Brogan Austin- "No MP training." thoughts on Tinman.

Yepper Depper wrote:

YMMV wrote:

And no MP does seem a bit strange.

Why is it strange? MP is no man's land in terms of training stimulous. 30 years ago no one did MP stuff. VO2, tempo, long run, mileage. That's how all marathoners used to train. I ran a of my 'thons and never once trained at my actual race pace.

I find this hard to believe. I recently read the Frank Shorter book that was published a few years ago and he said one of his staple workouts was a 20-mile long run with the last 10 miles run at marathon pace.

Zero runners in the late 80s were using a favorite workout of the man credited for starting the running boom?

Someone needs to introduce Tinman to Canova and a 2:12 could easily become a 2:06.

Stugotz's Game Notes 99% Written By Mike Ryan wrote:

I find this hard to believe. I recently read the Frank Shorter book that was published a few years ago and he said one of his staple workouts was a 20-mile long run with the last 10 miles run at marathon pace.

Zero runners in the late 80s were using a favorite workout of the man credited for starting the running boom?

I've been racing marathons since 1981, and have never targeted marathon pace in training. I don't know how common that was back in the '80s ... I may have simply been uninformed in my training. Even now, I prefer to run faster threshold-type runs, or slower longer runs, with no MP, unless "passing through" that pace during progression runs. But I'm looking to change that a bit during my upcoming cycle.

Yepper Depper wrote:

YMMV wrote:

And no MP does seem a bit strange.

Why is it strange? MP is no man's land in terms of training stimulous. 30 years ago no one did MP stuff. VO2, tempo, long run, mileage. That's how all marathoners used to train. I ran a of my 'thons and never once trained at my actual race pace.

Maybe not 30 years ago, but I assure you that 40 years ago, many many were. I was one of them.

Tinman has been an inspiration for his training knowledge on here for me for over a decade. Guy knows his stuff!

Some of my best marathons (2:16:52 PR and 2:21 at the age of 21) came right after 10km-half marathon training blocks...the later was after my spring track season of 5km-10km racing. When I've "moved down from ultras" its proved much harder to crack 2:20 for me personally and been a tougher transition.

So having the speed 10km/season coming first makes sense. The other thing is not running MP or not having to do a "simulator"with a bunch of miles in a row at MP. Sure, I did that at Hansons, but the key workouts were really the 3x 3 miles and 5 x 2 miles mixed in at faster than MP pace. The thing is most people don't know exactly what their "goal MP" might be on the day. Having some miles "around MP" is good enough.

Like Canova...working at 105% and 95% of MP a lot.

It also just so happens (and we did this at Hansons) that doing 2-3 miles repeats and some really big volume workouts at around Half Marathon Pace (or 10sec/mile faster than MP roughly at least) corresponds almost exactly to Lactate Threshold (esp when you are sub 64 min for a half marathon as a PR)....same thing with 15km race pace being around critical velocity.

If you are doing Long Runs slightly slower than MP and long workouts slightly faster than MP (and more short intervals closer to 10km-15km pace) then there is really no need to run MP exactly from a physiological perspective.

Stugotz's Game Notes 99% Written By Mike Ryan wrote:

Yepper Depper wrote:

Why is it strange? MP is no man's land in terms of training stimulous. 30 years ago no one did MP stuff. VO2, tempo, long run, mileage. That's how all marathoners used to train. I ran a of my 'thons and never once trained at my actual race pace.

I find this hard to believe. I recently read the Frank Shorter book that was published a few years ago and he said one of his staple workouts was a 20-mile long run with the last 10 miles run at marathon pace.

Zero runners in the late 80s were using a favorite workout of the man credited for starting the running boom?

Note that Shorter's book came out a few years ago. That may well be the first time that particular piece of information came out. In the 70s we knew Shorter ran a 20 each week as pretty much we all did but that was about as much as anyone knew. There wasn't specific stuff about the 20s. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Frank himself only worked that out in hindsight.

S. Canaday wrote:

If you are doing Long Runs slightly slower than MP and long workouts slightly faster than MP (and more short intervals closer to 10km-15km pace) then there is really no need to run MP exactly from a physiological perspective.

