In Reply To:
It's amazing to me how rarely people do a 50 mile week like this:
Mon: 7.15
Tues: 7.15
Wed: 7.15
Thur: 7.15
Fri: 7.15
Sat: 7.15
Sun: 7.15
Everyone "cheats" with a long run. Sure, long runs are important, especially for marathon and long course tri. But you can get REALLY fast just running a decent amount EVERY day. If we were talking about 1/2 marathon (open or in a 1/2 IM), I'd rather take the guy with this schedule who maybe throws in 3 long runs of say 10-12 miles (which would be a breeze off this base) than the guy who mostly runs 5 miles,
but uses a weekly long run to jack up his mileage.
I don't think anybody uses long runs to "jack up their mileage". What would be the point? The bragging rights to a high mpw figure are pretty weak. Those who do weekly long runs do them because they want to, or due to a specific training plan for a long race. The fact that weekly mileage goes up fast with a long run is irrelevant.
IMO, if training for a 1/2 marathon, a weekly long run in the 12-14 mile range makes sense. For a marathon, make it 20 miles (not every week). For a 50K, do one or two 25 mile runs.
"100% of the people who confuse correlation and causation end up dying."