Taking your easy days easy

That would be good for an ultrarunner. But anything dealing with a marathon or shorter would require you to eventually increase your speed endurance in order to keep making improvements.

Isn't that the way Lydiard's boys trained? Most of us ran very fast times doing just that. Semi-hard runs every day. Big mileage. A rare interval workout here and there but we weren't afraid to hammer on a long run.

Xvbnnnmm wrote:

Isn't that the way Lydiard's boys trained?

No, it wasn´t.

As long as the body is stressed, it will work to improve itself in response to that stress

Just think of what your goal is-will medium runs accomplish that?

mrtalent wrote:

That would be good for an ultrarunner.

Not if they want to be competitive.

Fbjoofdfv wrote:

This is good advice but what if you scratch workouts and just run "steady" every day? I don't think you would need to go very slow especially after building a good layer of fitness over months and years.

Didn´t work for Solinsky in the long run (hamstring problems). I get tightness even by reading this. I hope you have hilly roads to run at least to break up the monotony of movements...

U.N.O. wrote:

Fbjoofdfv wrote:

This is good advice but what if you scratch workouts and just run "steady" every day? I don't think you would need to go very slow especially after building a good layer of fitness over months and years.

Didn´t work for Solinsky in the long run (hamstring problems). I get tightness even by reading this. I hope you have hilly roads to run at least to break up the monotony of movements...

Solinsky trained that way?

Plenty of people run on the treadmill every day. Is that bad for you too?

Xvbnnnmm wrote:

Plenty of people run on the treadmill every day. Is that bad for you too?

It´s not a problem for even a every day treadmill runner, but at high mileage that could create problems in the long run. Strength training with good range of movements helps, to keep the muscles (agonists and antagonists) balanced. Variation of pace up to sprinting keeps the hamstrings etc strong and breaks up tightness.

Xvbnnnmm wrote:

Isn't that the way Lydiard's boys trained? Most of us ran very fast times doing just that. Semi-hard runs every day. Big mileage. A rare interval workout here and there but we weren't afraid to hammer on a long run.

Semi-hard pics?

Fbjoofdfv wrote:

This is good advice but what if you scratch workouts and just run "steady" every day? I don't think you would need to go very slow especially after building a good layer of fitness over months and years.

This sort of training was not all that uncommon a few decades back and people did well. Names who come to mind quickly are Ron Clarke, Mark Nenow, Mark Curp, Derek Clayton, Dick Taylor, (the British one, not the Kiwi), and Bill Adcocks. It's what I did in my best years though I didn't do quite as well as the guys on that list did.

May I ask what your PRs are?

Nothing spectacular, stuff like 2:35 for the marathon, 32:20 for 10,000. But I never broke 6:00 for the mile in high school or beat another runner who finished a race until late in my junior year, my first marathon was 4:34, so times like I ran once seemed unattainable. Interval work either did nothing for me or slowed me dramatically.

U.N.O. wrote:

Didn´t work for Solinsky in the long run (hamstring problems).

That was a combination of both being one of the hardest working human beings the history of the United States plus performance enhancing drug use. Achilles had a heel, Solinsky had a hamstring.

HRE wrote:

Fbjoofdfv wrote:

This is good advice but what if you scratch workouts and just run "steady" every day? I don't think you would need to go very slow especially after building a good layer of fitness over months and years.

This sort of training was not all that uncommon a few decades back and people did well. Names who come to mind quickly are Ron Clarke, Mark Nenow, Mark Curp, Derek Clayton, Dick Taylor, (the British one, not the Kiwi), and Bill Adcocks. It's what I did in my best years though I didn't do quite as well as the guys on that list did.

This is also a list of top runners without kicks.

HRE wrote:

Nothing spectacular, stuff like 2:35 for the marathon, 32:20 for 10,000. But I never broke 6:00 for the mile in high school or beat another runner who finished a race until late in my junior year, my first marathon was 4:34, so times like I ran once seemed unattainable. Interval work either did nothing for me or slowed me dramatically.

This is really interesting too me as I had a similar situation in high school. Started my year and was not able to reach my full potential. This gives me hope that someday I can be sub-sub-elite.

May I ask how long you have trained like this since HS?

FriendlyLobo wrote:

HRE wrote:

Nothing spectacular, stuff like 2:35 for the marathon, 32:20 for 10,000. But I never broke 6:00 for the mile in high school or beat another runner who finished a race until late in my junior year, my first marathon was 4:34, so times like I ran once seemed unattainable. Interval work either did nothing for me or slowed me dramatically.

This is really interesting too me as I had a similar situation in high school. Started my year and was not able to reach my full potential. This gives me hope that someday I can be sub-sub-elite.

May I ask how long you have trained like this since HS?

I started getting away from a lot of interval work late in college. Until then pretty much everything was interval work. I managed to convince our coach to let me do less and less of that as I got a lot faster by doing steady runs. Once I was out of college I did only steady runs.

2:35 is spectacular in my view. So you had zero workouts, just mileage every day? I like this, but people always say "you need to work on your speed".

What's steady? A bit faster than an easy effort? In your case, something like 6:30-6:45 pace?

Did you do anything that was a little faster, like tempo runs or race-specific workouts? Sprints/strides?

Pretty much everything I did was at or a bit faster than my marathon pace, whatever that may have been at the particular time. I modelled a lot of what I on Ron Clarke.

I think I'm a similar type of runner. I've run my best on marathon training, with longer, threshold and marathon pace workouts. Traditional track intervals kill my legs. I think there's a time and place for them, but many of my peers get stuck on doing them week in, week out without any specific purpose because the think it's what they're "supposed to" do to run fast. Right now I'm focusing on base training to get my mileage up and build strength and endurance. While I'm not doing any structured speed or tempo runs, some of my runs have naturally been faster paced just because my legs are fresher. Even my slowest runs feel easier, yet are faster paced.