I know this is on another thread as well, but in the newest Running Times it has his logs, and he ran most of his miles slower than 7 minute pace. It's clear that RT converted his training distances from kilometers, is there any way they did it wrong because it has him logging a large majority of his miles at 7 min. pace or slower.
bump
just speculation, but my guess is they fudged it up a little to motivate GalloWalkers or something, who knows...
Viren ran up to 200 mpw in building for his Olympic peaks. No doubt that a lot of that mileage was slower than 7 minute pace at altitude.
Plenty of guys including Rodgers and Shorter (who ran up to 170 miles in his Montreal build up) ran slow through most of their training. The secret for them was building a huge base around their workouts. And to stay healthy it required going slow enough to recover even though they were capable of running much faster.
It seems a lot of elites train at slower paces than most people would think. This is going along with my theory, most people run to fast too often because they have this stupid American idea that you get the best results from tearing up your body into pool of pain. I've run a 16:04 and a large majority of miles are slower than 8 min/mile. Then again I'm running in a lot of heat and humidity right now which also raises my resting heart rate because I don't like to sleep in air conditioning. Anyway if you wore a heart rate monitor and knew the principles behind it you'd understand. I think a lot of elites have a natural sense of knowing their recovery pace from their workout pace. I mean a person like me banging out about 5:10 a mile in the 5K, training at 7 min/pace, only 2 min/mile slower than race pace, that would be murder, especially in this weather to run 65 miles a week at that pace.
In "Running With the Legends" there's a week's sample which shows similar slow paced traing with some quality stuff intermixed.
I do think that Lasse ran a lot of easy miles that surrounded his more difficult workouts, quite akin to Frank Shorter. When you are running high volume, you can't hammer it daily or you will crash, most likely. Additionally, it just works to do a bunch of easy miles plus key workouts! Tinman
He probably did go 7 min pace, elites know how to relax sometimes, your body can't handle the intense workouts and 6 min pace recovery runs
I think running surface matters quite a bit as well. If you run on a narrow and hilly forest path, 7 min/mile is really not that bad.
I remember one interesting detail from Haikkola's books. During Viren's base building he told Haikkola that "the paths seem to have gotten narrower". Haikkola knew from this that base building was going well and Viren was up to destroying his earlier PRs when they would move to faster training. He did destroy his PRs.
viren did a lot of his miles in finland where i am sure you appreciate during the winter it is often very snowy and icy. so i assume a lot of his runs were run in at best light snow which would affect times greatly, also in finland thee are lots of trails etc where counting miles would not be easy so he probably just guessed a lot of his mileages and the rest.
It is logical that if u run huge amount of miles a lot of them are going to be slow.
So, if out of 150, 50 are fast that leaves 100 miles of slow running.
For those of us who run 70 per week total, 100 slow miles a week look like goofing off.
AreYouWithMeSoFar? wrote:
It seems a lot of elites train at slower paces than most people would think. This is going along with my theory, most people run to fast too often because they have this stupid American idea that you get the best results from tearing up your body into pool of pain. I've run a 16:04 and a large majority of miles are slower than 8 min/mile. Then again I'm running in a lot of heat and humidity right now which also raises my resting heart rate because I don't like to sleep in air conditioning. Anyway if you wore a heart rate monitor and knew the principles behind it you'd understand. I think a lot of elites have a natural sense of knowing their recovery pace from their workout pace. I mean a person like me banging out about 5:10 a mile in the 5K, training at 7 min/pace, only 2 min/mile slower than race pace, that would be murder, especially in this weather to run 65 miles a week at that pace.
I think you hit the nail right on the head with that post, my man.
BINGO.
jman wrote:
AreYouWithMeSoFar? wrote:It seems a lot of elites train at slower paces than most people would think. This is going along with my theory, most people run to fast too often because they have this stupid American idea that you get the best results from tearing up your body into pool of pain. I've run a 16:04 and a large majority of miles are slower than 8 min/mile. Then again I'm running in a lot of heat and humidity right now which also raises my resting heart rate because I don't like to sleep in air conditioning. Anyway if you wore a heart rate monitor and knew the principles behind it you'd understand. I think a lot of elites have a natural sense of knowing their recovery pace from their workout pace. I mean a person like me banging out about 5:10 a mile in the 5K, training at 7 min/pace, only 2 min/mile slower than race pace, that would be murder, especially in this weather to run 65 miles a week at that pace.
I think you hit the nail right on the head with that post, my man.
I agree with you completely... I am a 4:20 HS miler, not a world beater but not sucky by any means, and my resting HR is about 40, and it seems to me IMPOSSIBLE to keep the HR that low. I believe the number 86 was used once, and definitely below 100, which is crazy low for a run.
I'd like some of that 'light snow' right now.
I am tired of hot weather.
