HRE mileage progression

We do all have time to fill in now, don't we? I ran my first marathon in May, 1972, at the end of my sophomore year in college in a disappointing 4:34 which convinced me that I needed to run more. At the time, I really had little idea of how much national class runners trained. There was nowhere near the information available that there is now and I lived in kind of a running backwater.

But I had just gotten Joe Henderson's "LSD" book and was learning. He and a guy called Jeff Kroot were the lowest mileage guys portrayed and were doing about 50-65. More importantly to me, they were both running times that were better than anything I was doing. Well, so was everyone else in the book but winning Boston like Amby Burfoot did seemed a bit of a reach. So I set out to do the 50-60 Joe said he was doing with the idea of getting to 60 or so.

That was the summer of '72 and the biggest issue for me was being consistent. I had normally been running 7-8 miles a day with a 15-17 mile run but I was missing days. I had to work to get myself to adapt to the idea that yes, I was doing ANOTHER 7-8 mile run today even though I'd done one yesterday and the day before. I got to 60s by August and finished up with a couple 70s then went back to school and cross country.(and lower in season mileage) and made major improvements from the previous two years , took an hour five from my marathon time in Philadelphia in November, and was sold on the idea that the more I ran the faster I got. An d I knew that most serious guys were doing 100 mile weeks and set off to do that.

I spent my junior year working up from 70. Nothing fancy, just looking to add a few miles each week bit I recall getting past 80 was a struggle. I eventually just accepted that it would be hard and powered through and by late summer before my senior year, that would be 1973, I got to 100 a week.

Things had changed with coaching that year and I stayed around 100 through the whole school year but moved up to a couple 110-120 weeks over Christmas break then went back to 100 for the balance of the school year. I started doing 120 or so, and more now and again, regularly in the summer after graduating. Getting a teaching job that fall gave me less free time and energy so I tried to stay around 100-110, occasionally coming up short when I couldn't get myself out for some doubles. But in the summers I took full advantage of my free time and would get to 120-150, though I only got a full 150 two or three times. My typical main runs were 12-15 miles and second runs tended to be 4-7. I probably averaged 10 runs a week though the plan was 13. Long runs were usually 17-18 but if I hooked up with some guys doing a 20 I did it and now and again I'd push to 22-25.

I pretty much swore off of intervals when I got out of college but occasionally got talked into doing a session with some guys in my club but it never lasted long. I did not run slowly, at least relative to whatever sorts of race times I was doing. Most runs left me "comfortably tired, "to use Lydiard's phrase but I had some friends who were 2:15-2:25 type guys that I ran with and got a lot more tired than comfortably. On my own I would do some genuine fartlek, totally spontaneous, or some timed reps, 5 x 5:00, 20 x 70 seconds, etc. with no firm idea of how far I'd run.

All of that got my marathon to 2:41 by December of 1975 with times at other distances that were beyond anything I'd realistically expected to run. I kept with the routine described above until the beginning of 1978 when it dawned on me that I'd gone two years with no new PBs. As the rationale for doubles and three digit mileage was to see how fast I could get I began to think I'd gotten my answer and that it made little sense to keep running so much. But I didn't want to become just a health runner and give up racing.

I'd always like Jack Foster's line about how he never trained but just went for a run each day. I decided that would be what I did. I'd done doubles because I believe they are effective but never liked that second run, mostly done in the dark and often coldest bits of the day. So I went to one run done after work, still the same 12-15 mile run that had been my main session for years and dropped the long run to 15-16. That brought one last little round of new PBs, the 2:35 marathon being the most notable and a four mile in 19:53 being maybe my best ever race.

I was doing 75-90 in that phase. I have wondered if maybe that was all I ever should have done, that I might have been faster had I stayed with that volume. But I think the fact that I'd come to that volume from something higher was the trick. I was not getting anything close to those sorts of times when I was doing that kind of mileage in 1973-74.

Advice? Just focus on distance. Let the pace find you. Don't worry about faster running especially if you have a lot of hilly courses. If not it might not be a bad idea to do some strides or easy fartlek. As to adding miles, I think gradual and consistent is the way to go. If you can manage 100 mile week you can manage 102-103. Do that for a couple weeks or so and adjust. If you can manage 103 miles a week you can manage 105 and so on.

Appreciate the post and taking the time to give some context. Definitely think this is the time to forget pace and add some miles. Then drop the mileage mid summer in prep for a late fall marathon and add in some traditional pace work.

