Is Sub-3 Possible with high-mileage alone? Why or Why Not? How?

Banner. wrote:

Exactly this, where we are there are several groups of middle aged 'ultra' runners forever entering 30-100 miles 'races' (walks). They log many hours on our local trails , lots of elevation but none of them can barely crack 25mins for a 5K let alone anywhere near a 3hr marathon.

Counter point: Jamil Coury ran a 2:52 off of exactly the type of training you describe:

Who said that hill work is speed work in disguise? Maybe that is what is going on here.

GBohannon wrote:

zzzz wrote:

Ha ha, you didn't read his post closely the second time either. MP+10s and MP-10s is faster than 8:00 pace.

Yes, very true. I do realize this is kind of a workout, but still thought the experience was close enough to give some insight to OP. I can’t imagine many people have gone into a marathon with 70-100 mpw and literally NO workouts, but do recognize this is what was asked.

That's why I gave my example. I had literally no workouts, just a lot of jogging. My total miles under even just 8:00 pace from all the runs in the prior 10 weeks combined was probably somewhere around 10 miles, with maybe only one of them faster than MP.

As for the OP's question of wouldn't you just get uncomfortable running faster than 7:00 pace, I guess I didn't answer that part. 6:30 pace was still super easy after just jogging for months and months. I obviously wasn't trained to hold that pace for a marathon, so I was on sub-2:50 pace until I got some cramping and jogged in a 2:54. 8 months before that marathon, I was winning the local fall trail series of 8 races (kind of like cross country, but more singletrack/adventurous sometimes), beating lot of guys that were in sub-16 5K shape (including a guy that regularly is sub-15). So I had residual speed that didn't go away.

Oh, yeah, and to get into shape for that trail race series that I mentioned, all I did was the same jogging. I raced my way into shape as the workouts.

LetsEatDoughnutsInstead wrote:

Lots of factors here, but look at the ultra community - not many of them are breaking 3 in the marathon, and this is exactly the training many of them do.

+1

Depends on your age, sex, talent. For a 65 year old slow woman, no she couldn't run a 3 hour marathon on 80 miles a week.

OP, you would do better to also include one short race a week, as Ed Whitlock did, so 3 hr pace and faster is familiar.

Another giver of +1 wrote:

LetsEatDoughnutsInstead wrote:

Lots of factors here, but look at the ultra community - not many of them are breaking 3 in the marathon, and this is exactly the training many of them do.

+1

Depends on your age, sex, talent. For a 65 year old slow woman, no she couldn't run a 3 hour marathon on 80 miles a week.

OP, you would do better to also include one short race a week, as Ed Whitlock did, so 3 hr pace and faster is familiar.

If I remember correctly, the "LSD" (Long Slow Distance") guys from the late 1960s were similar to Whitlock - they ran heavy mileage with one race or time trial every week.

Also, isn't the point of Hadd's system that a runner can get pretty close to peak fitness with just easy distance.

If you have the talent. But you really need to be doing workouts touching on goal pace, and perhaps faster. That's just basic training methodology.

Of course it's possible for some people. It's even possible for some people on low mileage.

I ran 3:06 in my second marathon, at the age of 20, off of about 25-35 miles per week and some elliptical. After that I bumped my mileage over the next few months to around 70, and then I ran 2:58 (though I was on 2:45 pace for much of the race and ended up walking a lot towards the end). I did zero planned speed workouts, but I probably ended up doing a bit of marathon paced running during my runs, just organically. (Of course, "marathon pace" when you're running around 3-hours isn't so fast that it's automatically a hard workout. Lots of 3-hour marathoners end up hitting MP during their non-workout runs; by contrast, you'll pretty much never see a 2:30 guy accidentally drop a 5:40 mile on an "easy" day.)

I won't say "I have no talent" like so many on LR do, but it did take me several years of training to break into the 15s for the 15k, so I figure that had I been a runner in high school, I probably could've been a middling D3 runner in college. I guess that's some talent, but nothing remotely unusual.

When I was 5 years old I used to run 50 miles per week on 10 minute pace, and ran a 1:59:59 marathon

HighMileageNoWorkouts wrote:

Just curious on this. Is it possible to run sub-3 without any workouts. Example: Say for 3 months someone runs a large base of 70-100 mpw at a slow pace (8:00/mile to 9:30/mile).

I feel that the answer is yes, but I don't know how this is possible. Wouldn't this person just get used to running slow and become fatigued and uncomfortable running MP (anything under 7:00/mile pace) during the Sub-3 attempt?

There's no cut-and-dry rule that applies, specifically, to everyone.

A 3-hour marathon is a 6:52 pace per mile, every mile, for 26.2 miles. My take is that if you are to run at #:## pace, you have to practice at #:## pace once in a while.

My experience: A former coworker asked me to enter a marathon with him, 4 weeks out from the race date. I didn't alter my training regimen much, except for making sure I was on my feet, non-stop, for a 3.5 hour period one day. I ran a 3 hour marathon on 50-54 mpw (average) training. I hit the wall hard at 20 miles, walked about 2.5-3 of the next 4.25 miles. However, my 50-54 miles per week included some speed work, and a "longer" run (usually, a periodic 20-25km). My usual training pace (steady run pace) was 6:40-7:00 per mile, for an hour..., and yes, I would take a day off once every week or two.