This is true. It shows up on my heart rate monitor. I can hold a faster pace on trail then on other surfaces without increasing my heart rate. I think it has more to do with being in the shade than the actual surface because a lot of my mileage is on a road the into a park on asphalt under trees and back on road again. When I go into the shade in the park I can increase my pace just by getting out of the sun. My coach at JUCO used to keep us in the shade until we started our warm-up. He was very serious about keeping us out of the sun until we ran. =
AreYouWithMeSoFar? wrote:
It seems a lot of elites train at slower paces than most people would think. This is going along with my theory, most people run to fast too often because they have this stupid American idea that you get the best results from tearing up your body into pool of pain. I\'ve run a 16:04 and a large majority of miles are slower than 8 min/mile. Then again I\'m running in a lot of heat and humidity right now which also raises my resting heart rate because I don\'t like to sleep in air conditioning. Anyway if you wore a heart rate monitor and knew the principles behind it you\'d understand. I think a lot of elites have a natural sense of knowing their recovery pace from their workout pace. I mean a person like me banging out about 5:10 a mile in the 5K, training at 7 min/pace, only 2 min/mile slower than race pace, that would be murder, especially in this weather to run 65 miles a week at that pace.
no offense, but you have only run 16:04, so I dont think that you neccesarliy know what a lot of americans are doing wrong, when a hell of a lot of americans are running faster than 16 min.
I think I probably agree with you on some of the concepts, but when it comes to running 5:10 mile pace for 5k, i think you better be running 7 min pace pretty often if you want to improve. I mean, that is still way off your lactate threashold. You have to be pushing the pace without physiologically taxing your energy systems by going overboard, and 7 min pace - while tough - will not kill you, especially if you want to become elite. I dont know if you do, but if not, then you cant apply your theory to elite training can you?
Yeah, I'm trying to become elite. It's August. I'm in my aerobic base training period right now. I've often thought of keeping my fingers from typing for reasons you have stated. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Haile Gebrselassie ran X many hours 2 times a day which came to X many miles a day. I remember calculating his daily pace for most of mileage during most of the year would be about 6:30 a mile. He's ran all kinds of crazy world records. Why are people with 14 and 15 minute 5K PR's running most of their mileage faster than him? I've read a lot about the concepts of heart rate monitor training. I'm not trying to caoch anyone, but when I see science that is based on some pretty solid stuff and people not paying any attention to it. I dunno. I could be dead wrong which is why I often think of not advocating my methods so strongly. I've taken 8 months off from training. I've been training since april. I 've been training with a heart rate monitor since May 11. In early June I ran a 4 mile race in which I held back a lot. I ran at a pace that was about the same pace I run 8K XC races full tilt. Not to bad for two months of training, one of which was done with a heart rate monitor. This fall will be the tell all. If I start seeting new and crazy PR's then you can bet I'll keep advocating what I'm doing. I've improved my my 5K time as follows...
High school:
Frosh: 22's
Soph: 20-21's
Junior- Low 18's
Senior- high 17's-low 18's
College:
Freshman(2002): 16:39 (beat my high school 10:58 3200 meter PR en-route) Ran 29's for 8K XC
Sophmore(2003): 16:04 5K PR 4:23 1500 Ran 28's for 8K XC
Injured 2004
Fall 2004- The great comeback - Coming soon to courses up and down the mid-atlantic, East Coast.
Spring 2005 - Goal is to be competitive in the Penn Relays.
PS. Currently I'm running more weekly mileage then I've ever run before (60 to 66 MPW so far) and I'm doing this while working a tough 40 hours or more a week.
It sounds like you are getting the most out of your ability. I would tend to agree with you on easy pace. Take your 5K race pace x 1.375 and you will have a decent indicator of your easy pace (which the majority of your base work should be).
ie)
15:30 5K=5 minute pace x 1.375=6:53 mile pace for easy runs
17:30 5K=5:39 pace x 1.375=7:46 mile pace for easy runs
19:30 5K=6:17 pace x 1.375=8:29 mile pace for easy runs
***This is just an indicator that I have used for my running, this is by no means exact.
That calculation seems to be a good tool based on people I know with those 5k prs.
AreYouWithMeSoFar? : using a 5:10 mile pace , the easy run pace comes out as about 7:10 with this calculation. I think this seems like a good number, probably better than my original suggestion of sub 7 pace, and better than running 8 min pace.
I worry a little about americans thinking they can train with lots of slow mileage. I myself am a fairly high mileage advocate, but I also think that the quality needs to be progressivly built up along with the mileage. It is easy to get ahead of yourself by either: running too slow and too much, or too fast and not enough. I think elite american runners just need to train smart, thats all. A lot of this is by feel, of course, which means going as fast as you can on "base building", distance, or easy days without over-reaching, or taxing the body more than it can recover.
The energy systems should be kept in mind : learn to get the most out of the aeribic system on aerobic days by staying CLOSER but NOT OVER the lactate threashold. *If you never get near your lactate threashold, then you are actually neglecting a huge part of aerbic system, which i assume is the opposite intention of running a high volume program.*
I hope you have a great upcoming season and some big PRS. GOOD LUCK!