Kona: Sub 9:00 on 10 hours per week!

I always see a lot of talk about training methods/protocols at the end of the season (which happens to be the start of the next season), and they almost always take the following form:

1. My friend is a:
• kona qualifier
• ex-pro
• swam/biked/ran in college
• just really freakin' fast
2. And they:
• do a TON of low-intensity miles
• only work out "x" hours per week (where "x" is a sufficiently low number), but they always go hard
• have some "secret" intervals or workouts they do (usually involving a spreadsheet and a copy of a so-called "bible")


Nothing wrong so far... I love reading about new approaches to training. Where people usually make the mistake is in following up with:


3. "Therefore, I am going to ....".

Right now there's a popular post making the rounds about going sub 9 hours at Kona on less than 10 hours per week. There always is. Every year. And of course there's a slew of counter-point posts about putting in double-century weekends and and 60, 70 mile run weeks.

What people fail to realize is that none of these posts prove a thing because the sample size is too limited.

I could be trained by the winningest NCAA D1 track coach in history, and even given 4 years I'm not going to beat the guy that has a string of sub 16:00 5k times from high school and only runs "socially" a few times a week.

Why? We're all born with a certain limit. True, we may never find out what that limit is, but it's there. Further, gains are easy to come by at first... We've all experienced it: You double from 10 miles per week running to 20 miles per week, and you knock 5 minutes off your 5k time... Then you add another 10 miles for 30 miles per week, but you only knock off another minute from your 5k time. Consider the following graph:

Here's how my own personal graph *might* look:

Notice that I can run pretty close to my potential (at least in the same ballpark) on just a little bit of training. 20 miles per week is going to get me quite a long ways.

But compare that to the naturally "gifted" runner below:

The only chance I have of beating him is if I've been putting in 30 mile weeks and he's coming off the couch and is only in the low teens for mileage.