The Less is More approach - does it work? (Read 2185 times)

Nobby, Neat you married in Appleten. Great town. I really like it. I lived in Appleton for about 4 years, 1995-1999 but have lived in Green Bay most of my life and currently. I do race in Appleton occasionally moreso in the fall and primarily 5Ks. I work in Appleton quite a bit as many orthos and podiatrist use my products. Didn't do any races last year in Appleton but previous year did a handful of 5Ks including Fox Cities. Not sure when you would have seen me but it would have to have been a 5K. I am one of those 20 mile a week runners over 4 days and work with a lot of other runners who do the same. I do agree that one should do little fast running on low miles especially being a newer runner. I live and learn. Years back all my runs were tempo runs. Back then I was running a bit less but each run for 3-4 miles very hard. I didn't run every day so I could recover. Of course I was younger then also. My best 10K was about 44-45 but I was also on Creatine and a bigger man - yet also younger. I agree with you guys on a lot of faster running on low miles. Just not enough miles to support it. For me, my focus now (and my hammy tendonitis has limited this until recently) and since I have been doing cardiovascular training and running for over 20 years is to get in one quality session a week and a long run. When I say quality, I don't mean max v02 workor hammering intervals. I generally will be do some longer slower tempo work (long for me) like 4-5 miles at MP or some half marathon paced or critical velocity paced (around 10K pace) reps and quick striders a couple days per week. Long run is generally comfortable depending on what I am training for. The CV reps I really really find benefit in for all distances. If training for a half I will try to do a bit more aggressive long runs like 1:30 slower than 5K pace rather than 2:00 slower than K pace or perhaps a faster finish long run. Depends how I feel. Not every week. When I would try to do two hard quality sessions on 20 miles per week, my body did not like it. Lead to my hammy tendonitis I believe. It is a bit much on the low miles. Age is a factor also as is experience. Of course, each athlete is individual but for me, one hard session a week is plenty. And quite frankly, a long run of 8-9 miles can be considered a "work out" when running 20 miles a week. Hard sessions without any semblence of a base is not recommended by me for long term progress and health. This year I just ran 20 miles per week without any quality and still within 2-3% of my best race times for 5K, 10K and 1/2 marathons. The quality work only gives you that extra benefit. The comfortable miles provide 97% of your fitness and race results in my opinion.

Actually, I do disagree. I've tried this (hitting key workouts, cutting out other mileage) several times due to issues getting enough time to train. It flat out doesn't work (at least for me). It will work for awhile, kind of like reducing mileage and hitting workouts to peak into a key race(s). After awhile, however, with the reduction in volume, I can no longer tolerate the length or speed of workouts that I used to. Performance begins to decline. IMHO saying the main purpose of easy days is recovery is misleading. Do you recover on easy days? Of course. But they serve an important primary purpose -- to continue to develop you at a level that does not negatively impact recovery. In other words, the primary purpose is what I mentioned before -- continuing to develop you aerobically, strengthen various tissues, and add endurance. Recovery simply happens because you are not pushing it, it's a secondary benefit. Cross training, while better than not doing anything, is NOT running. I did slash over a minute off my 10K in college simply by nordic skiing 2-3 hours/day all winter. However the alternative was not doing anything since there was too much snow to run anywhere -- running would have been better. Watch any very fit skiier or cyclist try to run fast for the first time and you will see cross training is not a 1:1 replacement. This is why when top runners are injured they will spend hours and hours in the pool, on a bike, etc to replace that one hour of easy running they are missing. My current conditioning sucks primarily because I cannot get the volume in. Becuase I cannot get volume, I can't go out and do 4-5 miles' worth of intervals on the track, I don't have the stamina the volume would give. When I get time one of these days, I am going to post an analysis of my performance by year as it correlates to volume. The results are pretty clear for this n=1 experiment.

I find a lot of the 'less is more' proponents like to misrepresent the easy day as though it's strictly for recovery, and present "the best recovery is no running at all" argument. We actually recover quite well while continuing training. Personally, if every workout I did were a ballstothewalls type, I'd hate them and probably quit. Fortunately a good volume of easy stuff is not only pleasant to do, it makes you a better runner. I love my easy and recovery days where I don't have to push it at all.

Ahh....triathletes.... I have a former college teammate and good friend who has more talent in his left pinky than I do in my whole body. They guy was All-Conference all 4 years of college. Importantly, he also has a high beer tolerance (I was so envious back then). Post-college, we ended up living close enough to train together about twice a week. He began emulating my "more is more" plan and increasing his mileage. I remember his having a difficult adjustment, since I was a year ahead of him on the plan and he was trying to keep up with the mileage. Eventually, he was averaging in the 70s per week and occasionally hitting 80. He was more injury-prone than me, so he never got up to the volume I did. This tendency to get injured prevented him from ever training more than about 9 months straight without problems at any volume and prevented him from reaching his potential, but he still ran sub-25 8k and about 31:30 10K. Never could get the volume to convert a decent comparable marathon. He has now started doing duathlons so he can get use out of the biking he does to substitute for some of his running volume. He's no longer competitive as a dedicated runner anymore, but in duathlons he always finished 1st or 2nd on every run and gets spanked on the bike. Even in large duathlons, he's running with the elites. Duathlons/triathlons are an exercise in achieving perfect balance while comprimising on everything. Triathlete training for each discipline is far different from what I would bet anyone dedicated to any of the three disciplines would recommend.

So, you can run better with less miles, but you'll probably have a pretty nasty heart attack? Hmmm.

To be fair, the study showed some myocardial changes, but didn't show that there were any adverse outcomes associated with those changes. But what I want to know is what other cardiovascular exercise did those marathon runners do? As far as I can tell, the researchers didn't measure that. I don't run more than 30-35 miles most weeks, but I do pretty intense cardio cross training on most of the days I don't run. I would imagine that would make a difference, but it doesn't seem like anyone has taken that into account. And does the type of training matter? If some of those <40 miles are pretty intense interval training, is that more cardio-protective? enquiring minds want to know .... miles="" are="" pretty="" intense="" interval="" training,="" is="" that="" more="" cardio-protective?="" enquiring="" minds="" want="" to="" know="" ....=""></40 miles are pretty intense interval training, is that more cardio-protective? enquiring minds want to know .... >

I used to run every day........and kept getting injured and sidlined....... Now I take off Mon and Fri....and I never seem to get hurt....... You have to define 'less' cause that is a term that is different for everyone, but I cut back to 5 days and I am doing much better now........for what it is work in this string....

Unless you're prone to injuries, more running will tend to give you more benefit. Doing lots of mileage makes you stronger so that you can handle speed work and recover and obviously it trains your aerobic capacity. People who advocate "less is more", from my experience, are really just people who don't want to put in the time to train properly.

Just to be contrary - I've had exactly the opposite experience: the less I run, the more frequently I get injured, or feel sore, or hurt, or just don't wanna run.

100% agree. I'm much more sore and have more little nagging injuries on low miles.

But I'm pretty sure if I had the time and inclination, I could run 10-15 miles daily and never be injured. Oh - and I'd probably get a hella lot faster if I did it.

Maybe even faster than Tanya.