Why don't you run 100 mpw?

Before my junior year in high school, I ran more than 100 mpw for a 6 week period. My max was 122 mpw. How did I do it? By running slow. Real slow. Like 10 mpm slow.

Did it help me? No. Did I run x-c any faster? No.

Before my senior year in high school, I ran 70-80 mpw and did much better in x-c that fall.

My advice is to not increase your mileage if it means running more than 90 seconds slower than your race pace.

drinking beer while running is too difficult.

I can think of a lot of potential reasons:

- Running glory is not the highest priority for a lot of runners.

- Runners may not yet be ready for 100mpw.

- Runners may not respond positively to 100mpw.

- Runners may have already achieved maximum aerobic conditioning.

- Age

- Lack of talent or potential

Exactly who should run 100mpw?

High School kids? Maybe not.

Promising college athletes? Maybe, if they are ready.

Post-college "been there -- done that -- time to move on to better things in life" has-beens? Maybe not.

Middle-aged parents with full time jobs? Maybe not.

Masters runners? Maybe not.

Just my opinion, but 100 mpw has to make sense, when looked at in light of where you are in your career, and what your goals and priorities are.

gregmacd wrote:

Before my junior year in high school, I ran more than 100 mpw for a 6 week period. My max was 122 mpw. How did I do it? By running slow. Real slow. Like 10 mpm slow.

Did it help me? No. Did I run x-c any faster? No.

Before my senior year in high school, I ran 70-80 mpw and did much better in x-c that fall.

My advice is to not increase your mileage if it means running more than 90 seconds slower than your race pace.

how exactly did you do that season? and what was the effort like on those 10 minute miles? does that mean that your 5k race pace is 830 per mile?

Because I've been there and done that. I made running #1 for several years during grad school, and went from a 34:18 college 10K PR to sub-31 six years later by consistently running 90-110 mpw. The three months leading into my PR I think I only had one week under 100 and it was in the 90s.

Now I have a more-than-full-time job and a kid. And I owe my wife back a lot of time she kindly gave me to run back then. So I only do 40-70 mpw.

watch it.... wrote:

I take offense to the comment that running 100mpw is greedy if you have kids, wife, job, etc...

You take offense?? LOL Then you need to stay off letsrun.

Glad you got it worked out and you get your miles in, but for me going to bed at 9 pm so I can log the miles would mean seeing my family about 1 hr a day. Not something that's really a priority now.

The fact is you can NOT do it all. I run about 50-65 mpw and I know just that means there are other aspects of my life that get neglected because of the time spent on running. If you double that, it just means more stuff is being pushed to the back burner.

Because it would double the amount of time I put into running now. With a wife and child and a 40 hour - week- job...responsiblities, etc.

I could probably run 7 in the morning and 7 in the evening every day and get in my 100, but that doesn't guarantee success. Plus I struggle to get 50/week in as it is.

look at me more wrote:

gregmacd wrote:

Before my junior year in high school, I ran more than 100 mpw for a 6 week period. My max was 122 mpw. How did I do it? By running slow. Real slow. Like 10 mpm slow.

Did it help me? No. Did I run x-c any faster? No.

Before my senior year in high school, I ran 70-80 mpw and did much better in x-c that fall.

My advice is to not increase your mileage if it means running more than 90 seconds slower than your race pace.

how exactly did you do that season? and what was the effort like on those 10 minute miles? does that mean that your 5k race pace is 830 per mile?

Before doing the 100 mpw, during my sophomore year, I ran 3-mile x-c meets in about 17:00, and a marathon in 3:46:00.

After the series of 100 mpw, during my junior year, I ran 3-mile x-c meets in about 16:00, and a marathon in 3:23:00. This was disappointing to me, and I felt that the high mileage did not pay off.

My senior year, I cut back to 70-80 mpw, and never did training runs slower than 8 mpm. I also did a lot more tempo runs, intervals, and hill repeats. These were all of the high intensity low mileage workouts that I had been skipping in my quest to "log miles." I consistently ran x-c meets that year between 15:30 to 15:45, which was usually good for the top 3. I also did a marathon that fall in 2:59:20.

My 3-hour marathon pace was about 7 mpm, so by 90 seconds slower, I mean that my long runs were never slower than a 8:30 per mile. Tempo runs and intervals were much faster.

"What was the effort like on those 10 minute miles?" Well, I started out with the "quality AND quantity", but the quality had to go, simply to have enough energy to log the miles. My pace went from 8 mpm at the beginning of the runs to about 10 mpm after a few weeks doing 100 mpw.

My legs were so tired that even with the slightest incline, my stride would be reduced to a slow pathetic shuffle. My legs pretty much fely tired all of the time, and had very little spring. I was working hard just to keep up a 10 mpm pace. I also realized that I was beat during pick-up basketball games.

I eventually realized that 100 mpw might be good training for ultramarathoners, but not for a high school kid running 3-mile races.

Time and lack of interest are the biggest things for me. I'm too busy with work, AND my kids' schedules AND playing in my band AND church responsibilities, etc. BUT, if I had the time, I would NOT run 100 MPW now at age 42. I've done that. I have other things I'd rather do with my time.

Back in my 20s with no kids, I ran a couple of ultra marathons and had a stretch when I ran 100-140 miles per week. Looking back I should have targeted a couple of 10Ks or halfs or even a marathon while doing that kind of running, tapered a bit and gone for a fast time, but I didn't -- was focused on the ultras because that's what I was doing at the time.

Any person with no kids, married or not, who has a 40-hour a week job (not much more than that) has no excuses to not be running 100 MPW if they want and if their body can handle it. Some will find great benefits, others will find minimal ones (law of diminishing returns).

redundant wrote:

Because I'm a sprinter.

_________________________________________

That's latin for "lazy"

I don't have time to run 100 mpw. I have many important responsibilities.

But I do have time to write posts on letsrun justifying myself.

Because Teg no run teh 10k?

Obviously most of us don't run 100mpw for the same reason we don't do drugs or smoke -- because we're not college students any more, and now we don't do dumb, self-destructive things because of our fragile & mostly deluded egos...

running 100 mpw is neither dumb, nor self-destructive. I like the stories of guys who had little success (but improved a lot) while running high mileage and then dropped the mileage, upped the quality and had success (while improving a smaller amount). the base 100s were the foundation from which the lower mileage quality took off. look at steve sherer (sp?). he ran high (fast) mileage with nick willis (the latter would do 15 milers at 5:20, supposedly), then dropped the mileage, upped the quality and started at 3:56. problem was that the speed didn't leave much improvement for the rest of the season.