in an attempt to advance their agenda. Not only that, but your "...best way to do so" line is gratuitous in that it in no way follows from the rest of your introduction; regardless of your intent, it seems to imply that those who enjoy improvements following increased training mileage do not concomitantly increase the amount of faster, more intense running they do. Try this instead:

"Distance runners have frequently observed that increasing their weekly mileage results in improved performance. Numerous runners have reported that when they increased their weekly mileage, their performances improved significantly. Additionally, the fastest distance runners in the world train with high weekly mileages; elite runners commonly report running 100 or more miles per week. Research demonstrates that higher training mileage is correlated with faster times. These observations suggest that increasing mileage results in improved performance."

Even this could be reduced to a few sentences without sacrificing its meaning:

"Distance runners have frequently observed that increasing their weekly mileage results in improved performance; elite runners commonly report running 100 or more miles per week, and research demonstrates that higher training mileage is correlated with faster times. These observations suggest that increasing mileage results in improved performance."

There's your abstract.

With your approach, any chance of your being regarded as an objective reviewer by an alert reader is compromised beyond repair.

Does increasing mileage improve performance? Yes, it does with some important caveats though. If the increase in weekly mileage is accompanied by an increase in the distance of the long run, an increase in training intensity, or an increase in the volume of intense training performance will improve. If an increase in weekly mileage does not include one or more of these three factors, performance will not measurably improve.

All that, just to reach this conclusion?

Thanks.

Actually, Broadview, that conclusion is crap.

Let's imagine this:

You run once per week and go for a dead easy 15 miles every Sun. The rest of the week you do zip.

Over the course of some months (or years) you build up to where you can run (at the same say pace) 15 miles EVERY DAY (but Sun is still 15 miles, not longer).

Are you (or Richie Rich) trying to tell me that your race performance (in, say, a HM or marathon) will not get any better now that you are consistently running 105mpw instead of 15mpw? (Note that you are STILL doing them at dead easy pace).

You have not increased intensity, you have not increased the long run and you have not increased the volume of intense training per week (in fact, you don't do any).

Wanna bet you race faster, whaddya say?

You are correct and that makes perfect since butit will turn into a quantity v. quality debate. For the record, I believe that is is quanity AND quality. But...if Joe run 10 x 200s once per week at 36.3 and does this his whole life, and ends up running 10 x 200 at 23.5, his race times will also improve. And the quantity has not moved.

you'll never get studies long enough in length to get anything concrete. Who is going to leet you rule their life for 5 years as you up them to 3500mi years?

Oscar,

A review of the research on frequency in the article reveals that training 3 or 5 days per week produces greater improvements than does training 1 day per week. Hence the conclusion that frequency of training does influence performance. Additionally, training 5 days per week does not necessarily result in greater improvements than training 3 days per week, hence the conclusion that, though frequency exerts an influence on performance, it is not a large influence.

It could even be argued that in your example the runner increased his total volume of intense training, which would account for improvements in performance. Admittedly, in the example you used the runner is not training hard and the highest effort he trains with is not very high. Your example does have him increase the volume of his hardest effort (though that effort is not close to 100% it is still his hardest effort) as part of his program of increasing weekly mileage.

all about the mitochondria and building capalliary beds...do as much mileage as possible with enough quality work so that you don't quite get hurt.

You can run slow and work fast oxidative red muscle fibers. That's why the elites do it, I'm told. My personal experience has been:

Low mileage/high intensity: SUCK

High mileage/only LT: pretty decent

High mileage/only LT and THEN some period of quality: PR's

I'm going to guess higher mileage, 90-100 mpw, was necessary for me to gain a PR.

Richard:

I should warn you that you are full of crap, have no functional knowledge of distance running, boast a moniker that celebrates the very thing most people on here seek to avoid (slow times), offer no credentials, fly in the face of what every truly successful elite runner has done for decades, make no point, and make too much of it.

In short, get out while you still can, lest you be treated to a well deserved flaming. If 500 people post on this board, I bet 450 have successfully used precisely the training you scorn with great success.

Higher mileage at less intensity can be good, if you're pushing the envelope a bit on the volume. My training's at 12 miles/day, usually at a pretty modest pace...and within a few weeks I'm looking at 15 miles. I am now capable of running 10 miles/day at a pretty intense level, which would not be the case if I worked hard at 10 miles, instead of 12 miles.

In other words, I am promoting the Lydiard approach that base-building should put an emphasis on volume, while the higher-end aerobic work will be concentrated on later. I think we need a time in training to over-distance our runs without worrying about pace. It's the only way to really maximize volume training, I think.

