Could any runner in history run 70mpw at 5:00 pace for several months?

Read a book by Ron Clarke of Australia when I was a teenager in the 70s. I'm pretty sure the bulk of his training was distance runs at about 5:00 pace.

The book: Ron Clarke, Runners and Races

For Bekele anything over 6 min pace was just useless . I sometimes wonder if runners take it too easy on easy days

malmo wrote:

The Overexplainer wrote:

Sure. I will give you some probable examples. Malmo may want to weight in on this as he was world class and always ran over 70 mpw. I am sure he would know whether this is possible and/or who could have done it.

John Walker

Ron Clarke

Mark Nenow

Sydney Maree

Ron Tabb

El Guerrouj

...

There are probably 3000 others who might have been able to.

Thousands of runners could do it if they focued on the task.

Thanks Malmo, for the correct answer, thousands or at least many hundreds.

It must be done. If you train in an area

where there's ample stops. You should

be doing 4:30-4:50, regulary.

You run fast right

You will get fast and know the pace.

Hillwork is mandatory.

And like Bob Dylans says, "...they stone you and say good luck!"

longjack wrote:

malmo wrote:

Thousands of runners could do it if they focued on the task.

Thanks Malmo, for the correct answer, thousands or at least many hundreds.

Malmo, you were a high mileage guy, very fast also. Did you ever run over 70 @ 5:00 or under, any week or month or months? If so awesome, if not how close to the perimeters were you? Thanks.

I'd take Tabb off this list. He may have but I find it hard to believe a guy with a 2:09:30 PR was running 70mpw 3.5 seconds slower than his PR marathon pace for that many miles a week.

Thoughts wrote:

Malmo, you were a high mileage guy, very fast also. Did you ever run over 70 @ 5:00 or under, any week or month or months? If so awesome, if not how close to the perimeters were you? Thanks.

.

Why would I do that? You train to race. You don't train for the sake of training.

To answer your question, I don't see that running 70mpw at 5:00 would be difficult at all, especially if you were in a climate like Palo Alto or San Diego, but for what reason?

I have no idea what perimeters are?

malmo wrote:

Thoughts wrote:

Malmo, you were a high mileage guy, very fast also. Did you ever run over 70 @ 5:00 or under, any week or month or months? If so awesome, if not how close to the perimeters were you? Thanks.

.

Why would I do that? You train to race. You don't train for the sake of training.

To answer your question, I don't see that running 70mpw at 5:00 would be difficult at all, especially if you were in a climate like Palo Alto or San Diego, but for what reason?

I have no idea what perimeters are?

I meant parameters "70mpw @ or under 5 minute pace" Thanks

malmo wrote:

Thoughts wrote:

Malmo, you were a high mileage guy, very fast also. Did you ever run over 70 @ 5:00 or under, any week or month or months? If so awesome, if not how close to the perimeters were you? Thanks.

.

Why would I do that? You train to race. You don't train for the sake of training.

To answer your question, I don't see that running 70mpw at 5:00 would be difficult at all, especially if you were in a climate like Palo Alto or San Diego, but for what reason?

I have no idea what perimeters are?

I agree but someone in this thread said Bekele did easy runs at 5:00 though? Is that just hearsay.

Run007xx wrote:

To achieve this feat, one must complete 7 runs, 10 miles in 50 minutes each.

This is only one of an infinite number of ways of running 70 miles per week at 5:00 pace.

One 10 mile run per day is probably one of the harder ways of doing it.

People who couldn't run much quicker than 5 minute per mile for a long distance would struggle to run 10 miles continuously every day, but could probably run a lot of mile repeats or shorter, with generous recoveries.

More interesting questions would be:

1) Who is the slowest runner who could manage 70 mpw at 5:00 pace, in any combination

2) Who is the slowest runner who could manage it, subject to the constraint of running 10 miles continuously at that pace?

3) What is the highest mileage that can be sustained at that pace? Who can do the highest mileage at that pace?

fullnattybrah wrote:

malmo wrote:

[quote]Thoughts wrote:

Malmo, you were a high mileage guy, very fast also. Did you ever run over 70 @ 5:00 or under, any week or month or months? If so awesome, if not how close to the perimeters were you? Thanks.

.

Why would I do that? You train to race. You don't train for the sake of training.

To answer your question, I don't see that running 70mpw at 5:00 would be difficult at all, especially if you were in a climate like Palo Alto or San Diego, but for what reason?

In addition to the climate, I think terrain and obstacles are likely to be an issue for many. Obstacles (like going over styles, opening gates and crossing roads) should probably be fairly minimal, but in my experience most runners will tolerate them to be able to run in interesting places and on good surfaces. Slower terrain is often sought out, as always running on flat roads is unlikely to be optimal. So I suspect a lot of runners who comfortably run 5:00 per mile would actually be slower for many of their runs, as they are interested in effort not pace for these runs.