Hey friend, first off, I love the enthusiasm for the sport of running, it is my first and only true love other than my child, and I love seeing folks get into the sport.
The “How we do it” is very simple, though I don’t think you will like the answer: years and years of SLOWLY building up your mileage is the only way to successfully become a high mileage runner, especially when you are past your athletic prime.
Running is an incredibly high impact sport, you are throwing about 100%-125% of your bodyweight onto every single piece of connective tissue in your lower body with every step. Over ten miles, that is about 15,000 steps. For me, sitting at 5’10” 150 pounds, that means I am putting about 2,250,000 pounds of force onto my Achilles tendon, my IT Band, and my knee ligaments over 10 miles. You wouldn’t expect to go even 2,250 pounds in a single squat session when you first got into lifting, and you would be absolutely insane to attempt to putt 1,000 times that amount of cumulative pressure on your body through running.
My coach has a great saying: Runners commonly overestimate their ability to improve in the short term, while underestimating their ability to improve in the long term.
You need to slowly build up your mileage, and do the prep work required to get both your muscles and connective tissue ready for the training load. That means foam rolling, dynamic stretching, and most importantly deload weeks.
I am currently a 2:21:42 marathon runner. I am knocking on the door of getting an Olympic Trials qualifying time, and hope to do so this year at the CIM in December (I need to hit a 2:18:00, so it’s a long shot, but I am still hopeful that some changes to my training, and the introduction of a regimine of EPO, test, and GH will help me break that elusive barrier). For training, I currently average around 100-120 miles during base training period, divided up by one 20+ long run per week, 2 hard workouts a week, and 4 days of easy running, 2 runs of around 7-10 miles each of those days. I lift 3 days per week using a protocol centered around high sets and low reps of heavy weight and explosive plyometrics. The intensity of the workouts and long run builds each week for three weeks before I take a downweek of around 70 miles.
It has taken me about 15 years of serious training (from college, where I was first introduced to REAL endurance training to now), and guess what. Sometimes, I still get injured. When I do, I lighten the load or shut things down because YOUR BODY CANNOT HEAL UNDER STRESS. So, my recommendation would be to calm down on the “Destroy all you bitches” attitude, because that won’t get you anywhere but the PT’s table in this sport. Just give yourself time for your body to adapt, and continue to cut weight. The best thing you can do to shorten the time you need to increase your mileage is to eat healthy, nutritious foods at a minor calorie deficit. And, tbh, you really aren’t at the stage where you should be looking for any pharmacological solutions to this problem. Peptides are fine, sure, but I would HIGHLY advise you to wait on the popular products in the endurance space like Test, HGH transfusion doping, EPO, stims, and cortisone until you are at a level where they can get you over the hump and help you squeak out that last bit of performance potential you are capable of.
