Question for Malmo regarding "too few tempo runs"

777 wrote:

Not true. I've seen a runner who barely broke 20min in the 5k his freshman year crush a state champion and a 9:15 2-miler. Wejo barely broke 4:30 in high school. How? Mileage and smart training.

What does that prove?

Firstly, what one runs as a frosh off of little training is not the only indicator of talent, hardly. Bigger indicators of talent are: a) how much does that person improve when they start training a little more seriously, b) and can they handle more and more mileage as they get older. Being able to handle more and more training stress, chew it up, absorb it, and come back for more, I GUARANTEE you is a "talent" as much as anything else you would call talent. Sure, it is a quality that needs to be nurtured and smartly worked on (just as all qualities of talent need to be), but it is a natural ability nonetheless. If you are or anyone else thinks that everyone is equally capable of smartly building up to a 120 miles a week and handling it the SAME way, and reaping the SAME fitness improvements from it (not absolute times, but even just % improvements), you are nuts. People have different training thresholds, and abilities to absorb training stress (whether that stress be high mileage, or high intensity). Not everyone can handle or thrive off of "higher" mileage, and not everyone needs it.

(Secondly, concerning wejo, being a sun 4:30 miler shows plenty of natural talent/speed to become a really good distance runner (10k/marathoner) if one ALSO has some of the talent indicators I showed above (a & b) wejo could handle and thrived from high mileage. Not everyone does).

Finally, let's look at that kid who just ran 3:59 mile from Maine....? Where are his 100 mile weeks? Where are his 10,000 lifetime miles I am told over and over on here one needs to become a really great runner? And he TOO started off as a "13:00 2miler". So according to people like you, based on that freshmen deuce time, he had "no talent". And yet he is already a sub 4:00 INDOOR miler as a soph. This off of a couple years of 40 miles per week in HS, and a year of 50-60 in college (at max). Are you going to tell me he isn't super talented?? I thought "mileage" was the only way? No, TALENT is the only way. It's just that what you call hard work (being able to absorb lots of miles and convert that to lots of improvement), I call talent, and when Malmo tells us to listen to our bodies, I say: that might all well and good, but I guarantee you that Bekele's body, and the Maine miler for that matter, send very different signals out when under stress compared to 99% of us.

Or maybe he that kid from Maine just found his "inner kung fu" when running up in Maine. Sure, that must the explanation for his sub 4 since it ain't talent or mileage.

Nice rant. Not sure what you're trying to say, nor how this relates to the topic of the thread?

Malmo, how do you reconcile your philosophy of listening to your body and being flexible with your training with the demands of a more structured training/racing schedule? Do you think collegiate coaches would be better off not giving out the traditional training schedules with hard workouts on specific days of the week? Do you think more structured training hampered your performance before you set your own schedule?

might as well jump wrote:

...

Or maybe he that kid from Maine just found his "inner kung fu" when running up in Maine. Sure, that must the explanation for his sub 4 since it ain't talent or mileage.

Well, if you count responding well to training as "talent," then yes, you're right. People usually view talent in light of how well a runner does "raw" with no training, or very little (like the guy in Maine--though I must say, he's certainly doing SOMETHING right if he can go from 1:54 to 4:06 to 3:59 in a span of weeks). It's a much easier measuring stick than how someone responds to training, because that has as a lot to do with all of the OTHER aspects of your life. I.e. Wejo ran 120+ mpw at altitude, with no job, and no obligations, and he always took it easy when he needed to. Would he have absorbed that training as well if he was working 40 hours a week or hammering all the time because he didn't know any better? Probably not, but that doesn't have anything to do with "talent." I cringe when I have to talk about training in pure numbers--If I ran 70 miles a week by doing a ten-miler at 6-minute pace every day, that's totally different than doing 55 miles a week in singles, at a variety of paces, and including 15 more miles as easy doubles.

Alberto is a perfect example of a coach being able to adjust his athletes training based on the feedback his runners are giving him. He doesn't even know 100% until they step on the track that day what his athletes are going to do for the workout, he has an idea but if his athletes have a wrinkle or two, they didn't recover from the previous workout etc, than the plan changes accordingly nothing is written in stone, you have to be able to use your brain a little, your gut. maybe that's a "talent" and maybe some of us take that for granted, who knows I've had it since I started running.. a lot of coaches or either stubborn or stupid in this area.

edumacator wrote:

Malmo, how do you reconcile your philosophy of listening to your body and being flexible with your training with the demands of a more structured training/racing schedule? Do you think collegiate coaches would be better off not giving out the traditional training schedules with hard workouts on specific days of the week? Do you think more structured training hampered your performance before you set your own schedule?

