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 mentioned doing something very similar way back toward the beginning of this thread. While I don't run the same exact mileage every day, I keep it within a close range. A 50 mile week is 7 runs of 6-8 miles. I started doing this back in late 2007 trying to run 45+ per week. Since then I've gradually built to where I'm currently running 70+ MPW. Essentially daily runs of 8-12 miles.
During this time I have broken every PR from 2 miles to the marathon, many of them numerous times - and I'm still getting faster. I have gone from a MOP runner, to regularly placing in the top 3 in my AG in most local running events.
Is running similar mileage every day boring? Not at all. I rarely run the same route two days in a row. Some runs are fast, some easy, some hilly, some flat, some roads, some trails, etc. Some days I'll split the mileage between two runs and do a shorter hard run early and a longer easy run later. If I do something like a 5K race on a Saturday morning, I'll usually follow that with a 7-9 mile run later in the day.
Unless I'm specifically training for a longer race like a half or full marathon, I haven't seen any real benefit in doing runs of longer than 14 miles on a regular basis. I have run as much as just over 100 MPW while never having a single run longer than 12 miles. Shortly after that week I had solid PRs 3 weeks in a row in a 20K, 10 miler and 5K. I placed in both of the longer races, but not the 5K as there are local guys in the 50-54 AG still running sub 18 and I'm not that fast - yet.
What you seem to be saying -and I agree - is not much attention or importance is placed on getting in a solid block of consistently running 50+ MPW prior to transitioning to a race training program.
I also agree with Barry in that while people can run decently off these programs of 3 days/week, they will not be running at their full potential. If running only 3 days/week was really that great, all the top runners would be doing it - and as far as I know none of them do it.
My comments are based from the perspective of being primarily a runner. I will end up running around 3000 miles this year, but have done no swimming and very little biking. Last year I did 8 multisport races and only ran just over 2000 miles. I have gravitated in this direction because we have a running race locally almost every week all year while we only have a couple local triathlons.
YMMV.
Don
Tri-ing to have fun. Anything else is just a bonus!