YRMV. Good luck to you!

Amby Burfoot was famous for saying his 1968 Boston Marathon victory came off of "mostly 8:00 miles", with lots of volume.

Note that he said "mostly".

In his recent book Run Forever, Burfoot also says that everyone should do some running literally as fast as they can. He also recommends hill repeats.

Ron Clarke of Australia... OK, not a great marathoner, but a lot of his training was simply going out and blasting 10 miles at 5:00 pace or faster. He's doing volume, but he's running fast.

This is old guy advice, right? Hell, I barely know how to turn on my computer, but trust me, you have to do some running at speed to break 3:00.

How talented are you. A lot of guys could go sub 3 doing that pace and no workouts for 20 or 30 miles a week. Or less.

Big Red wrote:

Amby Burfoot was famous for saying his 1968 Boston Marathon victory came off of "mostly 8:00 miles", with lots of volume.

Note that he said "mostly".

In his recent book Run Forever, Burfoot also says that everyone should do some running literally as fast as they can. He also recommends hill repeats.

Ron Clarke of Australia... OK, not a great marathoner, but a lot of his training was simply going out and blasting 10 miles at 5:00 pace or faster. He's doing volume, but he's running fast.

This is old guy advice, right? Hell, I barely know how to turn on my computer, but trust me, you have to do some running at speed to break 3:00.

A lot of good info here, run a lot, most of it easy, some of it hard, emphasis on hills.

Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely to work for your average Joe? No.

If you want to run a bunch of slow mileage and see how fast you can run a marathon, by all means, go for it. If you want to run a bunch of mileage and maximize your odds of running a sub-3 marathon, throw in a weekly or biweekly workout and prepare for victory.

Good luck!

LetsEatDoughnutsInstead wrote:

Lots of factors here, but look at the ultra community - not many of them are breaking 3 in the marathon, and this is exactly the training many of them do.

1% of Ultra-runners run 70-100 mpw (like you stated). If more of them did, more of them could run a 34:XX 10k, or a 2:40 marathon.

Cut your mileage and run faster on your easy runs until you can handle sub 8 pace. Then bump the mileage.

HighMileageNoWorkouts wrote:

Just curious on this. Is it possible to run sub-3 without any workouts. Example: Say for 3 months someone runs a large base of 70-100 mpw at a slow pace (8:00/mile to 9:30/mile).

I feel that the answer is yes, but I don't know how this is possible. Wouldn't this person just get used to running slow and become fatigued and uncomfortable running MP (anything under 7:00/mile pace) during the Sub-3 attempt?

When I was in 7th grade I was getting started on proper training and I had a friend with a generous Dad who drove us to a race EVERY weekend. Sometimes we hit up two on one Saturday, or one Saturday and one Sunday. But mostly we did 2-4 every month.

I was starting to run 55-60 mpw regularly in anticipation of the REVCO Cleveland Marathon. So I guess I did 40-65 mpw for DEC-JAN-FEB-MAR or so? I ran a 3:13 and it was very conservative. When I was 17 I ran 2:34 off of "just" 70 mpw base training for track. For four months, nothing faster than 5:00 pace on fartleks. Most of it was 6:30 pace and 5:30 pace on hard runs.

Now I know that 2:59 is :30 per mile FASTER than 3:13, but if a 13 year old can run 3:13, then an adult could do 2:59. Especially if they ran 70-100 mpw. I would expect MOST people to run 2:30 or 2:40 at least if they were running 100 mpw. 2:40 is really quite slow -- 6:06 per mile.

HighMileageNoWorkouts wrote:

Example: Say for 3 months someone runs a large base of 70-100 mpw at a slow pace (8:00/mile to 9:30/mile).

3 summers ago, I got lazy and did just this. I was actually running 8:15 to 9:00 miles, mostly 9:00. Probably only around 65 mpw, but still somewhat relevant. On race-days, here was the result:

~ I got within 10 seconds of my 5k PR.

~ I was more than 7 minutes off of my half-marathon PR.

I didn't run a marathon, I know, but if my half-marathon performance was a preview, it wouldn't have turned out well.

I know my results are counter-intuitive. I'm almost all slow-twitch, so it's even more puzzling. I can only suppose that the reason is because the very few fast-twitch fibers I have, had time to heal, but that whatever bodily system is responsible for long tempos fell apart. Thoughts?

It's an interesting question. I ran my first marathon this April in 2:56, averaging 40 miles per week (in about 5 runs) for the 12 weeks leading up to the race. My highest mileage week was 50, and my longest run was 21. Average easy pace in training was about 7:30. I did a few interval workouts on the track, as well as a handful of tempo runs and tempo interval workouts at race pace and a bit faster.

With that as context, here's my two cents: If you don't have a particularly strong background in running (i.e., you're relatively new to racing and have slow PRs at the shorter stuff), and you're doing all your training at 8:00+, trying to hit 6:50 pace out of the gate will be a rude awakening . I don't think it would be possible for the average Joe.

It may be a different story if we're talking about a former college runner or someone for whom 6:50 pace was at one point trivial.

So what most people are saying is that it's definitely possible if you're running lots of slow miles with a wide variety of speed work every week. Got it.