Too Much Mileage (Read 2475 times)

 

I prefer "fastwork"

The definition of fast seems equally as vague.

 

The definition of fast seems equally as vague.

 Perhaps "Personal Speedwork or Personal Fastwork"??

I do half-fast speedwork.

In the end though, it's an individual decision.  For some people, like Diamond J, the training is certainly there to support it.  He'll have far, far more miles in his legs than the average marathoner today.  

Absolutely it's down to what the individual wants.

It's not directly related to the original questions about too much mileage, but one argument against going up to the marathon so soon is that the toughness and confidence to "go to the wall" in something as demanding as the marathon may be best developed in shorter distances.

I just wanna know how you afford to replace your shoes every couple months (that's with the assumption that you rotate at least 2 pairs).

 

 I plan on going through 10 pairs of shoes a year at about $60 each on average.  I bet a lot of RA'ers spend more than that a year on booze alone...

 I plan on going through 10 pairs of shoes a year at about $60 each on average.  I bet a lot of RA'ers spend more than that a year on booze alone...

+1 on that (the booze part).

I put 700 miles on per pair...I worked that out as the max practical while pushing them to as much as 1000+ as a poor grad student.  I've got a pair at around 760 and going strong, on the treadmill only.

It all depends on what you can handle. It took me about two years to go from my first 70 mile week to my first 100 mile week, then another year until I was able to do 100 mpw consistently, that being said in the last 15 months of the most high mileage I have ever done I have only done about 20 100+ weeks. 

What I have figured out, or at least what works for me, is that I can run a whole bunch up to the 120s and maintain all the other stuff in my life, but it takes working up to it over months and years. It also depends on how I feel. Despite averaging double digit mileage when I am in shape, I have days off and low mileage days which inevitably destroy my weekly mileage. On the other hand, running that much is a sacrifice and something else has to give, your tv time or time with non-runners, or your sleep. I feel that doing as much as I can, while maintaining a life balance that doesn't alienate everyone else is where I want to be. I mean 15 hours of actual running gets like 120 miles in a week and really thats only about two hours a day. It's really not out of reach.

I have also learned that getting 1XX in my log is a huge mental boost. I feel like I am training well. Compared to running 80 miles a week with more quality and an hour of core work per week I am probably not training as well, but I feel good about my training where as a measly 80 miles per week is kind of like a recovery week or a waste of good training, at least that is part of how I see it in my head. 

In the end remember the goal is to race really fast. The means to get there, while they make the experience more valuable, are not as specific as the goal itself. I mean that if you get injured for six months because of incorrect training, such as more mileage than you can handle, you would have been better off chugging through 70s and 80s for six months. For an extreme example, read some of Anton Krupicka's blog posts at running times or his blogspot blog.