Malmo what's the best way to structure a 100 and 110 mile weeks?

Honestyl, I respect Malmo as a runner and a message board poster, but why do people defer to him to answer the minutiae of their training? Especially when SOM talks about how you feel and your sweet spot? Asking for exact times/numbes seems counter to the whole damn point of SOM.

He would suggest lengthening the runs during the rest of the week and then fill in you Sunday volume based on feel and it's relation to the rest of the week.

Shorten that Sunday run to 100 minutes and aim for 100 mpw, that is the next logical move.

This ones a little trickier than the post directly after yours, but I'll give it a go, having lurked these boards for many years on end.

Malmo would say that trail running is overrated. He has posted before how everyone talks about the risk of pounding from running on pavement, but never the risk of stepping in a hole, or on a rock or tree root out on the trail.

In short, he feels the risks of trail running are greater than pavement / asphalt running.

In regards to an ice bath, he has stated: "Take a hot shower instead, it works better."

Well I'd have to disagree about trails. I've had injuries that were severely irritated on pavement but were almost normal on trails. Bounce a golf ball on asphalt and dirt for an illustration of why trails are far superior. Road running also carries the risk of being hit by a car, let's not forget that.

Hot shower instead of ice bath? Yikes! Having tried both hot saunas and ice baths, I can tell you first hand that I love nothing better than a long cold ice bath after a hard workout.

As far as turning an ankle, there are plenty of potholes and whatnot on the roads, as well as cars. And you can avoid twisting ankles on trails if you're nimble and careful. I've found that small twists and tweaks are easy enough to run through, and have made me very durable against them over the years.

My question was directed more towards the nature of the impact... the golf ball example has been brought up. There is another purpose to that question, which is if minimalism might be something worth trying if the hard surface isn't as bad as every thinks.

Thank you to every who has provided input so far, I like getting many perspectives and hearing their merits!

777 wrote:

Well I'd have to disagree about trails. I've had injuries that were severely irritated on pavement but were almost normal on trails. Bounce a golf ball on asphalt and dirt for an illustration of why trails are far superior. Road running also carries the risk of being hit by a car, let's not forget that.

Bounce a golf ball on a running shoe sitting on pavement, and a running shoe sitting on dirt. Big diff. Better analogy.

Of course, being impaled by a protruding branch is no fun either. To say nothing of slipping in the mud and looking like you shat yourself on the way home.

In spite of their popularity, I have no idea what you would be taking ice baths for, nor have I seen any evidence of any known beneficial physiological response from them.

Icing for a traumatic injury, on the other hand, is a well-known and proven method for mitigating the effects of swelling and pain. The physiology is straightforward; icing reduces inflammation and swelling in the interstitial spaces due to edema and/or blood accumulation . All injuries and all tissue damage can only heal with adequate blood supply to the affected area. It’s only after this swelling is reduced can the injured area receive an adequate blood supply for healing. Applying heat to an affected area dilates blood vessels and brings that much needed flow of blood.

As far as recovery from athletic training goes, you need more blood to the muscles, not less. Since training for running doesn’t come to the level of traumatic injury there’s no known physiological reason to apply cold. You would only be delaying the recovery process.

If you are a football player, you probably need to sit in an ice bath every day. A runner, no.

Citations from Guyton

http://www.caringmedical.com/sports_injury/rice.asp

Ice baths get chilly review

http://www.training-conditioning.com/2007/08/ice_baths_get_chilly_review.html

RICE vs MEAT

http://www.caringmedical.com/symptoms/meatvsrice.asp

777 wrote:

Well I'd have to disagree about trails. I've had injuries that were severely irritated on pavement but were almost normal on trails. Bounce a golf ball on asphalt and dirt for an illustration of why trails are far superior. Road running also carries the risk of being hit by a car, let's not forget that.

What does bouncing a golf ball off the asphalt have to do with anything? It just proves that energy on a hard surface is given right back. You are making the fallacious assumption that hard surfaces, and by extension impact, is inherently a bad thing. Impact is a function of three variables and one constant (gravity): 1) body mass, 2) velocity, and 3) instantaneous deceleration at foot-strike. I'm pretty sure that the foot-strike gives the least impact on the final impact calculations. Somewhere in a thread here someone published a study on injury rates over the last 30 years. The shoes became noticeably soft, yet the injury rate hadn't changed one bit.

