2004 Olympic marathon champ Stefano Baldini's career is now over and the IAAF had a nice piece last week on the great Italian's great career: A Look Back At Stefano Baldini's Glorious Career. The article mentioned that during his career, Baldini "ran about 180,000 kilometres in both training and competition covering a distance which is four and a half times as long as the earth's circumference."
We decided to try to figure out how much mileage Baldini was averaging. Baldini first shows up in competition results on http://www.tilastopaja.org in 1992 when he ran 13:39 for 5k at age 21. So if in 18 years, he ran 180,000 kilometers that would be 10,000 kilometers per year or 62,000 miles per year, which is 118 miles per week. If one assumes that Baldini had been running for a bit longer, let's say he started training seriously at age 15 in 1986, then he covered those 180,000 kilometers over the span of 24 years and that's still 89.17 miles per week including weeks and days off. Looking back farther still, we know that Baldini first ran at age 10 in 1981. Even if one goes that far back, Baldini still averaged 73.8 miles per week since he was 10 years old. And remember - this includes days off and weeks off. Very impressive.
Consider what percentage of American collegiate runners come anywhere close to this. If you average 90 miles per week for a year but take two weeks off before and after seasons, your weekly average is just 82.98 for the year. If you average 90 miles week but take two weeks off between seasons and run two months of 70, 70, 60 and 50 as you taper for a championship, your yearly average is just 78.95 per week.
The moral of the story is to be the Olympic marathon champ you need to run a lot. Remember 1972 Olympic champion Frank Shorter supposedly averaged something like 120 miles per week, including time off, over a seven-year period in his heyday.
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