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In today’s age of social media and (virtual) group training, it’s hard not to notice that the majority of runners who are shaving down their marathon and half marathon times are running a lot of miles in their race build-ups. Many runners get caught up in the idea that in order to see gains, you have to do more—myself included.
At 33, I’ve run 10 marathons and more than 30 half marathons with personal bests of 3:45 and 1:39, respectively. Along the way, I’ve experimented with varying levels of volume and intensity, often simply based on what I saw my running peers doing. Ironically, I ran some of my worst marathon performances with high mileage training, feeling fatigued and overtrained by the time I made it to the starting line.
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In contrast, I’ve run my best marathon and half times with lower mileage training. This led me to wonder: Could some runners just be better suited for lower mileage training cycles? Can I reach my longtime goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon without getting upwards of 60 miles in preparation?
Experts say yes: Running truly is an individualized sport and the volume and intensity you’re better suited for to perform optimally can depend on fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fiber predisposition.
A 2020 study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that runners with more fast-twitch muscle fibers—which are better suited for short bursts of power—were more likely to suffer from short-term performance dips after periods of higher-volume training.
As a quick refresher, fast-twitch fibers have more powerful force but fatigue quickly; slow-twitch muscle-fibers are less powerful but more fatigue-resistant. Our muscles contain both types, but your personal ratio can vary depending on factors such as muscle function, age, and training history.
“This shows that physiology can vary greatly between two athletes who seem the same on the surface in every way,” says David Roche, a Boulder-based coach and co-author of The Happy Runner: Love the Process, Get Faster, Run Longer, who, along with his wife Megan, has coached recreational and elite runners of varying mileage levels. One such runner is Scott Hawker, who logged just over 40 miles per week in training before finishing third place at the 2019 100-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc. “So if you’re a fast-twitch athlete trying to push the same training as a slower-twitch athlete, it may have the opposite effect of what you’re looking for and may actually make you get slower.”
In other words, for some people, less truly is more.
The tricky part is that it’s hard to know what your specific muscle fiber ratio is, and thus what type of athlete you are. Plug a recent 5K time into a race equivalency calculator, and compare it to your marathon results. If your 5K time suggests you can run a 3:59 marathon, but your best marathon time is 4:10, you may be stronger at shorter races that require more fast-twitch muscle fibers. But if your best marathon time is actually 3:45, you may have more slow-twitch fibers.
Also, consider your race history and the training approach you used to get there, Roche says. If you ran a 4:10 marathon with a high-mileage training plan, but clocked a 4:08 on a lower-peak plan, that’s valuable info. Neither of these methods is fool-proof, but they can help you estimate
Even professional long-distance runners at the highest level of the sport can fall on different levels of the spectrum. Nell Rojas, who placed ninth at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, is coached by her father, former professional runner Ric Rojas, who trains his athletes with the mantra to “under-train and over-perform.” Before setting her PR of 2:28:06 at the 2019 Grandma’s Marathon, Rojas trained on a lower-volume training plan in which she peaked at around 80 miles (a pretty stark contrast to the 120- to 130-mile weeks most elite marathoners are known to complete).
“My dad has been coaching athletes for about 50 years, so he’s seen a lot of runners over-train and then either not get to the line, barely get to the line, or not finish the race,” Rojas explains. “He understands that the most important thing is that you get to the line healthy and ready to run hard, and thus believes in more of a steady progression.”
Lifestyle factors matter
Hot take from Rojas: Most people actually aren’t suited for higher mileage simply because they’re not elite athletes, she says.
“Professional elite athletes are going straight home after their workouts, and they’re eating well, stretching and napping, because pretty much everything in their lives revolves around running,” she explains. Most elites like those training at ZAP Fitness in North Carolina have extensive routines that include hot and cold therapies, massage therapy, and chiropractor appointments every day.
“The average person with a full-time job is likely stressed and not sleeping enough, and they’ll quickly see that trying to put that much quality or volume in their running just isn’t sustainable,” says Rojas.
Rebekah Mayer, a USATF Level 2 coach in the Minneapolis area, agrees. Mayer has run three sub-3-hour marathons, two of which came after training cycles in which she ran an average of 30 to 35 miles, peaking at about 50 miles. She credits her training decisions to her life circumstances dictating what her body could handle. Before her first sub-3, Mayer didn’t have kids yet and had the time to devote to building up to a 70-mile peak, but with her latter two, she dealt with curveballs like coming off bedrest while pregnant and recovering from a car accident.
