I think as a distance runner you get bombarded by people saying "how many miles are you doing?" which is somehow an indication of how hard you're training, if you reply with anything less than 100miles you feel as if you're being criticised.

I suppose the key question is (as the heading suggests) is it better to do big mileage weeks or big runs. So rather than doing 10miles twice a day for say 3 days would it be better to do 15miles in one go at a decent pace and then rest up for the next days efforts.

Of course you don't do that every day but if your training for a half marathon or marathon and your are doing 2 big runs with the Sunday long run over 20miles regularly at a decent pace then is there a need to do an extra 10, 20, 30 miles in the week which might just make you to tired to actually get any good stuff done. In my opinion people get obsessed by weekly mileage (as I have done in the past for sure) and it takes over the training plan like a disease, trying to find a few more miles here, a few more miles there because one year one athlete ran a great time did 160miles in a week.

Everyone is different and there has to be a good balance (George's words), and as Nick always told me "You have to look at each run individually and give it a purpose, if it doesn't have one then why are you doing it....long run, recovery run, lactic training, speed endurance and so on".

People like to say that someone is really hard because they ran lots of miles and maybe so but that doesn't make them good. Lance's book (yes I do constantly read it) summaries it nicely in one paragraph .... "The difference between a good athlete and a great athlete is a good athlete trains hard whereas a great athlete will train smart. You have to know when to push hard and when to ease off if you're feeling ill rather than try and run through it and not really getting anything from it. The razors edge is the fine balance between getting the most out of yourself and going over the edge which will make you worse."

Since I have been coached by George I honestly haven't looked at mileage (have to force myself not to) and don't write it down on the training logs. George will send the weeks over and after I have a little scan (maybe a thought or two and a change) then it gets done, he knows what he is doing and I trust him. A perfect example was when we decided after about 6 weeks hard training to take a couple of weeks over Christmas to relax, recover and just do the important runs with more time off in between and then get back into the tough stuff in January. George sent the plan over and straight away I started adding runs and when we met up I was saying 'we should do a run there, there and there' and he said "Well, you would then lose the point and purpose of this bit of training with what we are trying to achieve, let the body recover after some tough training or you won't be able to do the next block and will give you a chance to kick up the quality a bit" ....he was right of course but my point is you can quite easily get sucked back in.

So the question is, as at the start.....more miles or bigger runs?

Simx