no interval work success?

RE: no interval work success? 7/15/2005 6:37AM - in reply to Lindsay Dunn

One of the great training challenge is that it has to play with the biological variability. It does not exists a magician formulate for the success, rather based in the absence or refuse to use the interval training or in the abundant use of that same interval training.

Each individual case that it a single unique case. The same performance is done by several runners but it´s gotten through very different capacities, and with different times of development of the maturation of that performance. It is a world of great variety and complexity, and ther´s no need that a coach it grasps itself why the runners did get that performance by formulate it as a result of the statistical registers.

The resultant inquiries of the statistics alone or relating training data to performances only serves to apply to the group, are not operational for the individual. It is therefore the good chrono results, in the competition sport, what makes each singular case very interesting and a issue of analyze focus - that´s in the study of that singular cases where I think that you have the field resource that able you to understand training more than physiology . That´s in the perspective of the practical cases what may guide us and motivates us.

Lindsay Dunn, based in his deep experiment coach experience uses in this thread a few statement conclusions that I advise you to read once again:

“….He had ran 3 interval sessions a week and his lactate tolerence was excellent but his aerobic bases was terrible….”Next year he won British 10k after 100 miles a week winter again no intervals….” - Lindsay Dunn

“…At the same time another runner in the group had done the opposite . He had ran pure mileage throughout the winter for years and had very poor lactate tolerence. He had ran 13-42 5 years prior without improvement. I had him do intervals during the winter and his 5k came down to 13-28 and he eventually won the British 10k also and went on to win an Olympic bronze at marathon…” “…Even with the runner who I mentioned above who ran no intervals - in the light of what I now know I would have included some sessions. - Lindsay Dunn

“…There must be some element of lactate work in every schedule and this would be in the base period too..” - Lindsay Dunn

“…The answer in your case would be to go back to running a lower mileage again…” - Lindsay Dunn

Lindsay conclusion is that ther´s not a single rule. How this way of thinking is distant than the “100miles formula” for everybody that a lot of people pretends that the only correct volume mileage direction.

Let´s take a look to the German Foehrenbach, R., Mader, A., Liesen, H., tail, H., Vellage, E. and Hollmann, W. then alaso includes Dr. Mader statements – some considered the gurus of the training based in the lactate test data. In the original article in German language: Laufen/Marathon - Wettkampf- und Trainingssteuerung von Marathonläuferinnen und -läufern mittels leistungsdiagnostischer Felduntersuchungen
(The need for lactate training management in the marathon training and longer distance events.)
http://www.sportdiagnostik.de/fitness/laufen.html

free lanslation to the english language

http://world.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=de_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.sportdiagnostik.de%2ffitness%2flaufen.html

Read careful the DISCUSSION in it´s item 3 - it says that 3 to 10min intervals (1000m to 3000m) are a constitutive and effective part of the Specific Lactate Training Management, as a marathon specifics - and not only continuous runs are considered LTM, intermittent training is also a good training format for the anaerobic threshold pace intensity.

As you see for Dr. Mader ther´s no contradiction in the use of interval training or don´t.

Now, lets read what Tinman – with his great contributions to all this discussion and with the merit to help us to understand that lots of times the typical (interval) training approach doesn´t works, read what he said about the use of interval training along Ron Clark career:

…”Ron Clarke was interval trained to the max as teen and burned out, but he later came back to bust many world records based upon lots of moderate to strong paced distance running, minimal amounts of ins and outs and racing to sharpen his skills….” – Tinman

According to what Ron Clark did along his career the interval training format is followed by distance running and in that last format he did all his PB´s. Or according Marius Bakken most of the kennian runners they follow the opposite training direction:

http://www.mariusbakken.com/tr_kenyan2.htm

… If you want to study how the Kenyans train, you will have to divide this into two categories. One that goes “before they get into the European agents system” and one after. From the Kenyans training camps in Europe and Australia you will hear stories about incredible times on track sessions, and almost no Lactic Treshold (LT) sessions at all. It is therefore important to divide Kenyan training into two : the basetraining done in the small camps in Kenya from a very young age and the track training done in some of the larger camps for older athletes who are already good.”

“…It is in the basetraining phase LT training plays an extremely important part. My experience from training with the Kenyas, even the very young ones, is that they go right under their LT on almost all the sessions….”

“…When these athletes with the LT basetraining in the bottom starts to run well enough, European agents might recruit them. Then the training changes into being more of the running we are used to from European tracks. They can still do their regular 180 –280 km, but now the training is more interval based. Dr. Rosa who coaches Paul Tergat claims that in their group they do intervals every single day, including two-three track sessions a week. The five remaining sessions is then probably around their LT. In the Kim McDonald group, from the information Bob Kennedy and the Kenyan Francis Rop, much of the training consists of three hard track sessions a week. For long distance runners, for example one hill session of 10x300 m, one track session of 1600-1200-800-400-200 (Komen did that one in something like 3.52/2.51/1.51/52/24 at his best in Australia according to Bob) and then another track session of 400s, for example 4x5x400 m. The rest of the running is easy long runs, with only occasional LT work – approx. mileage 180 km pr week. BUT these athletes have a broad base of LT running from a very young age. In a way, this track work is only a way of getting out that base of LT running. That might also be one of the reasons why some of the Kenyans “burn out” and disappear from the European running scene – because they simply lose some of their natural LT base. …” – in Marius Bakken site.

As you see here we have 2 opposite training approaches – that one of the Kenyan runners – building a training base with continuous runs and later on when they get the top wit the use of hard interval workouts with some easy runs in between, and that one of Ron Clark or Carlos Lopes that after a first career moment that the train is based in interval training it follows a period where the interval training isn´t so important in the training context or absent.

I could go on and on with more facts that pick articles or use posts that shows that a training regime or a training direction is not write or wrong by itself. It always depend of the individual we have in front of us to coach. Consequently this is also applied to the case of interval training versus continuous runs, as well as intensity versus volume mileage.

(If you permit me I want dedicate this my post to a UK runner and friend Jerome Brooks, that comes out of an injury and that I wasn´t able to make him improve as I wish, but that the analyse of his unique individual case it helps me to come to the kind of conclusions that I express in this post)

One final word for Tinman. Keep on going. Threads like this one high up the mainstream of this site.

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