End of season, what are the likely reasons an athlete would tell you aerobically they feel fine in a race, but their legs are hurting?
What would the corrections be?
End of season, what are the likely reasons an athlete would tell you aerobically they feel fine in a race, but their legs are hurting?
What would the corrections be?
Too much hard speed in order to try and induce a "peak" will leave the legs feeling like trash.
CoachB wrote:
Too much hard speed in order to try and induce a "peak" will leave the legs feeling like trash.
Bingo.
Pat?
CoachB wrote:
Too much hard speed in order to try and induce a "peak" will leave the legs feeling like trash.
Wish someone would have told my college coach this. And then told me too.
Last four weeks we did 1000's at 5k pace with 2 min recovery, 4 mile LT runs at 5k pace +0:40 / mile, one long run (cut down last four weeks in lenght), and races (one per week). Rest of the days were recovery. We still had problems with it.
How many 1000s? This could be your issue. We have our section championship coming up on Sat. We will do 1000s tomorrow, but only do 3 of them and we will take 5-6 min recovery.
We will also do a little tempo this week, but we will do it cruise interval style. Probably something like 6 x 800 at a pace like you described. Probably will be about 30 seconds between 800s
Our week will probably end up looking like this (we just raced a very hilly course on sat.)
M: Easy 4-5 miles
T: 3 x 1k @ slightly faster than 5k pace (no more than 5 sec per k) 5-6 min recovery
W: 6 x 800 @ 15 sec/800 slower than my #5 guy's race pace (this works well for us, since guys 3-7 + #1 girl are really close in ability level) 30-40 second recovery. My top 7 must run within arms reach of eachother on this workout.
Th: 3-4 easy + 4 x 300 @ mile pace, no faster. 1-2 min recovery walk
F: 20 min easy + 4-6 x 200 stride out.
S: race
Yes, there is some fast stuff every day, but it is at a pace that will not fatigue their legs at all. They should come to each workout feeling totally fresh from the day before. At this point of the season, I don't want them to need "recovery days"
If things go well, we will win the freshman boys' title, go top 5 in the varsity boys, and have the individual girl's and freshman boy's winner.
Dont like the K's @ 5K race pace, especially on race weeks in the last 4 weeks. Recipe for disaster to me.
Do like the LT work tho.
Its not all that crazy in total, but a lot of work in the last 4 weeks can leave you trashed.
How was the result? Just asking because you haven't said and they may not be a need for corrections if the result was good--obviously SOMETHING is going to feel like shit when you run fast.
Essentially the same training plan the past two seasons for us. We had few if any PR's at the state meet either year, despite placing well. We underperformed in my opinion both years. We have been top 5 every year for the past 4, one win, one runner-up. I'm not concerned with where we place so much as getting to the end of the season and not running our best when it matters most. I was probably most upset the year we won...yes we won, but we ran terrible.
4 weeks out we did 5 x 1000 at 5k pace/ 2min rec.
3 weeks out we did 4 x 1000 at 5k pace/ 2min rec.
2 weeks out we did 3 x 1000 at 5k pace/ 2min rec.
week of we did 2 x 1000 at 5k pace/ 2min rec.
1000's were always on Tuesday and LT work on Thursday, with a meet on Saturday, except for state meet week, where we did the 1k's on Monday and LT on Wednesday.
The last 2-3 weeks saw a drop off in performance. Perceived effort was greater in the workouts. Despite dropping the mileage, they felt tired in the 1000's when earlier in the year it felt "good".
Maybe you're dropping the mileage too much? Lots of people have found that dropping the mileage at the end of a season is a recipe for disaster in the champs meets. I can understand dropping the amount of intensity (fewer 1Ks and such), but maybe try to keep the mileage up. If they're racing well on decent mileage, and you have three or four years of bad performances during the time you drop the mileage, learn from that and next year keep it up. I know mileage isn't everything, but try it.
