Why does weekly mileage matter so much? (Read 3293 times)

Oh to have that stick that someone once slobbered on.

woah

You know guys, you could have saved about 11 pages by just explaining WHY/HOW additional miles of running (even slow miles) improves one's ability to run a distance race faster.  Instead you kind of just kept repeating things along the lines of  "running more miles will make you race faster." What he is/was looking for is an explanation of why.

I'm sure someone here could boil it down to a paragraph of two. Or we could point the OP to Lydiard's Osaka lecture (http://lydiardfoundation.org/pdfs/al_lecture.pdf). Or we could point him to McMillan's site (http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/training1.htm for example) and the way he explains the benefit of longish/slowish runs:

The goal of Endurance training is simple, to build endurance. To do this, your body adapts in very specific ways. Research has shown that Endurance-zone training results in specific adaptations to your cardiorespiratory and nervous systems as well as to the muscles themselves. The key cardiorespiratory or "central" adaptations that result from Endurance training include an increase in your stroke volume -- the amount of blood that is pumped with each heart beat. The result is that fewer heartbeats are needed to deliver the same amount of blood to the working muscles. You experience this as a slower resting pulse and lower heart rates at a given pace.

In the muscles, there is a corresponding increase in the number of tiny blood vessels (capillaries) to deliver this greater volume of blood per beat. The number and size of mitochondria, the power plants of the muscle cells, also increase. You become more efficient at using fat as a fuel source, decreasing your reliance on your limited carbohydrate stores (muscle glycogen). Speaking of glycogen, Endurance training stimulates the muscles to store more glycogen making this fuel readily available for long duration efforts as well as high intensity workouts.

The nervous system becomes very coordinated in its recruitment and use of your slow-twitch muscle fibers, which helps improve your running economy. There's even a stimulus for your fast-twitch muscle fibers to become more "endurance-like".

You experience all of these adaptations quickly when starting or increasing your Endurance training. You go from feeling out of breath easily to being able to chatter throughout the entire run. Your breathing becomes easy and the legs no longer feel rusty. They seem completely happy to go for a run and when you encounter hills, there is only a mild increase in effort compared to the full-on lactic acid, breathing-to-the-max effort that you experienced before training. Objectively, you see your morning and resting pulse drop and your heart rate remain lower at a given pace.

(now, as for the reason why some people run tons of miles and never seem to improve their times, who knows. I suspect it's because they do ALL their running at really easy paces and just kind of default to that pace when "racing" as well. they probably have the fitness to go much faster, but just don't go for it. but maybe they don't mind that at all.)

Hi everyone...first post.

You know guys, you could have saved about 11 pages by just explaining WHY/HOW additional miles of running (even slow miles) improves one's ability to run a distance race faster.  Instead you kind of just kept repeating things along the lines of  "running more miles will make you race faster." What he is/was looking for is an explanation of why.

I'm sure someone here could boil it down to a paragraph of two. Or we could point the OP to Lydiard's Osaka lecture (http://lydiardfoundation.org/pdfs/al_lecture.pdf). Or we could point him to McMillan's site (http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/training1.htm for example) and the way he explains the benefit of longish/slowish runs:

The goal of Endurance training is simple, to build endurance. To do this, your body adapts in very specific ways. Research has shown that Endurance-zone training results in specific adaptations to your cardiorespiratory and nervous systems as well as to the muscles themselves. The key cardiorespiratory or "central" adaptations that result from Endurance training include an increase in your stroke volume -- the amount of blood that is pumped with each heart beat. The result is that fewer heartbeats are needed to deliver the same amount of blood to the working muscles. You experience this as a slower resting pulse and lower heart rates at a given pace.

In the muscles, there is a corresponding increase in the number of tiny blood vessels (capillaries) to deliver this greater volume of blood per beat. The number and size of mitochondria, the power plants of the muscle cells, also increase. You become more efficient at using fat as a fuel source, decreasing your reliance on your limited carbohydrate stores (muscle glycogen). Speaking of glycogen, Endurance training stimulates the muscles to store more glycogen making this fuel readily available for long duration efforts as well as high intensity workouts.

The nervous system becomes very coordinated in its recruitment and use of your slow-twitch muscle fibers, which helps improve your running economy. There's even a stimulus for your fast-twitch muscle fibers to become more "endurance-like".

You experience all of these adaptations quickly when starting or increasing your Endurance training. You go from feeling out of breath easily to being able to chatter throughout the entire run. Your breathing becomes easy and the legs no longer feel rusty. They seem completely happy to go for a run and when you encounter hills, there is only a mild increase in effort compared to the full-on lactic acid, breathing-to-the-max effort that you experienced before training. Objectively, you see your morning and resting pulse drop and your heart rate remain lower at a given pace.

This is a very surface level explanation of the physiological benefits of running longer distances (even slowly) compared to the adaptations that take place from running shorter distances at faster paces. The OP can learn more about  all the physiological benefits of the different training "zones" from the two websites I linked to above. Best of luck.

(now, as for the reason why some people run tons of miles and never seem to improve their times, who knows. I suspect it's because they do ALL their running at really easy paces and just kind of default to that pace when "racing" as well. they probably have the fitness to go much faster, but just don't go for it. but maybe they don't mind that at all.)

Thanks for the info.  I got some helpful info from a few others, unfortunately had to filter through alot of nonsense along the way.

  I would have just written "+1", but I too am a message board veteran... probably a lot longer than most of the people here as I helped Al Gore invent the internet and all that... so I don't like the +1 thing.

+1

There's plenty of information out there about the physiological processes that take place with endurance training if you're into that sort of thing but the fact is pretty plain that it takes months and years to build a strong aerobic base and that this is the foundation for everything we want to do in distance running.  That's good enough for me.

Where the hell were you 12 pages ago?

 

Sure there are lots of resources out there that say you should run alot if you want to improve.  They don't necessarily do a good job of explaining why. 

 

To me this is very counterintuitive when compared to other sports so its far from obvious.  Running seems to be the only athletic activity that you actually get better by doing alot of it at a low intensity without really challenging yourself physically.   In weightlifting, if you aren't pushing yourself by lifting enough to make your muscles fatigued, then you are essentially wasting your time.  In tennis, if you just play alot without challenging yourself and working on your weaker components of your game, then you will stagnate as well.  So I came into running with the mindset that intensity matters, but apparently thats not the case.

where did you get the idea that you don't ever need to push yourself?  

 

 

There's plenty of information out there about the physiological processes that take place with endurance training if you're into that sort of thing but the fact is pretty plain that it takes months and years to build a strong aerobic base and that this is the foundation for everything we want to do in distance running.  That's good enough for me.

 Leave it to mikey to boil it down in two sentences.

Ace - look at First training. It seems to suit your needs/ideas better based on your intensity. Not a joke but for real.

I swear that the specter of Rich is hanging in this thread.