Only real benefit of high mileage = weight loss/maintenance?

Lmao someone here really said after 1-3 years of running you're no longer a beginner. OP thinks 30 miles a week is high mileage. Hilarious.

Rez wrote:

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.

Yeah I think so too. The part where you say 2 hard days per week and 2 medium days.

I tried multiple times to do 3 to 4 hard days a week of sprinting and lifting and it just never works.

So it's always just 2 hard days and an optional medium day.

selling weight loss pills? Get outa here!

skyboy wrote:

In the words of John L. Parker/Frank Shorter: You may not believe in mileage, but you sure as sh*t run mileage.

Yea, but that could be in large part because you want to maintain a lean frame without restricting your eating to an unpleasant degree, and can't or don't want to put in hours of cross-training to burn extra calories.

Most people will experience a huge spike in appetite from running just 40-50 mpw including workouts, on top of having a completely sedentary job (which leads to habitual snacking), and might find that they gain weight as a result. When they double that to 80-100 mpw, whether or not by merely padding their mileage with easy miles, they reach a new level where their calorie burning is out-competing their appetite and ensuring them a good body frame for running.

DiorXX wrote:

There are many benefits when it comes to any kind of physical activity. If you are going to run like crazy, it's pretty normal that you are going to have a fit body. It doesn't matter if you are going to run marathons or short sprints. Either way, your body is going to adapt to your needs. Another thing that should be taken in consideration is that a good nutrionist, like the ones from

https://medicalweightlosslehighvalley.com/

or anywhere else, will help a lot. After all, diet is something that shouldn't be neglected, especially if you are going hard everyday with your body

I wish someone else could send me his opinion

Here's something I found while browsing about this topic.

A new study has found that two hours of running per week can lead to significant weight loss.

A recent article in the Journal for Physical Activity, Nutrition and Metabolism (PANEM) studied a group of sedentary adults who began adding just 2-hours worth of jogging each week over an 8 year period. Unlike those attempting fad diets or strenuous exercise routines, these participants were able to lose up to 13 pounds by increasing their activity levels without making any other lifestyle changes at all.

In that case, it can be said that running long distances in a long time can definitely lead to weight loss.

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?

In all likelihood it's a question of diminishing returns - some benefit, but there's a point at which it becomes insignificant,

But you can't arbitrarily keep increasing mileage in practice because injury becomes the limiting factor.

AlanGibson wrote:

I wouldn't be so sure about it. You see, if you run 10 miles in 1 hour slowly, for example, and you run 10 miles fast in 30 minutes, you can't say that you will lose more weight in the first option.

As longer you run as more %fat you burn during that run. So it seems to be that the time duration is indeed the most important factor to lose weight.

mjhv wrote:

Why America gets worse the longer the race.

Not true! US is good at ultras...

Mileage has diminishing returns, but you need to run adequate mileage to obtain good fitness and then use that fitness to run fast workouts.

Screw all of these technical terms and just run. Do a long run, a tempo run and intervals or strides every week. Everything else easy. You don't gain anything by pushing your easy pace.

Run as much as you can while staying healthy and not being in a state of fatigue all the time. The more the better, Bio 101, (increased stroke volume, build more capillary beds, increase red blood cells, increase venous Flo etc..)

The best runners are the most talented healthy guys who run the most.

No shortcuts.

This is one of the stupidest posts I've ever seen on Letsrun.

Almost everything is improved upon by practising over and over at a low intensity.