Thanks again. Stay safe

I found that alternating between periods of high miles with lower periods when racing brought a lot of improvement. Good luck.

Thanks for this long write up, HRE. I love when I find posts about training that you've contributed to, as I always appreciate your insights.

From reading about your progression, am I right assuming that you ran your marathon PR and that 4 mile race around age 27 or so? 28?

Did you continue to train much beyond that? I'm asking for partially selfish reasons as I'm an almost 40 year old who's just getting going with mileage. Last fall I found Henderson's book, and it's helped me get up into the 70s per week. And now with my spring marathon canceled, I'm just seeing how I can let things ride. But I also know I need to be more careful with my body now than when I was training (for other sports) in my 20's.

Thanks HRE,

What's weird is that you and I seemed to have followed almost the same trajectory. I was a sophomore 2 years after you and managed to read the same things and tried the same basic approach. Like you I improved far more than I expected (I was never going to be a world beater) and in retrospect probably should have kept my mileage at 90 - 100 instead of constantly trying to hit 130 and higher (I never got to 150 though). My marathon best ended up being 2:36.

Thanks for the compliment and I have no idea why I had to use a different name.

You're right about my age for that second round of PBs. As to whether I kept training, well, as I said, I'd adopted Jack Foster's not training but having a run each day philosophy. But what I did would look like training to almost everyone. After that last burst of PBs happened I thought that maybe I had done too much mileage, as some people had told me over the years ,and that I might go even faster on fewer miles so I dropped into the 60s for a while. It didn't work so I went back to that 75-90 range and got progressively slower. I had some spells where I went back to big miles, there was a 155 mile week somewhere in all those years and improved very slightly but finally decided that running 10 km in 42 something on 100 plus mile weeks and some doubles vs. 43 something on 80 or so in singles was not worth the added time and effort. I had kids by then. Also, some back issues that I've had since I was a kid seemed to be getting worse, not bothered by volume so much but increasingly restricted hard running.

I had one stretch of time when I went back to regular doubles but did fewer miles, maybe 70 or so, hoping that I could run faster on each of the shorter runs. It seemed like it worked, by then I was struggling with 7:00 paces when I raced (oddly I could maintain that pace for marathons but not go faster in anything longer than 3 miles.) On the shorter doubles I was able to get below 7:00 again for 5 miles/10 km.

Then for some reason I got into doing a 15-17 mile run one day and an 8-9 mile run the following day and managed to get even a little more under 7:00 pace. I also was running maybe 3 marathons every two years. This was all in my 40s and very early 50s. But I wasn't happy with the times as a rule, the marathons were okay but I was still not keen on being maybe a half hour off what I could once do. I got less keen on racing, getting away to races cut into doing stuff with the kids, and the back stuff got more problematic. Check the massive "Loss of Control in Leg" thread here. It's been some years now since I've raced. If I could get the back stuff, which has now become knee stuff too, sorted out, I'd like to race again. There are places where I could be first and last in my age group simultaneously.

Thanks. There still are times when this board is a lot of fun. I bet you'd make up way more than that one minute if we raced now.

Thanks for the additional info, HRE. Sorry about the back and leg. Long term injuries are a serious bummer. It's nice that you're still able to stay involved with the sport through the forums and spending time with other runners. And does your son run? I feel like I read that at some point.

I have a few more training questions, if you don't mind. It sounds like in your training mostly followed the mileage maxim of lots of easy and steady runs. You mention the occasional fartlek in there, but it doesn't sound like those happened often. I also know from some of your other readings that you were fairly close with Lydiard. Did you ever follow his progression of base to hills to speedwork? Or did you do any other kinds of "specific" work for the races you were training for?

I'm happy to keep going here. I did so much interval work in college, 11 sessions in a week was my record, and I only improved slightly. When I graduated I saw no need to keep doing it though now and again my conscience would tell me I should do something interval like again. But then I'd think that it never seem ed to have done me any good and Ron Clarke did fine without doing any. I usually just did the same things but faster as I got fitter. I was never a prolific racer but I did race more than most people seem to these days and that was really my race preparation. Lydiard told me you could race yourself fit without doing any rep work. Yes, I knew Arthur passably well. But I never did the whole cycle.

HRE thank you for posting.