Also, most people have dropped the race pace stuff by the end of the season in favor of LT and a little bit of shorter quicker stuff. Do your kids hit the race pace 1Ks all season long? Or do you bring it in later in the season. If they're doing that weekly all season long, they may just be past their seasonal peaks. Maybe start them later in the season? Just a couple of ideas to try based on what we've got to work with.
By the way. do you have any idea how many coaches you've probably pissed off by writing "I was probably most upset the year we won...yes we won, but we ran terrible." Do you know how many coaches would LOVE to have that "problem?" Apparently, you're getting the job done, and so is your team, but being pissed off at "only" winning? You're gonna have a heart attack, dude.
Take it easy two days out from the meet, never do anything hard on Thur. before a big meet.
mighty porn stache wrote:
Maybe you're dropping the mileage too much?
I echo this sentiment. You're training your athletes for a highly aerobic event, so you should keep the aerobic training contribution high (diamond model). A little more rest is good, but keep the emphasis on what is important. A smarter man than I am once said, "The long run is the most important run of the week."
Welcome to the death of high school running. Ever notice how when you work hard in the middle of the season everyone runs great and then you start "tapering" and everyone feels like crap. It's called the law of specificity. If your kids are doing 60 minute races, do lots of tempo work the last couple weeks. If not, run fast with short recovery the last couple weeks. Most kids will open the first 200 meters well under race pace and yet coaches never have them training for that. That's why they feel good aerobically but dead legged. They could run slower than race pace for an hour but since you haven't trained them faster than race pace, as soon as they go anaerobic in that first 200 meters, they're done.
Peaks Well wrote:
as soon as they go anaerobic in that first 200 meters, they're done.
There's no such thing as "go(ing) anaerobic."
Foot fetish wrote:
There's no such thing as "go(ing) anaerobic."
There's also no such thing as "dying" "kicking" "rigging" "surging" or a hundred otherterms that runners and coaches use and - unless they are idiots - understand each other when they use them. If people "peak" - also no such thing - with "tempo" (no such thing) runs, they are most likely running with a respiratory quotient of under 1.0. In the first 200 meters of a race, their quotient will likely be around 1.1 and they will not have trained for this feeing. This is often termed as being anaerobic ans, as mentioned earlier, people more interested in performance than semantics can discuss this. As for you, have fun in literal world; let me know how it works out for you.
Peaks Well wrote:
Most kids will open the first 200 meters well under race pace and yet coaches never have them training for that. That's why they feel good aerobically but dead legged. They could run slower than race pace for an hour but since you haven't trained them faster than race pace, as soon as they go anaerobic in that first 200 meters, they're done.
While the physiology of what you said is not entirely correct, I agree with the need to be 100% comfortable at paces faster than race pace. This is why in the late season, we sprinkle in lots "mini workouts" of 200, 300, and occasionally 400m reps. These reps will alwasy be after an easy run of 3-5 miles and will almost never total more than 1600m (usually around 1200m). Occasionally we will do the reps with short rest (30 seconds) so that we can have a little lactate build up.
On a side note, I have become pretty disillusioned with the standard interval training (i.e. 5-6 x 1k @ 5k pace with 2-3 min recovery) I have had some good results doing those workouts and they were a staple of my best team ever. But, I've had far more teams underachieve when incorporating regular interval training into their schedule. Many of those underperforming teams had run very well early in the season off of our base type program that included weekly cruise interval sessions and hill repeats of about 200m. This year, we have done very little true interval training and my teams have performed very well. This is really a topic for another thread, however.
u might want to consider changing your interval workouts a litle bit. doing 1000s at the same pace with the same rest for four weeks straight could lead to a plateau, not to mention that your races are essentially at the same race. u might want to introduce a new workout and/or pace such as time trials or 400s or 600s @ 3k pace to give your guys a new stimulis, just don't pour it on in a high volume, do enough to present a new challenge. dont drop the mileage a ton, but keep it at an easy pace. keep the LT stuff
i hope that may help
I'd also like to second (or maybe third) the point of not dropping mileage too much. Most HS programs aren't running that many miles to begin with, so if you drop off a significant ammount from there, you could run into significant de-training.
Check the athletes ferritin level.