100 mile equivalent in doubles or triples

100 mpw is 100 mpw, regardless of frequency. I suppose they are all equally effective, though it would be difficult to put in 100 miles off just singles.

I agree with the first reply. Why is 100mpw in only 7 runs the golden standard? The body doesn't know arbitrary time distinctions. It knows duration, intensity, and effort. 100mpw is 100mpw regardless of if you run it in singles, doubles, or 10 shorter runs per day.

It would be a runner by runner thing, but assuming you have a couple long to longish runs in the mix while you're doubling, I think maybe 90 or so. On the other hand, if you do no long runs while you're doubling or tripling, maybe 115-120. In the late 70s, Chris Stewart was third at New York in successive years in 2:13 each time. In one of those years he did no runs longer than eight miles, but he was doing 120-130 a week which I suspect compensated for the lack of long runs.

the bossman wrote:

I agree with the first reply. Why is 100mpw in only 7 runs the golden standard? The body doesn't know arbitrary time distinctions. It knows duration, intensity, and effort. 100mpw is 100mpw regardless of if you run it in singles, doubles, or 10 shorter runs per day.

I don't think 100 mpw in 7 runs is the golden standard. I'd say I've heard of very few people who do it this way compared to 100 mpw as part of doubling.

Of course the body recognizes time differences. If you broke 100mpw into 3 runs of under 5 miles a day, much less 10 1.5 mile runs a day, the body would never experience meaningful reduction in glycogen stores, meaning adaptations to increase glycogen storage in the cells might never take place. Similarly, many of the cardiovascular adaptations the body makes, including increased muscle capilarization and increased heart stroke volume are incurred through longer, sustained efforts of an hour or more.

This isn't to say that there are no benefits to shorter runs as part of high mileage training, because there are plenty of good reasons to do them as well, but to suggest there is no difference in training outcomes between the examples you gave is flat out wrong.

Thank you, that was essentially what I was thinking about when I asked the question. I agree that it would be really odd to believe that your body just sees all runs as the same, every mile is the same mile. I think you have to think about having a period of time in each run where your burning through your glycogen and increasing your aerobic endurance and if you break that up into doubles then you spend a lower proportion of your daily mileage where your accomplishing those things.

I always thought you run singles up to 70 mpw and then you start doubling.

But I also thought you start doubles at any time to reduce injury chances by increasing bouts of stress without increasing the stress levels. This is good for older and injury-prone runners.

But I think a lot of stuff.

Well yeah that is used by many people as a training strategy but when talk about injuries you can consider a relation between training stress and injury risk where the more stress you're going into with relation to your typical peak mileage or the build up to where you're going. So if 70 miles per week in singles and 100 mpw in doubles is what your used to then yeah, 100 mpw in singles isn't for you. But if you've built up to over 100 mpw and you have the ability, then what's the equivalent of that is what I'm really asking.

I believe you cannot give an exact number. You just might be able to compare two different training systems.

It is a huge difference running 100 MPW with 14.3 miles every day when you compare it e.g. to 10 - 20 - 10 - 20 - 10 - 10 - 20 or even more drastic, something like 6 - 20 - 6 - 25 - 6 - 30 - 7.

While it for sure is highly individual (some folks will burn out way faster than others or get injured) I have read somewhere that an even split double of 30 % more volume than a single is in the same ballpark. So when you run 14 miles in a single shot you roughly gotta do 2 x 9 miles at the same pace in order to reach the same endurance effect. Problem is you might be able to be more consistent because the doubles are easier. And on the other hand there are even studies that say when you run 5/5 everyday that it's better for mitochondria and fat metabolism than 10 in a single shot because of frequency that is some kind of stimulus for the body, too. I'd always advise a mix. So something in between 2 and 5 doubles. But do some. Definitely.

Pikachu

Thanks for the answer. I hadn't heard of these studies but that's definitely interesting, 30% sounds pretty similar to what I was thinking about for sure.

the bossman wrote:

100mpw is 100mpw regardless of if you run it in singles, doubles, or 10 shorter runs per day.

So if I run 100 miles in singles I would get the same out of it as running slightly over 2 miles every two/three hours throughout the day until I reached 14.3 and then repeated that for the week?