My coach believes in low mileage at high intensity, it's too bad I don't. During the summer I'm on my own and there will be nobody stopping me from taking Lydiard's way, until then I'll continue to do 6 miles a day with a hard intervals or races every other day. =\

Richard_ wrote:

Additionally, training 5 days per week does not necessarily result in greater improvements than training 3 days per week.

BULLSHIT! All else being equal, ANY distance runner who is NOT pathologically frail will derive FAR more benefit from training FIVE times a week than from training THREE times a week. (FRIVOLOUS examples, like doing 3 miles easy five times a week vs. doing 10 miles three times a week across a range of paces - do NOT COUNT.) If you HONESTLY believe there is EVIDENCE to the contrary, PLEASE present it so we can set about TEARING it to PIECES!

Susan,

The evidence is in the article. There is a link to the article in the first post in this thread.

"...PLEASE present it so we can set about TEARING it to PIECES!" Never mind. It seems your mind is already made up.

Richard_ wrote:

It seems your mind is already made up.

It's called INDUCTIVE REASONING, a concept FOREIGN to you. EVERYTHING you have posted on this board, and there's been LOTS and LOTS of it, has turned out to be UTTER SHIT. Why should I BELIEVE that it's gonna be DIFFERENT...THIS time?!

And FUCK wading through a long-winded "ARTICLE" on your CESSPOOL of a "TRAINING" site! Just paste the RELEVANT text HERE. If there's a PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE that SUPPORTS what you believe about TRAINING frequency, CITE IT HERE TOO.

Susan,

Susan Powter wrote:

And FUCK wading through a long-winded "ARTICLE" on your CESSPOOL of a "TRAINING" site! Just paste the RELEVANT text HERE. If there's a PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE that SUPPORTS what you believe about TRAINING frequency, CITE IT HERE TOO.

Thanks for your reply. Very scintillating.

I see that your standard is "peer-reviewed". Excellent standard. I, admittedly, don't have any peer-reviewed articles supporting my my beliefs about training frequency. There is, however, some published, peer-reviewed research that supports my view. They are cited in the article if you should choose to review them.

In line with your standard, please cite the peer-reviewed research supporting your point of view about frequency of training. I look forward to reading them.

Until then,

Richard, here's the deal. You write "article" after bullshit-filled "article" on your site - where you admit to rejecting "conventional wisdom," which in your case essentially means ignoring reality - and invite people here to read them. When they ask you to support your frivolous ideas with facts or research, you, unable to fulfill this request, turn around and tell the skeptics that they need to come up with research to refute the aforementioned bullshit-filled "articles." You're like an wild-eyed man on a streetcorner babbling that the second coming is imminent who, when asked to provide evidence of this, in return demands proof that it won't happen.

When reams of anecdotal evidence for the benefits of increasing mileage exist - and you admit yourself that they do - then no one needs to supply you with peer-reviewed articles detailing this evidence any more than a journal article should be necessary to convince you that odd numbers are not divisible by two or that turtles can't fly. Only a relativist moron would assign equal value to every training-related proposition served up here or anywhere, but this is what you seem to do - not surprising given the self-imploding nature of every "argument" you offer.

Others have tried explaining all of this to you, but your combination of ignorance and truculence prevents you from securing even the vaguest sliver of comprehension. Despite what you say about harboring a thirst for "substantive discussion" (which you're about as personally familiar with as you are with menstrual cramps), I can only assume that you enjoy being regarded as the village idiot, because you certainly won't convince anyone of anything. Nonetheless, your blend of passion and blindness does carry a certain allure, not unlike that of a mentally retarded child madly whacking off on a crowded city bus.

Jack Van Impe said it perfectly.

hence the conclusion that, though frequency exerts an influence on performance, it is not a large influence.

Coming from a guy who dismissed a 0.38 correlation (between mileage and marathon times), that's a bit of a laugh, especially when you consider that other sources of variance are enormous (e.g. inherent ability is extremely variable, there are possible blowups on the day which causes a huge amount of variance in times, and, the response to increase in mileage is nonlinear which produces even more variance).

A runner in the real world who has passed the point of diminishing returns is interested in stacking a factor that has a supposedly minor correlation of 0.38 with performance in his favor. I'd personally jump at a chance to take a 1% improvement in my 1 mile pace.

So the point is that we know damn well that there is a point of diminishing returns, and that you can run fast without training very much or very hard. There is ample evidence of this. But once you get to the point of diminishing returns, how do you improve your performance ? You can just throw your hands up in the air and give up, or you can work your butt off to make your mile time a few seconds faster.