For how long would one want to sustain 10 hours a week? I am guessing you will probably tell me as long as you can. (And just to be clear, when I said that marathon training takes too much time, I meant in more of the psychological, emotional investment over a long period of time sort of sense rather than time spent running. Not that you were asking for clarification.) I have recently been getting that feeling for what you are saying in that last paragraph there with anchoring onto a tempo run (so fun!) and long run (sometimes with a friend) each week but it seems more solid with you putting it that way. More important. Thanks, that's something to hold onto.

In the end, good training needs to be giving us as much (or more) as it's taking. We're hobbyjoggers after all, in the best sense of that word. If we are talking ideal training, then, yeah, 10+ hours a week every week with maybe a couple weeks off every year. The human animal is meant to move. Take us out of this weird context of modern sedentary life, and 10 hours a week of movement is probably more like a minimum for ideal psychological/physical health rather than an ideal to be striving for. So, yeah in the ideal sustain it forever. But, the reality is that the context of this bullshit sedentary world with its aversion to sweat and smell and sleep and touch and a lot of other stuff that makes us happy, 10 hours a week of exercise can be really stressful to try to maintain.

Think about it like this: 10 hours a week of running means that [quick calculation] 6% of your life is time spent in motion. The other 94% is sitting around. So, 10+ hours a week is totally physically sustainable and really healthy, I'd say. I know I felt good when I was doing it. I found that once I hit 70mpw my body sort of "clicked" -- weight fell away, my energy levels improved, I thought and acted more clearly. That was 70 pretty quality miles.

Our capacity for moving and being healthy in a general way probably is much higher than 10 hours a week. But to get beyond that, you need to do some slow running, walking, swimming or what have you. 10-12 hours of really running (heart rate 140+) seems to me to be a sweet spot, though of course some can do more.

But yeah I think the runners who enjoy their running and run fast have figured out a routine that feeds them. Willpower is a pretty frail human capacity, and you certainly can't build a training schedule based on will power or overcoming suffering. The dirty little secret of successful training is that it is built around those anchor points of pleasure, that give more than they take. This is also the secret of good coaching, by the way -- figuring out your runner and what will work for them as a human being. It's also pretty good strategy for living too, if you can pull it off. Nosce te ipsum, etc.

[yeah, just getting warmed up. ]

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The best way to get a human body really fit for running is to run as much as you can squeeze into life, with all of its stresses, commitments, etc. If you are pretty low stress, and have time and some sort of running background then we're talking 10+ hours of running per week for everyone, for every distance from the mile up.

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I run close to this amount when I'm healthy.  (my husband calls it my part-time job...sad there's no pay).  But I'm a slower runner, so this translates to only about 40mpw if most of my miles are at my typical easy pace of 11:45 or so.

 

When I'm Emperor of the World, this will be changed. That should make me and a lot of people happy.

I'd settle for minimum wage for my running time.  That would keep me in shoes and good beer.

Jeff !!

How accurate do you find the McMillian calculator to be when predicting a marathon time from a half marathon time?  The Mcmillian calculator is spitting out a very fast time-one that seems impossible.  The predictor is almost perfect at predicting my half time from my 5K time.  I'm running my first marathon in May.  It should be a fast course.  Should I aim for a BQ (which seems doable) or go for what Mcmillian says is possible?

 

background:  I'll probably reach 1500 miles this year, so that means  I average 28 miles a week.  I'll amp that up for marathon training, but I doubt that I would run more than 40 miles per week regularly.  I've been running for about 5 years.  My yearly mileage is anywhere between 1000-1500 per year.

 

The bottom line is that I run regularly, but not high mileage, and I won't be putting in 50 mile weeks in training.  Realistically, I'll put in weeks that range between 35-45.  I'll do whatever speed work my plan will call for.  Oh yes.  I almost forgot about El Nino.  Humm...I've gotta go run right now because it is about to pour.  That mig;24ht put a damper on my training.

My marathon  time was 3:00 slower than McMillian time using a 10k time. Mc--3:34:20---Actually 3:37:38. BQ time 3:45(3:40). I take the Avg time of McMillain+RA+ Oregon pace wizard.

This little speadsheet gives unexpectedly precise race time predictions for me and my friends: Jack Daniels' Running Tables

 

In the end, good training needs to be giving us as much (or more) as it's taking. We're hobbyjoggers after all, in the best sense of that word. If we are talking ideal training, then, yeah, 10+ hours a week every week with maybe a couple weeks off every year.

 

10 hours a week is about what Lydiard recommended some 45 or 50 years back. That's a fair amount of running but a worthy number to aim for. I've done a lot of training systems over the years and you can do a lot off of 5-6 hours (up to the half marathon or so). You won't reach your potential off of that, and over the long term you won't improve, but can probably get 98 to 99% of the way there (based on times at a given distance).