My teammates hammer easy days... Should I ditch them and run solo?

Been there, done that. When I was in High School, we hammered all of our runs no matter the distance or purpose and basically used the same justification you're getting at - if we're not running hard every day, we must be missing out on training benefits. Boy, were we wrong. With that mentality, my Senior year, I think I peaked for XC sometime in early September and then I was completely fried. As the workouts and races started to heat up, I tried to perform, but my body was too tired and the harder I tried, the slower I got. I ran a minute and a half slower than my PR the last race of the season when it counted. Your body can only take so much consecutive punishment without some detox. I had to learn that lesson the hard way, but thank God I did. It would have continued to hold me back and kept me underperforming. I certainly wouldn't have had the subsequent success that I did. Sure, sometimes it takes restraint and you'll feel like you're not doing everything you can to get better, but being able to go out and do an easy run, in a lot of ways, takes more discipline. Easy runs are very important and don't always get the credit they deserve - I'm pretty sure Wejo has an article on this titled "Why I Sucked in College". If you haven't read it, I'd recommend doing so - it's a really good read about maturing as a runner.

Yes.

Never ran as much easy pace as last 6 months. Never felt so primed for the hard workouts.

There's a time for everything, but in my experience, it's much more common for young runner's to err on the side of too fast. Short answer is do your own thing.

Long answer is to stop thinking in binary terms of either "workout or easy day." There's a larger spectrum of useful stimuli. My rule of thumb is that when I'm far from competition, my average pace during the week is faster, but my quality workouts are much easier than they will be later. (Still fast, but longer recovery and less volume.) As I approach competition, my workouts get harder and it becomes more important to keep the pace under control on other days. But even then, I still do a mix of what I call recovery (4-6 mile shuffle), easy (6-8 miles slow enough to completely zone out), steady (6-12 miles at a comfortably fast clip that leaves me feeling strong), and steady-hard (6-12 at a slightly uncomfortable pace that wears me out but doesn't put me in oxygen debt). Realistically, there are even more useful paces, but that's enough for record keeping purposes.

I'd also add that your event is a relevant consideration. The longer your event, the more important your pace on "non workout days" becomes.

It's part of the obsessive nature of runners to overdo everything. And also, being young, you will do things wrong before you do them right, it's part of learning.

But some people never do learn from their mistakes. Obviously you are not one of those people.

You know it is pointless, hence you came here to say so.

You can try raising the issue with them, say that if you took the easier days easier, recovered better then ran faster (and less strained) in the track workouts you would end up faster runners. If they don't agree then yes, go solo.

Yes! Yes! This x1000. When I finally learned my lesson after doing basically the same thing in college (this was the 90s...we all thought we were supposed to be training that way) through a coach who knew better. I dropped 45 seconds off my 5k PR in training with him for 6 months. Running was much more pleasurable as well. Run the workouts hard, but controlled, do some strides, rest easy mileage as I saw fit (645-7min pace). Felt so much better all the time. Stronger, faster, happier.

What 30-60 seconds overall?

Just drop back and let them go.

Meet back up with them at the end.

Some may drop back with you and keep you company.

Push those hard days the way you feel.

OP, check out the link on the very bottom of the LRC front page, "why I sucked in college."

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2006/09/wejo-speaks-why-i-sucked-in-college/

Wejo has you covered: run slower.

Differentiate between;

a) a run whose sole purpose is recovery and,

b) a relatively slow run but one that is intended to have some training effect.

In the case of a) keep the pace slow and the run short (maybe add a few very relaxed strides over 100-150 at the end.

In the case of b) the pace and duration should be a bit more than a) but still well within your capability on that day. Remember, effort not pace has to be the key measure of any run. As a young athlete with plenty of other stuff in his life your ability will fluctuate from day to day depending on the demands of school, friendships, home life etc. etc.

Basically, if you don't have some very easy days you will end up doing a lot of OK training - and run a lot of OK races when what you are aiming for is excellence. I know this from bitter personal experience. Sometimes very slow IS best!!

Ever hear of Bill Bowerman? Hard/easy principal? While your friends are stagnating because they are injured or overtrained (and have set themselves up for it), you will be continuing to improve by utilizing the hard/easy principal. Basic stuff that smart runners live by. Good luck!

Yes. Train slower on your easy days. Run with a slower group of runners or solo.

well you have to quantify

90-100 seconds slower per mile than 5k pace is a reasonable.

or just by feel, if you are pushing the easy days, don't do that.

if you drop back and do your own thing you will be lonely the first few days but then you'll likely get a companion or two. I'm sure you aren't the only one on the team feeling the same way.

And if you start racing well you will get even more companions.

If this is a high school program, run with your team. Maybe you're right and the pace is too fast, but HS isn't the place to start doing your own thing. That's how teams fall apart. As much as people might be militant about making sure you don't run too fast on easy days, the idea that you need to be trotting on non-workout days is far from an absolute truth. There are a lot of extremely successful runners that hammer most or all of their runs. Look at the letsrun article about Drew Hunter's training, where Tinman mocks the people that run 6:00 pace that Hunter trained with at the Nike camp. What they gloss over is the fact that the people at that camp aren't exactly scrubs. They're all probably 405 HS milers or something similar, and it seems foolish to think that their 6:00 pace mentality has nothing to do with that. There's also something to be said for the mental aspects of training, and that putting yourself in constant discomfort might make you more willing to do that on race day. It's very possible that those mental benefits outweigh the physical costs.

I had a bunch of different coaches in HS, who had varying amounts of competence and whose training I followed to varying degrees. The one thing I learned, however, is that in HS as long as you work hard you're going to be okay. Perhaps there are better ways of training, and maybe you'll have to leave a couple seconds out there, but as long as you're working hard you're going to run well. Don't do cowboy stuff.

800 Dude is on point.

There's guys on my teams that hammer every run they do without any rest, but I'm not like that.

I try to go hard on Mondays, then an EASY 30 minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays with striders. Wednesday and Fridays are steady state runs, Saturdays are hard, then Sundays are an EASY 70 minutes.

This is all a lot of bollocks. The mental aspects of running too hard all the time outweigh the physical costs? I don't buy it for a minute.

So 4:05 HS milers running 6 min easy pace are doing it right while a 3:58 miler running 7 min easy pace is doing it wrong? You've lost me.

Putting yourself in constant discomfort in training will make you balls tired on race day and you will underperform. Unless you are a super-stud, you cannot hammer every day - not even close, not even as a teenager.

AnotherHighSchoolChick wrote:

Even though some people on here may say "I don't care that you ran in high school," I am here to improve.

My teammates and I train together every day. We have similar PRs but they run easy days 30-60 seconds faster than I feel is appropriate. Some of them have had issues with anemia and injuries, but I have no idea if that is related to this. I also feel like if I run slower on my own on easy days, they will improve while I stagnate. Discuss.

If you don't, you'll not progress. Never lose sight on the intent of the session. Make sure that your hammering doesn't screw up your goals for technique, and that you take rest days appropriately.

That will improve your hammer days.

Wejo "matured" and started doing insane mileage at a slow pace. Had a very short career at the top...

ilovemarathons wrote:

Ever hear of Bill Bowerman? Hard/easy principal? While your friends are stagnating because they are injured or overtrained (and have set themselves up for it), you will be continuing to improve by utilizing the hard/easy principal. Basic stuff that smart runners live by. Good luck!

ever been to oregon? they destroyed guys in their college years.