I've had one stress fracture in my life, at a time when 50% of all of my running was on soft surfaces, dirt trails or grass. In fact, the day that my foot cracked, I was just finishing a 10 mile run, all of it on trails or grass. During most of my career, I'd estimate that 95% (or more) of my training was on asphalt or concrete. Never had another stress fracture again.

On those same soft trails I did trip over a root the week of NCAA XC (I was undefeated and set the course record everywhere I ran up to that point) rolled over with my arm caught behind me and dislocated my shoulder. It was not a pretty sight. As you can see, I gave two specific real-life examples to the risks of trail running.

It might sound counter intuitive, but running in very minimalist shoes on hard surfaces has been the ticket to keeping my own injuries at bay.

If I use bad form it really hurts with minimal padding on hard surfaces. I quickly become more of a "stealth" runner

using form that causes less overall impact on injury prone areas.

If I run on soft surfaces, especially with clunky trail shoes, my form slowly gets a bit worse because I'm not getting the same bio feedback.

Of course, that is only me. Take it for what it's worth.

I love malmo! And hot baths and running on the roads! And doubles! And old school running shoes!

Thanks for your responses malmo. It may seem like common sense to you, but for some it's not and for some, it's good to hear you confirm it.

I remember reading an article in the 70s about Japanese diatance runners. There was a part about their ability to handle very high training mileages and one of the reasons given was the traditional hot bath the Japanese take. Essentially the argument, obviously muddled by thirty some passed years, was that the increased temperature raised the "fatigue by-products" out of the muscle tissue and into the blood stream where they could be carried away.

When I was in Finald in 1975 several Finnish runners told me that they thought their custom of taking saunas was why they could run high mileages. On the other hand, Jack Foster liked to hose his legs off with a garden hose after a run because he'd seen horse trainers walking their horses in the ocean surf after training.

My only stress fracture also came after running on dirt. Most of my runs by far are on asphalt or sidewalk and always hav been. Four years ago I wrecked my left knee digging a forsythia bush out of my mother's yard. I'm positive it was because of the twisitng the knee endured while I dug. I've found that I can run pretty normally on asphalt and sidewalk, but that soft ground still bothers the knee, though not nearly as much as it once did. Again, soft surfaces tend to be uneven and there'll be a certain amount of "shimmying" when you run over them.

I have to agree that running on roads does not in itself cause injuries.

I run mostly off road, but I often do my hardest sessions on a road wearing racing flats. No matter how hard I run, I never feel as though the impact is high or detrimental to my muscles, rather the opposite, I feel that my running technique alters to absorb shock, and the hardness of the road surface is beneficial in improving my technique for fast running.

I've seen the study on how hard surfaces are actually better for landing. Interesteing stuff, although it applies more to shoes than running surfaces. I never said that trail running is a panacea that will prevent all injuries. Neither is minimalism or orthotics or anything else. Yes, you can get injured on trails, and yes, you can trip on roots. But you can get injured on roads, and you can get hit by cars.

Personally, I had a tendon that would flare up so bad on pavement that I could hardly run. Running on grass or dirt, however, was entirely manegable. For a good idea of what this is like, try running barefoot on asphalt, then try it again on grass. See which one you prefer!

For the record, I'm not a trail nut; I do a substantial amount of mileage on pavement, but I stick to the trails if I can.

The physiology is this: The soreness you develop after a hard workout or a long run is from micro-tears in the muscle. Taking an icebath is theorized to help close up these micro-tears and prevent them from bleeding out and becoming more sore.

Key words are "postulated." I'll have to look into some of the links you provided.

To add on the doubling idea, do you think there is a significant difference between running the shorter of the days doubles in the AM or PM? Thanks.

Arman Tanzarian wrote:

To add on the doubling idea, do you think there is a significant difference between running the shorter of the days doubles in the AM or PM? Thanks.

I like it both ways. A short run in the morning helps "warm me up" for a longer run later in the day, but I like getting the longer run out of the way in the morning too. Any of the science buffs want to help us out with this? Does the time of day affect your performance, and should that affect when you run?

I'm also wondering about the intensity. People claim that lots of elites go ridiculously slow on their shorter run, but looking at Buddy Edelen's training log from the 60s, he did almost ALL of his runs at a fast pace! What do you guys think about the intensity of the shorter run of the day?

Can someone give me an example of a minimalist running shoe?

Any companies 5k+ racing shoes......Flats

How many miles can you typically get out of them? I like the Asics Hyper speed 2 but haven't trained in them yet. How many miles could i get out of them?