Ok, I understand the benefits of building your mileage if you're a beginner and your body just isn't adapted to running, but I can't think of anything in life where you benefit from doing the same thing over and over again at a low effort level of activity. Is the real benefit of high mileage weight loss/management?
Long slow distance = rapid weight loss right? Doing three, ten mile runs a week > six five mile runs? This has definitely been the case for me.
Only real benefit of high mileage = weight loss/maintenance?
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Weight loss will help you no matter what your mileage is at. The key to being a good runner is making good on all of those little things like eating habits and recovery. So you're partially right, also higher mileage does A LOT more for you than just lean you out.
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Sprints are good for weight loss too though
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No, high mileage increases your aerobic strength/endurance.
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I agree. Milage is only good for beginner gains or if you’re training your mechanics to run but once youve done that (which happens fairly quickly like 1-3 years), dropping the milage and upping the intensity is what gets you gains from there on out.
People say you need to do easy days most days for recovery blah blah blah but it never works for me either. I do about 2 days easy, 2 days moderate and 2 days hard and I find that is the sweet spot.
Instead of making 80% of my milage easy and 20% speed/hard, mine is more like 30% high intensity, 35% moderate (marathon paced) and 35% easy (easy pace)
I really don’t understand 15 min 5k runners who spend 9+ hours a week slogging away at 8+ pace. You’d get the same results and less injury off much less milage. -
Volume has everything to do with red blood cell creation and quality. Maybe if you live at altitude and take EPO you can suffice on 40 miles per week of just workouts. But if you are the rest of us you probably need to put in serious mileage.
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You think East Africans run 120+ mpw because they are worried about their weight? If you want to be at your best for distance races, you run high mileage. No exceptions.
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That depends on how many you do and what intensity they're at
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Do long fast distance and thirty miles a week isn't even close to high mileage no matter how you slice it.
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Why America gets worse the longer the race.
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This idea has come up a few times on here, the answer is no.
There are plenty of significant adaptations to high mileage like capillarization, increased mitochondria, better fat utilization, better structural ability to handle harder workouts... -
Hardloper wrote:
This idea has come up a few times on here, the answer is no.
There are plenty of significant adaptations to high mileage like capillarization, increased mitochondria, better fat utilization, better structural ability to handle harder workouts...
Well said! Long slow activity may be a bit tedious but it is important. -
Hardloper wrote:
This idea has come up a few times on here, the answer is no.
There are plenty of significant adaptations to high mileage like capillarization, increased mitochondria, better fat utilization, better structural ability to handle harder workouts...
So there's no cap on all of this? Your capillarization, increased mitochondria, better fat utilization, etc just keeps increasing and increasing? -
awesome blossom wrote:
Hardloper wrote:
This idea has come up a few times on here, the answer is no.
There are plenty of significant adaptations to high mileage like capillarization, increased mitochondria, better fat utilization, better structural ability to handle harder workouts...
So there's no cap on all of this? Your capillarization, increased mitochondria, better fat utilization, etc just keeps increasing and increasing?
Obviously there's a cap but it's much higher than you'd achieve from low mileage training and if you drop down to low mileage the levels will decrease. -
Exactly, OP is only doing 30 mpw, that's low in the grand scheme of things
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My 30 mile example was just to keep the math simple. If you're running 30 miles a week, my guess is that you're not maxing out the moderate/ hard workouts your body can comfortably recover from week over week. I'm questioning something like 50 vs 100 mpw if you're just tacking on slow runs to get to 100.
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Shoebacca wrote:
Volume has everything to do with red blood cell creation and quality. Maybe if you live at altitude and take EPO you can suffice on 40 miles per week of just workouts. But if you are the rest of us you probably need to put in serious mileage.
And, theoretically, improves fatigue threshold if done well. But, it's very difficult to do high mileage well and get more than some distance practice benefits. -
snow blow wrote:
You think East Africans run 120+ mpw because they are worried about their weight? If you want to be at your best for distance races, you run high mileage. No exceptions.
I think they run 120 mpw because they take EPO, or whatever has taken its place. -
Hardloper wrote:
This idea has come up a few times on here, the answer is no.
There are plenty of significant adaptations to high mileage like capillarization, increased mitochondria, better fat utilization, better structural ability to handle harder workouts...
This is right, but high mileage does also lean you out which is all part of making your body into a more efficient runner. It’s just that the primary purpose of high mileage isn’t weight loss, it’s all of it. -
Shoebacca wrote:
Volume has everything to do with red blood cell creation and quality. Maybe if you live at altitude and take EPO you can suffice on 40 miles per week of just workouts. But if you are the rest of us you probably need to put in serious mileage.
Nonsense. Red blood cell creation and quality (I think you mean health of the cells?) is a normal physiological process in every healthy person whether they run or not.
