Happy trails

Very nice race.

Great race!

Good work!

Great time! That is a tougher course than it looks on paper. The hill from 20-25.5 is tough!! Glad you had good weather this year, last year's weather was horrible.

Congrats again on a solid race.

Thanks everyone. You're absolutely right-- the course is way tougher than it looks. Having so much of the last half uphill kills the confidence, but it was a beautiful course.

Nice time. I know it wasn't your goal but they can't all be PRs. Good effort and you will live to fight again.

That is a great time for a tough course! Congrats!

After looking at your mileage for the last four months I'd say you have an OTQ in the bag on any reasonable course. If the mileage goes up, that is. Do not do days less than 10, and you've got it.

Oh, you're a girl. I didn't even look at your profile. Oopsy. I should have said very very nice race.

I get injured every time I go above 70 mile/week. I've proven it on 5 different marathons out of my 14. I don't think increased mileage is always the key. I bike to get extra cardio. The last 4 weeks, I got the flu, so I couldn't train as hard, but other than that, I think my training was perfect. It was only illness and then some mental games that kept me from 2:46 this time. I'll do Napa or CIM in California for my next attempt. Thanks for all the congrats everyone. :-)

Have you tried slowing down the bulk of your miles to 8:00 pace and eliminating track speed sessions to get used to the mileage?

Some more arguments for mileage. Can you think of ONE standard A runner (2:39) that did so off 40 miles a week?

I can imagine a standard B runner, somebody the caliber of Deena Kastor that for one reason or another is afraid to run the mileage barely making it off 40 miles a week. But that would be a potentially 2:19 girl running 2:45.

I actually found some data. Jason Karp did a study of marathoners in 2004 Trials. Women under 2:40 had the average weekly volume of 135.8 km (84.38 miles) with the standard deviation of 31.5 km (19.57 miles). So in other words, one standard deviation below the average was about 65 miles a week. Women under 2:48 but slower than 2:40 had the average of 111.3 km (69.16 miles) with the standard deviation of 23.3 km (18.48 miles). One standard deviation below average thus is a little bit more than 50 miles a week.

What I get out of this is that it is very very difficult for a woman to break 2:48 off less than sustained 50 miles a week, and to break 2:40 off less than sustained 65 miles a week.

It is also interesting to look at the men's data since they had to run sub-2:22 to have the privilege of taking this survey, and if I had to deal with an identical twin brother and sister pair that would train, eat, and sleep the same, I would put much more hope on the sister running 2:48 than the brother 2:22. In fact, more hopes on the sister running 2:40 than the brother 2:22.

One standard deviation lower than the average for guys in the 2:15 - 2:22 range was about 100 miles a week out of 29 respondents.

I can tell you of one female runner who did run in the high 2:20s off only a little more though? Guess..

Interesting study though.

Sorry, I stand corrected I was thinking of Grete Waitz who ran some really good times as a low mileage track runner. Later upped her weekly average to 75/mi a week and ran a PR of 2:24:54.

I know a lot of B standard runners that run the exact mileage that I do. All of my training partners in San Francisco made the O trials last year on my mileage. I'm not running 40 miles a week, I run whatever my coach tells me to run--and it only dipped below 50 when I raced or was sick. I've come just as close to the O. trials as Sasha, in the same year. When I ran 80-90 miles a week, my marathons were 3:20 (St. George), 3:25 (Boston), and 3:15 (Hartford). The only thing that changed for my 2:49 the next year was decreasing my mileage and running faster.

Great race! I have not run TC, but know that it is NOT a fast course. As far as training, sometimes less is more. Great job with getting yourself prepared. What you are doing is obviously working for you, and there is no one formula to success.

Yes, everyone is unique in some ways as to how they respond to training. I think periodisation is key at least it has been for me. Big slow winter base followed by less mileage and progressively faster daily runs as your aerobic function improves. But as I found out the lifestyle has to go along with it. I can't get enough rest in order to benefit off of 100+ mile weeks unless I'm not working! And that's just not an option is it?

Wow, amazing race! Keep at it!

And it seems like you have a good coach and are very aware that you don't have to do killer mileage, just like Paul and Ashbaker said- interesting that your high mileage marathons have been poor times. A great example of low mileage success is Paul himself, who just set a half marathon PR and won a marathon off mileage of 45-65 mpw. He had previously done up to 110+ mpw, and certainly was a bit faster at the high mileage (emphasis- "a bit"), but health and injury risk now have him running lower miles. But even at the lower miles, he is dang fast!

Another good example is Nan Kennard, who just ran a 2:44 marathon off 50-65 mpw.

Sasha, those surveys at OTQ are a bit deceiving because they do not include any runners who tried to make OTQ but could not run it due to injury caused by high mileage. Even if they actually qualified, I'm sure some did not run due to injury. If Emily has tried high mileage and it didn't work for her, then we should only encourage her to run her best at the mileage she can do injury-free.

Emily - that's why they are standard B runners :-) Standard A talent + less than optimal training = Standard B performance. I consider 17:00 flat sea-level 5 K to be Standard A talent.

80 miles a week in an of itself does not guarantee that your potential will be fulfilled. For example, 40 miles the entire year followed by 80 miles three weeks away from a marathon followed by a 40 miles a week taper will bring you to the marathon overtrained. 80 miles a week with bad sleep and/or poor diet will produce similar results. There are many ways to blow it, too many to mention.

