Jim Walmsley ran 175 miles last week

My point wasn’t so much that he didn’t do those things (although I do believe some were exaggerated). I was more-so saying it’s ironic people will believe seemingly unbelievable feats but then are convinced people who run fast today are all dopers.. dopers with cheater-shoes.

He would get injured for over training

natehull wrote:

I think no one had GPS back then and things got exaggerated a bit in hindsight.

But the dude has the credentials to back it up. You know any other American teenagers with World Records? The kid beat three Olympic medalists one month before the Olympics!

Also, if Gerry said "I ran 12:53 for 3-miles on a dirt track over 50 years ago by myself in a district track meet only 2 months out of my teens, just missing the World Record by less than a second" people here would be saying "Oh sure, you're nuts."

Well that happened. He did that. And it was verified decades ago how high his mileage got. So maybe he didn't run 88 miles to a mountain, but he most certainly ran 200-mile weeks many, many times while competing and ranked Top 10 on the world stage.

It is a fine line though where you cross from hard but believable to impossible. Running a 200mpw? Sure that is doable. Running 600 mile weeks? Probably not. I am also pretty confident that he was never on 2 hour pace for 22+ miles in a marathon. And sometimes things get left off. Seb Coe was . reported to do 6x800 in 1:52 which seems absurd. Tell us that it is on a downhill road that was measure by car, and you can see . how that can be done (i.e. 2-3s of downhill, 1-2 s short and now we going . from an insane workout to one that is sort of believable for a 3:47 miler)

No one is ever going to prove or disprove that Lindgren ran as much as he did. But I think some of the people calling the claims bs are trying to discredit the value of really high mileage by discrediting the claims. But that misses the big picture. Let's say he exaggerated. Say that 88 mile run was really 77 miles, or 66 miles. Let's say the 350 mile week was really 305 and the 240 mile weeks were really 200. Heck, let's say he ran HALF the volume he claims and the 88 was 44, the 350 week was 175 and the 240 weeks were 120. How many runners, let alone high school runners are training like that? Whatever the precise numbers, Lindgren ran tremendous mileage and got tremendous results.

And 176 miles the week ending 12/29.

I don't care about the rest of you jaded bastards, but that crap is motivating and impressive. I'm really curious to see how he puts this all together. Jim passed up his automatic entry for Western States 2020, so he must have quite a year planned.

But how often do these ultra guys get dope tested? Surely he'll have to simmer down a bit before any real race like a marathon.

JM 2020 wrote:

And 176 miles the week ending 12/29.

I don't care about the rest of you jaded bastards, but that crap is motivating and impressive. I'm really curious to see how he puts this all together. Jim passed up his automatic entry for Western States 2020, so he must have quite a year planned.

Mega Mileage wrote:

His volume is insane with 9 weeks before the trials.

And this week, he’s run 60 miles in two days over four runs.

https://ibb.co/jGYSRzR

Thus proving the old adage “wolves don’t ask the opinions of sheep. “

Jim is doing EXACTLY what needs to be done.

Tng12 wrote:

But how often do these ultra guys get dope tested?

Surely he'll have to simmer down a bit before any real race like a marathon.

Think a little. He is in the same testing pool as the other OT qualifiers. They can test him, even target him, as much as any other USATF athlete.

its not impossible, it would just have to be done at a dang slow pace for almost all the mileage. People can and literally do run all day, look at strava.

zzzz wrote:

Tng12 wrote:

But how often do these ultra guys get dope tested?

Surely he'll have to simmer down a bit before any real race like a marathon.

Think a little. He is in the same testing pool as the other OT qualifiers. They can test him, even target him, as much as any other USATF athlete.

Clarifying and correcting myself, not all USATF athletes are in the same testing pool. Looks like there is Clean Athlete Program and Registered Testing Pool, and then the scrubs who don't have to provide whereabouts. But USADA can put you in one of those pools at their discretion, and since Walmsley has run for Team USA, he's at least in the CAP. USADA could target him if they though it was worthwhile.

HRE wrote:

No one is ever going to prove or disprove that Lindgren ran as much as he did. But I think some of the people calling the claims bs are trying to discredit the value of really high mileage by discrediting the claims. But that misses the big picture. Let's say he exaggerated. Say that 88 mile run was really 77 miles, or 66 miles. Let's say the 350 mile week was really 305 and the 240 mile weeks were really 200. Heck, let's say he ran HALF the volume he claims and the 88 was 44, the 350 week was 175 and the 240 weeks were 120. How many runners, let alone high school runners are training like that? Whatever the precise numbers, Lindgren ran tremendous mileage and got tremendous results.

Lindgren got tremendous results from being talented rather than from crazy mileage. His best career result was the 12:53 3-mile at age 20. If he had run about 120mpw he would have had better lifetime PRs and a much longer career.

Dave Bedford also ran 200mpw, ran a WR 10000 at 22 and never broke 28:00 again.

If Lindgren said he ran 120 mile weeks there'd be guys here saying he'd have been faster at 100. If he'd run 100 there'd be guys here saying he'd have been even faster at 80. The same goes for Bedford. There 's a kind of runner who just does not want to believe there's value to really high mileage so anyone who did that sort of mileage and was really fast is going to have people who "know" that this guy would have run even faster if he'd just trained less. None of us even know exactly what talent means, we certainly cannot measure it, so we cannot attribute how much of anyone's success is due to their talent and how much was due to their training. What we KNOW is that Lindgren did very high volume and got very fast.

UPDATE

today Jim went down to Sedona (4400') for a double workout day.

at 11am he does 6x1600 in 4:45ish, 2min rest.

then at 4pm he goes back and does 12x400 in 66-67 with a lap jog (3.5min)

that's a solid day in itself, but then you realize that he's ran 175 miles per week for the last two weeks and is on track for another 160-175mi this week.

I'm too far removed from this level of performance to comment any further, but that's pretty good, right? it's one thing to jog 175 miles in a week for a bit, but this is his second workout day of the week and he's doing two track workouts on the same day each day he works out.

Let's wait and see what he runs in Atlanta.

The training was good if he produces a decent Marathon there. Sub 2: 16 or so.

If he doesn't his training was crap.

On December 31st he also did a double workout. 8x200m in 30 in the morning and 12x400m with 100m jog rest in ~72 sandwiched in a 17 mile run.

While Jim has racked up a lot of mileage, none of the workouts or sessions in particular are impressive.

I'd much rather see a guy get 100 miles and do like 2-3 quality workout sessions (i.e. 6 mi tempo, mile repeats).

Jim is just taking the kitchen sink approach and it's foolish if you ask me. Slogging out 8 minute miles on trails in Flagstaff isn't going to get him in peak shape to run a 2:16. Seems idiotic to be running in the grand canyon instead of doing marathon specific work

He has not run very much in the grand canyon during this build-up, and has recently started specific marathon workouts. Also, I think someone of Jim's background might need a little more faster speed work than what a typical marathoner would do.

Jim runs huge mileage weeks, half of which at low 7 or sub 7 pace, it's "he's not doing any workouts". He starts doing workouts "well those workouts don't make any sense"

He runs on significantly less trails then he has before "stop running in the grand canyon".

??? lol

Might as well bump this one too

30 miler today @ 5:43 pace. 2200ft elevation. Ran pretty even pace considering the elevation profile.