Has anybody tried Tom Osler's sharpening? 50-100 Fast speed spurts, 800 build up, ext
Has anybody tried Tom Osler's sharpening? 50-100 Fast speed spurts, 800 build up, ext
I did, BITD.
Unfortunately, I really wasn't ready to do it right, because I didn't understand about his suggestion to loosen up with a few accelerations, then move to the 800s. I had had a period of all-slow running--in training, I never turned my legs over fast--so the initial pickups (which I basically ran as sprints, not gradual accelerations) didn't loosen me up, but rather the opposite.
In essence, I then ran some 800s (or whatever) about as well as I could manage, and ran my normal training pace inbetween--never slowed to a recovery pace. This got me into pretty good shape, but I was absolutely trashed at the end of these sessions, which lasted about an hour. I can remember sitting on a bench in the locker room for a long time before summoning the strength to walk to the showers.
Were I to do it over again,
a) I would certainly have a mix of speeds in my base training period, and would always keep in touch with my skill of faster running--either through occasional fartlek-type sessions, or by running some end-of-workout accelerations a couple times each week.
b) I would make the "fast" 800s just a bit faster (in the initial workout or two) than my normal training pace, and would then gradually speed them up from one week to the next, as I adapted.
In general I think Tom had the right idea, I just didn't implement it very well (and yet I still got some decent results). Tom was also a really slow-twitch guy and could stay fit with steady-paced running (and the occasional race) for much of his year; I was not, and needed something beyond steady-paced running in my foundational period.
I always sort of screwed it up too. He's very clear that you accelerate to full speed in very gradual increments of fifty yards or so and then decelerrate the same way, but I probably accelerated to full speed in one increment of fifty yards or so and then hung on until the end.
Amby Burfoot said that he did them in 1968 prior to his 2:14 at Fukuoka.
Osler's home page
http://www.rowan.edu/open/depts/math/osler/index.htm
links to PDFs of his "The Conditioning of Distance Runners". The sharpening bit has a graph that illustrates the accel/decel stuff.