“The adjustments in training felt appropriate for where I was at in life—I had young kids, was working full-time and then some, and ultimately, that’s all my body could handle,” Mayer explains. “If I tried to push higher, I was going to get broken down and injured. A lot of it comes down to working within your lifestyle and what your body can manage to do and still recover from.”
How to pack more quality into lower-mileage training plans
When it comes to creating lower mileage training plans for her athletes, Mayer focuses on polarizing their training so that they do two harder but longer-distance sessions per week, with a recovery run the next day that’s shorter and very easy. Rojas, who coaches everyone from high school students to recreational and sub-elite runners, typically has her athletes run four or five days per week with just one hard workout, which can be anything from a threshold workout to 200-meter intervals. She also includes a long run, which she counts as a quality session, sometimes varying the intensity of it.
A common misconception about training on lower mileage is that you need to supplement your days off from running with another form of cardio to cross-train. Rojas will sometimes assign cross-training sessions depending on the client’s schedule, access to equipment, and their motivations. However, some experts, including Mayer, believe that aerobic cross-training is not 100 percent of a crossover to your performance improvement, which means you may be better off just letting your body and muscles fully recover on days that you’re not running.
Rojas also has all of her athletes incorporate regular strength workouts into their training, which she also credits as a key component of her strong performances as an elite marathoner. One example of her prescribed strength sessions is a combination of weight-lifting and plyometric exercises, such as 5 sets each of barbell squats, weighted box jumps with dumbbells, and non-weighted box jumps, as well as separate 20-minute banded exercise sessions.
“The purpose of strength work is to recruit all your muscles, and produce power which will help you feel ‘springy’ when you run, in addition to preventing injury and improving efficiency and form,” she explains. “These workouts help to make your steps more powerful and add length to every stride, which is how you get faster.”
“Strength training is often essential for lower mileage runners because you’re not getting as much stress on your legs to be able to build that strength through running alone,” adds Mayer. “A higher mileage runner, on the other hand, is usually loading in a lot more hills and higher volume of that intensity, which means they’re likely getting most or all of the strength workouts that they need just from their run training.”
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Identify signs of overtraining
If you’re constantly dealing with soreness, fatigue, or overuse injuries, aiming for high numbers for their own sake isn’t going to be helpful in the long term, so it’s best to nip sabotaging behaviors in the bud before you get in too deep. If you get out for a run, are breathing normally, and running at a pace that should be easy but find that your legs just don’t want to move, or if you’re constantly underperforming on what should be quality runs, those are signals your body is craving more rest and recovery, Rojas says.
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“Listen to your body and actually write down good notes that you’ll learn from,” she says. “In my build-up to the Olympic Trials, there were some weeks that I ran over 90 miles (which my dad/coach did not tell me to do), and looking back on it, I was slogging through the miles and didn’t feel good.”
Mayer also recommends watching out for an increase in your resting heart rate. If you can track it so that you know what’s normal for you, and you’ve noticed that your resting heart rate is much higher (more than 10 percent) than it used to be for a couple of months, that’s a good sign that you need to make serious adjustments, she says.
Take personal notes and avoid comparison
Comparison is the thief of joy in both life and running. Even though I’m a seasoned runner who knows better and can easily identify what works best for me, it’s still sometimes hard to avoid second-guessing myself and questioning if I’m truly prepared when lining up at a starting line with friends who seem to be doing so much more than me while chasing similar goals.
Breaking 1:40 in the half marathon was huge for me, and I spent a year and a half chipping away at that goal. Rojas, Mayer, and Roche all emphasized that it’s key to remember that social media only tells a small part of the picture. And honestly, the idea that I (or anyone like me) might not be considered to be a “real runner” because I met my big goal by training at a much lower volume or slower paces than my peers were posting on Strava is absurd.
“We continually forget what works for us and then get scared or insecure based on what we see others doing, and then fall into the same vicious cycle of injury or overtraining mistakes,” Rojas says. “I’ve had to learn that hard lesson of not comparing myself to other athletes over and over again and remind myself that it’s about what works for me. I have to just trust the process.”
