Road Racing and Training Thread Week ending Dec 2 2018 (CIM edition)

S - Off (sick)

M - Off (sick)

T - Off (sick)

W - 4

Th - 8

F - 12

S - 12 (6:50) w/ 4 in 6:26, 6:11, 5:59, 6:00

Total: 36 miles

It feels like I missed 3 weeks instead of 5 days. Everything hurts, and the quads have felt like 2 giant charley horses.

Spoiler for this week's training: I did 4 x mile yesterday in 5:40, 5:35, 5:27, 5:26. Big step back in fitness. Aerobic fitness hasn't disappeared but the legs have de-trained. I suppose that's good news as the muscles can be retrained relatively quickly. But it's going to make for at least a couple weeks of difficult training, both emotionally and physically.

I've enjoyed the CIM race reports and discussion. I tentatively plan to run there in 2019 and appreciate the course reviews. Congrats on the big PRs, cocoon & SI. RunnersFix, sorry to hear about the late-race struggles. The fitness is there. I think you're right about how the downhills affected you. At your training volume, beat quads have to be from the course. When I lived in Utah, my training buddies would spend several workouts training on long downhills before any race since all of the bigger marathons are net downhill. Maybe that's a key to CIM success for those of use who aren't naturally built to take the pounding.

DietBacon - that's awesome. hopefully you get good results. If I had extra cash, I would probably reach out to Nate Jenkins.

toohot: I thought Tinman's "CV" was around 10K pace, not slower than LT?

You are right Jeremy, 10k pace (or about 93% of vo2max using Canova math and assuming a 2 mile race is run at vo2max for a 2:30 marathoner) is what most people use as a stand in for CV.

angryjohnny wrote:

Hate to hear this. Is it still the calf? Have you been to the doctor? Houston is still a ways off...

His colon hates to hear it even more.

Smoove wrote:

You are right Jeremy, 10k pace (or about 93% of vo2max using Canova math and assuming a 2 mile race is run at vo2max for a 2:30 marathoner) is what most people use as a stand in for CV.

Yea, the guideline on my training schedule while I don't have a better reference is roughly 30min race pace.

What worries me about my training so far is the peak volume on the schedule he set out is only 60mpw, and the longest run only like 13mi. I've emailed him about it and waiting to hear back, cause it seems a bit low to me, but if he says that's it then I'm trusting him on it.

For context, what's the peak race distance?

Gordon Tremeshko wrote:

For context, what's the peak race distance?

I'm running the Rotterdam Marathon in April. The average seems to be 50ish mpw

How does he mix in the CV work in terms of your periodization?

Last week’s thread had me thinking about this topic. My heuristic for Tinman marathon training is “Big workouts + 10k pace intervals”, and I don’t know much beyond that.

Sub 6:00 wrote:

How does he mix in the CV work in terms of your periodization?

Last week’s thread had me thinking about this topic. My heuristic for Tinman marathon training is “Big workouts + 10k pace intervals”, and I don’t know much beyond that.

That's the gist of it from my understanding. Tinman doesn't have any published material to my knowledge, so I'm basing this on how I've seen his athletes structure their training. Periodization consists of 2 loosely defined periods.

Base Period

Lots of easy to moderate running

Introducing "Tinman tempo," loosely defined as 5k-pace + 60s. Start short, extend later.

Long run, can include Tinman tempo

Marathon-specific period

1-2 Big Workouts per week

Big workouts are generally CV, LT, or MP

Paces are sort of mixed throughout the build

Long run, which can also be a Big Workout

Workouts are extended throughout the build. If you start with 8x1k @ CV early, you will probably extend it to 10x1k later. Similarly a 6x1mile @ LT early will be extended to 2-1-2-1-2 @ LT later on. I see other fairly standard workouts like 4-3-2-1 progressing from MP to LT, sometimes even 5-4-3-2-1, or 3-4 x 5k @ MP.

One athlete I followed liked to extend smaller workouts (e.g. 6 x mile) to Big Workouts by including 2 miles @ Tinman tempo before and after the repeats.

Brogan mentioned "keeping the ball rolling." I know Tinman has advocated maintaining CV and tempo workout year round. I assume that's what Brogan is reference, I just haven't seen it applied in the runners I've followed.

Thanks, jewbacca. I've been trying to piece more of his theories together, but like you said, there just isn't a body of cohesive written work out there.

I have seen the mention of the Tinman Tempo, but I didn't know the paces. I assumed they were closer to the classic Daniels style tempo. But 5K pace+60 seconds is right around marathon pace for most of us, right? Do you know long does he advocate running these tempos each session?

Jeremy R wrote:

toohot: I thought Tinman's "CV" was around 10K pace, not slower than LT?

You are correct. I did not say critical velocity was slower than LT but I can see how using the term sub-threshold might be confusing.

jewbacca wrote:

Brogan mentioned "keeping the ball rolling." I know Tinman has advocated maintaining CV and tempo workout year round. I assume that's what Brogan is reference, I just haven't seen it applied in the runners I've followed.