I am also trying to find my mileage sweet spot. I’ve found that 95-105 range to be great. I’ve done higher before, not quit as high as yourself, only up to 125 with several weeks of 120-125. I always struggle during these weeks. But I always get pulled back to high mileage. The allure and potential always gets me. I read about Malmo and many others in that era training high volumes. Those guys are faster than a lot of the current crop of US distance runners.

It seems like fluctuating between weeks of high and weeks of low is the way to go.

That's an incredible decline in performance despite still training a lot. It would be interesting to know what exactly leaks away at such a rate.

I still find that a lot of my training changes are much more "permanent".

11 fast sessions in a week. That's a lot. No wonder Henderson's book made such an impression on you (by the way, I really enjoyed your lengthy biographical article on him).

I ran in high school during the 90s. We did 3-4 hard sessions a week (always too hard for me) and raced 2 times a week as well. I loved running, but I knew what we were doing just wasn't working for me at all. My best races were always in the first couple weeks of the season. Then I'd just fall apart.

Now I still love geeking out over training plans and philosophies, but I mostly find myself just running solid base miles. Maybe 3-4 times a month I'll do some fartlek or other faster turnover stuff. But not often. I'm beating my old high school times and having way more fun.

Thanks for the info on Ron Clarke. I've read a bit about him in the past, but I'm going to dig around and see what other stuff I can find.

Louis Leakey wrote:

That's an incredible decline in performance despite still training a lot. It would be interesting to know what exactly leaks away at such a rate.

I still find that a lot of my training changes are much more "permanent".

I spent quite a lot of time trying to figure this out. If I was doing a Ph.D in exercise physiology a great research topic might be what happens people whose performances don't decline much as they age and those who do it a lot. why, for example did Bill Rodgers and Ron Hill both struggle when they were 40 to match Barry Brown's over 40 marathon time when they were both much faster at the marathon than Brown was in all of their best years and Brown had run for as long and did comparable mileage in all those years?

My own theory, which is probably rap, but what the heck, has something to do with Hans Selye's theories about kinetic and adaptive energy, the former being restorable by rest and fitness, the latter existing as a finite supply which we dip into in situations where we cannot restore our kinetic energy supply. Maybe years of hard racing and big miles dips into one's adaptive energy supply and limits how much energy you can use later on in life. But that's probably nonsense.

I think it's more likely that muscular damage that Noake's discussed. A biopsy might reveal that.

Our cross country team did doubles for two weeks in my first two seasons and in the first year both sessions were intervals. That was the era. I think a big problem I had with intervals is that I was so much slower than the rest of the team and was expected to do the same sessions. We'd be given something like 12 x 440 in 68-72 with a 110 jog. So I'd hit 69-70 for the first one, 72-73 for the next, maybe 79, for the third, and I'd be off. By the 10th I might be doing 105 seconds. It was just too hard to get any benefit from. Some of the guys should have been doing 68-72 and maybe I should have been doing 88-90 from the start. I never really learned to run intervals with any sort of control. It was just hammer away and try to hang onto the group.

But I think there real benefit was that I decided there must be a better way so like you, I geeked out about learning about training. All of the guys in Joe's book were doing things I actually could do as opposed to stuff I'd read about, say, Jim Ryun doing.

Thanks for the comment about my profile of Joe. He's had a rough past five months. First a stroke and then his wife died. I owe him a lot both as a runner and as a bit of a running writer. I also did an article on Ron Clarke who I caught in the nick of time. It must be in a computer file somewhere. I don't know if I can post it (if I can find it) because I think Marathon and Beyond owns it now.

Someone asked about whether my son runs. I have two and both run. Both have done marathons, one has a 2:36 best and the other has done 2:42. I never pushed either into the sport. They each found their way to it and it's been a blast for me watching them.

physics defiant wrote:

I think it's more likely that muscular damage that Noake's discussed. A biopsy might reveal that.

I got a lot heavier over time. Guys on my mum's side of the family get huge as they age. I'm the tiny one now. But I was slowing pretty noticeably.before that happened. I think the back stuff was becoming more of an issue than I recognized at the time. I'll take muscle damage as a good explanation and avoid the biopsy.

That's great your sons run and got to it on there own. Interesting to see you guys all have similar times.

I just did a little googling and found this blog post. Seems like it might be the article you were referring to?

https://alancouzens.com/blog/Chuckie_V_miles_make_champions.html

I've only just started it, but it is definitely the kind of info I've been seeking out and enjoying lately.

That's an old article of mine. But it's not the "Ron Clarke" one.