I'm not sure where the disconnect is here? How does a structured schedule cause an athlete not to listen to his body? Monday, Tuesday , Wednesday, etc etc, come up every day of the week. Training isn't about beating your brains out, it's about exploiting your body when the light is green, and respecting it when the light is yellow and cursing it when it is red. Any day of the week that ends in "y" you can make adjustments if your body is telling you.

As John Ngnugi said so well, "Don't waste good time."

Malmo, I find you posts very insightful. Since I see you have commented multiple times on this thread, hopefully you can respond to this high mileage question that is partly related to tempo-runs.

Do you find that it takes high mileage athletes that are doing slower/moderate base phase runs more races to start seeing benefits? Specifically, does the lack of alot of speed/fast work/tempo mean that a couple more races are needed to "get back in the swing of things" before one can see a big PR from the high mileage?

Shelby wrote:

Malmo, I find you posts very insightful. Since I see you have commented multiple times on this thread, hopefully you can respond to this high mileage question that is partly related to tempo-runs.

Do you find that it takes high mileage athletes that are doing slower/moderate base phase runs more races to start seeing benefits? Specifically, does the lack of alot of speed/fast work/tempo mean that a couple more races are needed to "get back in the swing of things" before one can see a big PR from the high mileage?

First of all I don't know where you get the idea that the higher the mileage the slower the running? In fact, you'd most likely find that higher mileage runners are training at faster paces because they are fully training their bodies.

Aerobic training is all at the same pace regardless of how much is being allotted in a 7 day window. But as your body becomes fitter aerobic training zones become faster and faster.

A runner who is not exploiting his body fully at 50 mpw will initially find that the jump to 80 or 90 mpw to be a bit fatiguing. It's not because 80-90mpw should be run slower any slower than 50mpw, it's simply becasue they were undertrained at those lower levels. Not fit. That's not the same as saying that 50-60mpw automatically makes you undertrained, but there's a high probability that you are.

You should be able to spot undertrained runners in competition. They look 'soft'. They don't look very lean. You aren't going to find too many 90-120mpw butterballs out there.

But to address your question as you phrased it, it depends on the race distance and the overall training profiles of the two types. A runner who is training for 1500-3000 with all interval work is generally going to outperform the higher mileage guy in the short-term window, but that difference doesn't last for more than a few weeks. Even with just a few tweaks, an athlete with a larger aerobic base will round into form very quickly.

I remember my first introduction to international competition, during the mid-Summer break in July running with Jos Hermans and Dick Quax in Hermans hometown of Njmegen. Here it was, a 2-3 week break in the middle of the Summer racing season, and these two guys, the best in the world, were putting in 20 mile days. I thought, "hmmmm, these guys know something that I don't" They knew that you just cannot perform well in long distance running without going back and touching on your aerobic base - even if for just a couple of weeks during the racing season.

Go to the training logs of Steve Scotts that have been posted here and you see much of the same thing. Dropping into the 50-60s while traipsing all over Europe, then coming home for 2 or week weeks in the 90s, then back to Europe.

It's all well and good to use Wejo as a poster boy for hard work trumping talent but people forget that he was never able to beat ALL the talented guys.

I think people imagine they can sneak in all this work and by some fluke the talented guys will be skipping runs and slacking off and one day the hard worker will win the day.

Never really happens though, does it?

Doesn't mean you shouldn't try to be your best but remember that Sell and Wejo never actually won anything.

SMJO wrote:

It's all well and good to use Wejo as a poster boy for hard work trumping talent but people forget that he was never able to beat ALL the talented guys.

I think people imagine they can sneak in all this work and by some fluke the talented guys will be skipping runs and slacking off and one day the hard worker will win the day.

Never really happens though, does it?

Doesn't mean you shouldn't try to be your best but remember that Sell and Wejo never actually won anything.

Thankfully they hold these events called "races" that help us to determine who is "more talented" or "working harder".

Malmo, thanks so much for the response! What I mean to say is many of my teammates and competitors from neighboring schools are running 50-60mpw and are incorporating interval work. Meanwhile in comparison to them I am doing 90mpw not coming near the sort of interval pace they are doing. They seem to be having a couple huge improvments PR-wise in recent races while I've gone 10-15sec slower than my PR in my first race of the season. Is it just about getting in the speed work following high mileage for it to finally pay off? I guess I am just concerned that I may be doing something wrong since I have yet to see the HUGE drop in race times. I'm talking 3000m to 5000m races on an indoor track.

