Is Running 5 miles a day overkill?

Nope.

Sexy as hell if you ask me and I'm mad jealous!

I don't think so. I run anywhere from 5 - 10 miles a day, 6 days a week. My only advice is to listen to your body. You don't want to injure yourself.

Would interval training just be like on the elliptical machine when you choose interval and it changes the resistance every couple of minutes that you run?

Bales(what does your user name mean always wondered, I like it for some reason).
I have a bodybugg, it's a device you wear on your arm 24hrs a day and it tells you how many calories you burn within a 24hr period of time. I found out that interval training doesn't increase calorie burn within a 24hr period of time. For example, if I do 30mins of intervals and burn 300 calories, and if i do steady state jogging at a lower intensity and i burn 300 calories(assuming it takes me an hour) at the end of the day there isn't much difference in calorie burn.

I also seen studies where calorie burn is higher per minute as you get in better shape running the same distance. For example a 300lbs guy doing 1mile in lets say 15mins, burns 10cal per minute, if he lost weight and ran the same mile in 4mins the calorie burn is higher such a 15-20cal per minute. I sitll have difficulty wrapping my head around this one, going to go research it more after i finish typing this. VO2Max formula has body weight as part of the equation, if you lose weight your VO2Max will go up. This includes muscle mass, there are a lot of people who do high intensity running who lose muscle mass. In terms of performance this is actually better because their VO2Max will be higher. Of course performance and weight loss are 2 different subjects, I am not talking about weight loss, just performance.

Bales is the name, and hay is made into bales. And to get my attention.

I had the BodyMedia (maker of the BodyBugg). Used it for 4 months until too many inconsistencies with exercise and other activities came up. Not worth wearing if I couldn't wear it with exercise.

Why?

It is not accurate in the least for exercise, nor BMR. I've had several posts that have showed my own tests that proved the body temp, air temp, sweat sensors have no bearing on calculations. And a study that tested it show the same fact for exercise - greatly underestimated calories, except walking.

Your test of same calorie burn with intervals and without, is exactly the problem. It is a glorified pedometer, and since your arm swung the same amount, it had no idea your HR went up for the intervals and actually would have been burning more calories.

And since it is not actually calculating something rest of the day, it would never see increased metabolism for say weight lifting, which has been tested to be the case. Nor intervals.

So what is it good for? They use the exact same formulas for BMR that other sites use, but then the second step of calculating goal calories is estimating your daily activity. Usually just 4 ranges, sedentary and such. This is where the glorified pedometers can help get more accurate, really seeing what your daily activity is. And then you set the scale for level of MET's for exercise, so when it reaches that level, no longer tagged as normal daily activity.
So one of the inaccuracies is taken care of. But the foundation of it, BMR, is not, nor the exercise stuff.

Regarding the VO2 max figure, weight is part of figure, and the formula. They measure how much CO you were putting out, per kg per min. Therefore your figure is per kg. And you could easily exercise (or not actually) and lose weight, and your VO2 max figure could remain exactly the same, because it is so many mL per kg per min. The reason it usually goes up when you lose weight is because you have worked out.

That is how Lance Armstrong's figures went up after cancer, he lost lbs of upper body muscle, some fat. So an already high VO2 max went up ever so slightly, but now he was pushing less weight up those hills, therefore that figure applied to less weight meant faster.

And actually, the calorie burn is most accurate outside the lab when done by heart rate, not tables using pace and weight.
If your runner at both weights had the same HR for that effort, no matter the pace, it would be about the same calorie burn.
Actually, when lighter you would actually burn slightly less.
Take into account the lighter runner has a much more aerobically fit system, you may not actually get the HR up to the same level.

Because the AT threshold probably went up, or at least efficiency of raising the fat burning zone to a higher HR. Or the Maffetone method, faster pace at same HR staying in the fat burning zone.

Yes it estimates it by movement, temp, sweat, and conductivity. the only way this can be semi accurate is if all of them work together to calculate calorie burn. If it gets hot(lets say i put it under the sun). I don't think it would show a higher calorie burn, if it's wet and hot(stimulates sweat and heat) I don't think it would show a higher calorie burn. The reason is because the conductivity, and the pedometer isn't being effected to much.

Here was my big test (done 3 times) that showed only movement was used in calculation.
Jogging on treadmill at constant pace with fan blowing on me, warm and sweating a bit, HR in 130's. My turn-over is about 90.
Jogging outside and sprinting up hills, 100 F in July, sweating buckets, HR in 160's. Turn-over exactly the same. I listen to music with exact beats to help with that.

Calorie burn for BodyMedia was exactly the same. Temp sensors meant nothing, sweat sensors nothing.

And the estimate of both was way off more accurate HR monitor. And this was for jogging, close to the walking it is better for estimating. Forget other activities. If you swing your arms a lot, overestimate. If you don't swing much (bike), total underestimate.

2 times I forgot to put the thing on after shower, the sensors sat on the band. When I got home I put it on. At night during upload discovered the thing had thought it was on-body the whole time. Company confirmed the sensor touching the band was enough to do that. And the bad thing here was, you cannot manually add activity if it thought it was on-body. It thought i was asleep of course, and saw the true BMR estimate. And saw it exactly matched normal calculations. After 3 months, no fine-tuning of night-time calories.
The only purpose of the skin sensor is an automatic on/off button, is it on-body or not.

Also had 2 instances of sleeping very cold, or very hot. No difference in cal/min for sleeping.

The kicker was cutting down a tree and chainsawing it up in cool weather, not much sweating, no elevated HR. Took many hours of walking around, moving arms, and much arm vibration. Had a calorie count per min estimate about 5 times higher than ever shown in the most intense exercise. Said forget it at that point, not even worth wearing, their whole premise of "you need accurate figures to be successful" was out the window.

Off subject, I have a question for you. My plan is to burn 500 calories doing aerobic training(below LT). This is the stress that my body will be handling, as I lose weight and improve my fitness, I plan to stick to 500 calories, this means I only have to increase time jogging/running which will improve my endurance. Do you see any flaws in this?

You can also increase the pace and keep the time the same.
So lets say now that 500 cal is from 30 min spin class with HR at 165 (using my own figures here).
You get smaller and fitter, and now that 30 min at that HR of 165 takes a lot more effort, really have to crank the resistance. In fact standing now you can't crank that much, because your weight won't push the pedals down. So you find you only avg 155.
So to hit the 500, you do have to go 35 min say.

So spin bike it's easy to increase effort without knocking yourself out. But jogging could be difficult. And you'll become more aerobically fit before you'll lose much weight. So yet, I'd say extend the time and keep the HR the same, or higher as you get more fit.

I'm not sure of your age or where you are running (hard surfaces, soft surfaces, or indoor/treadmill) but when I started doing what you are at 3 miles only by knee really started bothering me (age 30). When I was in highschool I used to run 6 miles 5 days a week on a soft path (woodchips) for Cross Country and didn't have any issues, but now I run 3 times a week and do weight training the other day. I think that will be the best formula for weight loss.