I believe this is true. CV is bread and butter of training for every distance from 5k-marathon as far as I can tell. It's weekly through all periods of a training cycle. Same with tempo. I am coached by my former high school XC coach, who works directly with Tinman for his current students. He's worked with Tinman for years so his training advice is pretty close to Tinman's philosophy (along with a little from Canova).

That said, my info about Tinman training is secondhand. It's a mixture of my coach's training plans and advice, everything I've read from Tinman, and from what I can gather from his athletes on Strava, etc. They are usually very cool about explaining the purpose behind certain workouts if you ask them about it.

This weekend is the Dallas Marathon and I'm signed up to run the half. My plan up until this week was to race it all out, but after last week's 22-miler finishing w/ 8-miles at MP, I've had a slight twinge in the right hip. I think it's a little bursitis. I've had it before and it usually goes away.

That said, I'm considering backing off the pace for the half marathon and just running marathon pace so I don't risk aggravating the hip further. I've been running easy most of the week, but the week following the Half is scheduled to be another big mileage week (80+) with an aggressive 22-miler only 6 days after the race. (Not to mention a 9-mile MP tempo only 3 days after the race.)

My inner debate is do I run all out and risk wrecking an important week of training and, even worse, messing up my hip; or do I tempo it and go about business as usual?

I was counting on the HM being a fitness Litmus test for how I should approach the full in Houston in Jan, and I hate the thought of not racing a race. Should I just run all out or is there wisdom in planning to dial it back?

Thanks for any feedback.

consistency wrote:

I have seen the mention of the Tinman Tempo, but I didn't know the paces. I assumed they were closer to the classic Daniels style tempo. But 5K pace+60 seconds is right around marathon pace for most of us, right? Do you know long does he advocate running these tempos each session?

Marathon pace or a little slower. The guy I've followed the closest used to start with 4-5 miles of Tinman Tempo in the base phase and would work his way to 8-10 miles before the more intense work started.

jewbacca wrote:

consistency wrote:

I have seen the mention of the Tinman Tempo, but I didn't know the paces. I assumed they were closer to the classic Daniels style tempo. But 5K pace+60 seconds is right around marathon pace for most of us, right? Do you know long does he advocate running these tempos each session?

Marathon pace or a little slower. The guy I've followed the closest used to start with 4-5 miles of Tinman Tempo in the base phase and would work his way to 8-10 miles before the more intense work started.

My summer 5k/10k training had a 40-minute session every week followed by 6-8x 20-30 second hills at 1600 effort. Now in marathon training, the tempo portion is longer but I still end with the hills and sometimes flatland strides.

Kid B wrote:

jewbacca wrote:

Marathon pace or a little slower. The guy I've followed the closest used to start with 4-5 miles of Tinman Tempo in the base phase and would work his way to 8-10 miles before the more intense work started.

My summer 5k/10k training had a 40-minute session every week followed by 6-8x 20-30 second hills at 1600 effort. Now in marathon training, the tempo portion is longer but I still end with the hills and sometimes flatland strides.

Thanks guys, this is awesome! I'm in a base phase now and once a week or once every two weeks do 40 to 60 minutes at about 10 to 20 seconds over MP. And they feel quite good. Definitely feel like the kind of big aerobic runs I could use to build off of for later, more specific workouts.

Consistency - You might find this helpful. At least for a 6:45 marathon pace "Tempo" is 6:41-6:51. I'll note the Hanson's book also calls marathon pace "tempo". Looks like every possible pace has been given a name.

http://www.runfastcoach.com/calc2/

Kid B - That follow up week (if it's the biggest week you've ever done) would have me being cautious even if I didn't have a hip twinge going into the half. If Houston is the big goal I'd play it safe in Dallas. Even going out at MP will give you some sort of litmus test for where you're at. After all, Smoove and RGM both felt like they were going pretty strong at a half right before their marathons and ended up with faster marathon splits than their half time. Not sure an all out untapered half trying to go all out will help you learn any more than a MP effort would, and seems like a lot of risk sandwiched between your two biggest weeks ever.

jewbacca wrote:

Marathon pace or a little slower. The guy I've followed the closest used to start with 4-5 miles of Tinman Tempo in the base phase and would work his way to 8-10 miles before the more intense work started.

For anyone interested, I previously copied his workouts and weekly volume into Excel so I could see it more easily. I've taken out any personal identifiers and marked designated Big Workout days as BW. Those were typically 15-17 miles total. Also he was coming off a marathon, so his "base phase" is a little shorter and includes plenty of faster paces, just smaller volumes.

He improved consistently on this training. Several years after this the stars aligned and he popped an incredible race. The training leading to that one had slightly less emphasis on Tinman Tempo and more LT and MP. About the same volume and frequency of CV.

Excuse the (lack of) formatting.

too hot 3 wrote:

[H]e will emphasize a lot of critical velocity training which, if you're going to be doing a significant amount of sub-threshold work, is much less taxing (and yet big bang for your buck) than work above 90% V02 max.

Work at CV pace is faster than 90% of vo2max, so CV pace cannot be "much less taxing" than work above 90% of vo2max.