SMJO wrote:

?

Doesn't mean you shouldn't try to be your best but remember that Sell and Wejo never actually won anything.

And your point?

You do realize the higher up the ladder you climb the more difficult it is to win races?

I'm always shocked at how the dickless little twits on Letsrun (not necessarily you) are quick to diminish the performances of Wejo, or Sell or even Alan Webb on the basis that they didn't win in the most rarefied air of competition.

Brian Sell is right, i'd take the advice from his wife long before i'd listen to anything that the anonidiots on a message board have to say.

The entire point of this or any other training thread isn't that you're going to make a donkey into a racehorse. The point is that you need to train that donkey to mimic what a racehorse does to maximize his talent. The point of all athletic training is to exploit YOUR talent to the max, oftentimes well beyond what you ever previously thought was possible. To do that frequently involves convincing the brain to think like an elite, even if you'll never become one. That means crushing pre-conceived boundaries and clearing the brain of the junk that has been fed to them for many years.

Shelby wrote:

Malmo, thanks so much for the response! What I mean to say is many of my teammates and competitors from neighboring schools are running 50-60mpw and are incorporating interval work. Meanwhile in comparison to them I am doing 90mpw not coming near the sort of interval pace they are doing. They seem to be having a couple huge improvments PR-wise in recent races while I've gone 10-15sec slower than my PR in my first race of the season. Is it just about getting in the speed work following high mileage for it to finally pay off? I guess I am just concerned that I may be doing something wrong since I have yet to see the HUGE drop in race times. I'm talking 3000m to 5000m races on an indoor track.

Why don't you post specifics? What does your typical week look like?

Mon: 12miles

Tue: AM: 4miles easy PM: 9miles

Wed: AM: 4miles easy PM: 10miles

Thu: 12miles

Fri: AM: 4miles easy PM: 3.3miles all out as fast as possible, 4miles total warm up/cool down

Sat: AM: 4miles easy PM: 10miles

Sun: 12miles

Usually the pace varies as if I am feeling good or running with a training partner I will go 6:10-30 pace. On more moderate days I go 6:40-7:00 and on easy 12milers I'll go 6:50-7:10. All the morning runs are 8:00 pace.

I am a 16:00 5k, 9:55 3200m. On my first indoor race of the season I went 10:20 in the 3200, so I am concerned why I didn't see the big PR I expected. I built up to this mileage over a period of 3 months. I am thinking I went slower than PR because it was the first race--rusty? In any case if it is speed that is the issue, I will be starting workouts in ~2weeks with the team.

OK that looks good, for general conditioning between-season training, but you won't ever race very well off of it.

I realize the winter is over but next time, or even this month, try something like this.

Why don't you try adding some shorter repeats one day, lets say 12-16 200s or 8-12 400s at slower than your 5k pace. This will feel easy, but you will progress. If your lungs and calves are burning after these you've run too hard.

Now add repeat 150s after one of your easy PM runs. 6 to 8 of them, SOM style. First 50m easy, accelerating to top speed for 50m then cruise the last 50m. Take 250m slow jog or walk. Make sure you're fully recovered. Wear spikes.

So what you could have done is a winter of easy neuromuscular training with weekend races. You wouldn't have been at your best, but you wouldn't burn yourself out either.

Malmo ... thanks so much for taking the time to post again, I have missed your contributions tremendously. It's too bad that the 90-10 rule has taken over letsrun .... 90% bad, 10% good in terms of posts.

Please try to ignore the 90, and remember that there is a vocal minority that appreciates what you contribute.

malmo wrote:

12-16 200s or 8-12 400s at slower than your 5k pace. This will feel easy, but you will progress. If your lungs and calves are burning after these you've run too hard.

Great advice....

Malmo - what to do if you find yourself saying, "I've run to hard"? >90% of the time the athlete will think, "Wow that was great!" esp early in the prep cycle. Other than looking for feeling flat etc and not bulling through it, what did you do if you got, "caught up in the moment" and ran too hard?

thanx!

Thanks alot for the response Malmo, very helpful. FYI I usually do 4-6 100m strides after most runs.

I guess I was just feeling worried that I wasn't seeing immediate results off of generic high-mileage base phase. But perhaps that is to be expected, I suppose I'll just need to incorporate the speed/interval work and then everything should come together well for PRs...