I do not know how a runner with your talent managed to run a 3:15 or slower in a marathon. What were you splits? Did you start with an injury? Were you sick? If somebody told me a girl with a 17:00 5 K speed was headed for a 3:15 I would dial 911 immediately :-) There is no way you could have blown up that bad without some outside help.

First time I tried high mileage, my marathon was a disaster (Boise 1999 2:49:59). I backed off and tried again. Second time it was better (Top of Utah 2001 2:33:20). I tried even a higher mileage again, and had another disaster (Top of Utah 2002, 2:37:40). I learned that you cannot mess around with recovery when you run a lot. Once I learned that and applied it I had a breakthrough (Top of Utah 2003, 2:27:46). Overtime I lowered my St. George time from 2:41 achieved off average of 55 miles a week to 2:23 achieved off average of 95 miles a week.

Without higher mileage the fulfillment of the marathon potential is impossible. Decent times relative to competition are possible. E.g. Haile could probably run 2:12, which is a world-class time, off 50 miles a week, but not 2:04. Do not be deceived by runner X running a time you consider fast off inferior training.

Jon - Nan is a 2:28-2:32 girl. She can run 2:44 off rather goofy training as long as it was not too goofy. And I do not consider 2:50 marathon to be a good result for a low-17:00 5 K runner. So I would not say that what Emily is doing now necessarily "works". It just works better than something that did not work at all before (I still would like to see the details of that and understand why), but it is a dead end. She might have enough talent to barely pull off an OTQ, but anything under 2:40 will not happen with this kind of training.

Emily,

Again congratulations.

I want to add my voice to the chorus and hope to shift away from this discussion on training style so that it doesn’t overshadow the progress you’ve made and the success you achieved.

As with any forum everyone has their own opinions and fortunately people share those ideas on this blog. For 99% of what I’ve seen this is meant to be constructive and is why I enjoy the blog so much. Sometimes these suggestions are well received and sometimes they are misplaced. Enjoy the glow of your achievement continue doing what works best for you and when/if you stop improving then maybe revisit other possibilities. But I think you are a perfect example of someone who tried one thing that didn’t work and found a way around that road block too much success.

Sasha,

I think in general you have a strong argument. But I think one of the best virtues of a good coach/leader is knowing how to tailor to the individual. Realizing that there is not a one size fits all in this world. I don’t think anyone is arguing that if you can train 150 mi weeks/ injury free/ with optimum rest/ and optimum diet that a person/ with a X talent of a 12 min 5K that you would break a 2 hr marathon. However, even people that make a living running (the four of them in this country that can) do not have all those pieces of the puzzle. Do I say that one should not try and achieve this? No. I think that people should try their hardest at whatever their goal is. But I think in this environment (the blog) it is important to not lose sight that we have a diverse population of goals and even those with the same goals will reach them by different means. The key I feel to getting more people performing to the top of their ability is for them to find the balance of key training points that compliment the other obligations and priorities in their lives.

Adam:

I acknowledge that everybody is different and will thrive off different mileage. However, runners have some things in common. Two legs , a pair of lungs, a heart, and a number of other things that are the same. So while different, we are really not that different, and certain principles apply to everybody. My argument is that certain performances with a given level of raw speed are impossible when the mileage is out of range. 50 miles a week peak with the yearly average of 40 is out of optimal range regardless of the individual. The range of optimal is fairly wide, from 70 to 200, but 50 is on the outside of it. If it was not, we would see sub-2:10 men and sub-2:30 women running that mileage at least sometimes.

Again, that does not mean that upping the mileage to the correct range would automatically guarantee the result. It means that UNLESS you do it, it would not happen. NECESSARY but not SUFFICIENT condition. Just like nobody runs a 2:10 by going through the first 10 K in 35:00 or slower. You will see them no slower than 32:00 for that split. There is a degree of individual variation. Some might need to hit it as fast as 29:30, while others thrive off a slower than pace opening split of 32:00. However, it does not mean that if you go out in under 32:00 you would run 2:10, or even 2:40 for that matter. You could blow up royally and not even break 3:00. But if you do really think you've got 2:10 in you, but not 2:05, you'd better make to the 10 K checkpoint before 32:00. Same with mileage. If you want a decent 5 K/marathon time ratio, you'd better get your mileage to above 70. After that it is individual - some benefit from more, others do not.

Jon:

The expectation I have when somebody sets up a public blog is that they do want advice. That is the whole beauty of making your training public. You ask the public to discuss it. Otherwise, there is an option of making it private or at least putting a note in the profile that says "I know what I'm doing, my training is not up for discussion, please do not advise me".

Incidentally, 95% of the notorious 30+ minute PR stories happened through what you would have called "unwanted advice". The Training Review Request board is not used that frequently.

I don't mean to get involved in this discussion, but I always enjoy hearing Sasha's advice. Everyone's free to ignore it if they want, but to me it's always interesting and has been helpful.

Sasha- I would say the biggest thing is that you don't need to give feedback like this on people's RACE REPORTS. Just congratulate/console them and let them enjoy what they did. If you want to give them advice, do it on their blog a few days or weeks later. But I know people on the blog who have been very offended/hurt when they ran great races and you immediately tell them how much faster they should have gone or could go. Let them enjoy it now, then give advice later. Don't minimize their current race by telling them how much faster you think they could go.