Running frequency and IM training (Page 3)

yes.  The BarryP plan also has you running much slower and using the McMillan calculator.  It isn't JUST 1:2:3.

IMO, when you run daily (or close to it) your body adjusts to running as a part of daily life and it just doesn't seem as stressful on my body.   Last week I had a hamstring pull, took 3 days off running and I'd swear the impact on my legs felt horrid, my body just seemed out of tune.  So, in essence its not speed or fitness you are building but tolerance.  Kinda like Jean Claude Van Damme when he kicks the coconut tree for months to harden his shin, but on a much less awesome scale *linked for reference*.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-uJUQe80AY

I don't want to put people on the kool aid too much because admittedly I'm not doing big weeks. 

The premise of the BarryP method is to get you to high weekly mileage without getting injured.  To get you there, he starts you out with frequent but short runs.  What I think this does is allow for the non-engine adaptations (think chassis) to occur in less dramatic fashion.  If you have the heart/lungs to jog 6 miles you have the heart/lungs to jog 12 miles a little slower... but you get injured.  That injury is not to your engine, but most likely to some sort of structural/connective tissue (tendon, ligament, bone, etc).

The reason you get faster while logging all those relatively non-fast miles is that you are building endurance and running economy... in other words you are becomming more efficient at running, and you are able to keep going and going and going.  And that's something that's very hard to do without logging big miles, but logging big miles is something very hard to do without getting injured.

That, imho, is the genius of the program.  And it's why so many people who were chronically injured as low mileage runners have so much success running high mileage without injury under the BarryP method.  We were, in the past, hurting ourselves by trying to run hard despite being inefficient and having poor running economy.  We quit running hard -- for months -- and had faith in the plan even when it took discipline to go as short and easy (and frequent) as the plan said... and eventually we got the the point where we were like "holy crap I'm running 50+ mpw and uninjured"... and low and behold we could go hard and long without it hurting us at all... because we were economical runners.

Somewhere along the way, many of us end up falling in love with running.  There's something that just feels wonderful about running economically.  There's a beauty and a comfort in it that is so much more enjoyable than shuffling or stomping around on shin splints.

to update this thread, I used BarryP's program for my HIM, never going longer than 90 minutes in a single run (and only the last 2 weeks of training for the HIM), and topped out at 24, 48, 72 and since I'm slow, that 90 min run was only 12km.  I had No Problem with the HIM 1/2 marathon (longest I'd ever run in my life) at 50 years young and was actually PASSING people on the run.  Much Younger People. 

My highest week was 4.5 hours of running and I finished the HIM with just under a 2.5 hr 1/2 marathon.  I have to give credit to Barry and Desert Dude for their program.  I"m now using it for my IM and figuring out where to stash the long runs now.