What Are Junk Miles

[dominion]

I forgot which of the legendary coaches said it but.... "the problem with most runners is that their slow runs are too fast and their fast runs too slow".... sums up junk miles really.

Back in the dim and distant past I've had opportunities to train with some seriously quick runners - predominantly road and track. The statement Nik makes above is very true of a lot of the UK athletes I've trained with, but is not true of the foreign athletes - they all, without question, do very slow mileage and very fast speed work. One Russian Olympic champion refused to do long runs with us because we ran too fast, yet kicked our arses in sessions.

Two of the foreign athletes in question have run 2.06 for a marathon, yet in the past decade only two Brits have broken 2.10. Which ones have the training methods right?