Over the past year (52 weeks), I averaged >= 50 miles (~80.5 km) of running per week, taking into account all the travel, sickness and injuries.
What does it mean in the grand scheme of things?
For some people (aka, “serious runners”), this is not much. Some other people are sometimes asking me “what’s the point of running that much if you aren’t close to qualifying for Boston Marathon / running a 5K in sub-20 minutes / insert your other arbitrary benchmark?”.
Instead of trying to answer these questions with platitudes like “it’s about journey, not a destination” or “sport makes me a better person” or argue that it’s likely a good way to train if one wants to maximize the performance 5 years down the road, let me direct you to Haruki Murakami’s book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”, which I very strongly relate to.
As always, thanks a lot to my great coach Lindsey, whose guidance and wisdom were instrumental in reaching such consistency!