Thanks so much for that feedback! Yeah, that has been my traditional approach, and on race day, I intuitively dial in marathon pace. Which, on tapered legs and a dose of race day "magic," feels very different than it would in the midst of the training cycle. I will add that, these days, LT pace is 15K race pace, and CV pace is faster than 8K pace ...

... I will add that, these days, LT pace is 15K race pace, and CV pace is faster than 8K pace ...

*That is assuming that LT pace is 1-hour race pace, and CV is about 30-minute race pace ...

I think there is though a physiological benefit of doing MP work especially when it is sustained work. Like I posted before the concept of 10k pace work (or mmol of lactate right around or slightly above TH...let's say 5mmol if you think your anaerobic TH is 4) this is not a new concept but Seilers was actually the physiologist that compiled all the data that supported the concept of 10k intensity being the "sweet spot" for endurance sport. The thing though...in training myself is that 10k pace solely does not prepare mentally and I think physically for the rigors of the marathon....you have to get used to a sustained pace (for someone with several marathons under his/her belt though prob already knows what to expect)....your body has to get used to the sustained pace. The thing about the marathon is your lactate does not really shoot up until the later stages but that's after you've run 20-23ish miles for a well trained runner. It's about figuring out the best way to mimic that process. I think 10k pace is good to teach the body to run at a lower lactate level at a higher velocity but I still think the long sustained work at mp is necessary. A balance if you will between Seiler(Tinman) and Canova....but everyone is different and needs a different recipe of stimuli.

Big Brogan only needed 520 pace in training as that was his equivalent pace / effort down the ski slope!

right

My favorite part of Brogan's recent podcast is how he first says the workouts aren't too hard and they leave feeling like they can do more, then talks about how his body shut down during workouts for the first 14 weeks. Those are totally opposite - which one is it??

Malmo,

Can't find a transcript...but here is the podcast link.

http://citiusmag.com/citius-mag-podcast-network/

Around 32min into it he states something to the effect of 'not ever touching marathon pace in training'...and 'not doing marathon-specific training.'

Thanks everyone for the responses, great thread.

-OP

Valeant effort wrote:

My favorite part of Brogan's recent podcast is how he first says the workouts aren't too hard and they leave feeling like they can do more, then talks about how his body shut down during workouts for the first 14 weeks. Those are totally opposite - which one is it??

I read that, or listened to that, as him adjusting to a new system, and his coach adjusting to a new athlete. On Brogan's Strava page you can see that he pulled the plug on some of the early workouts. But within a few weeks, they found that sweet spot.

curiousrunner1 wrote:

I found it interesting that Brogan did not train specifically at MP according to the Citius Mag podcast. Can anyone offer insight on Tinman's marathon training philosophy or workouts?

Seems very non-Canova style which incorporates alot of MP from what I understand.

link to the podcast?

HRE wrote:

Note that Shorter's book came out a few years ago. That may well be the first time that particular piece of information came out. In the 70s we knew Shorter ran a 20 each week as pretty much we all did but that was about as much as anyone knew. There wasn't specific stuff about the 20s. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Frank himself only worked that out in hindsight.

I had the privilege of chatting with Frank last year, so I asked him about this specifically, as I’ve always been curious about the apparent absence of MP work but lack of info on how he approached the LR.

He said, in a nutshell, that the first half was always relatively easy, getting it going towards the end, then the second half was by feel on the day. If he was feeling good, he’d rock it, getting down to MP or faster by the end. If he was tired or flat, he’d just keep it steady. So it sounded like if it was a good one, he’d work down to ~6:00 pace by ten miles, then start rolling, or if it wasn’t happening, just cruise in at that. When he got to Boulder, he said he and a group had a 10 mile loop from his house they’d do twice. Sounded like they’d all run together for the first one, then the second half would be sorting out the pecking order, haha.

So it sounded like in the scope of a training rhythm, it was a good hard long progression every other week or so. It should also be noted that he would usually do a hard session the day before or the day after the long run.

It’s interesting that his training approach was actually structurally kinda similar to Tinman’s approach, though his track work was faster. Same relative weekly format year round with low-volume track/high-intensity sessions or short tempos every other day with easy jogging between.

Brogan Awesome

What you're describing, a group getting together for a run of 20 miles or so, starting comfortably, then accelerating later and maybe getting strung out, was very common. But I doubt that the people doing it consciously thought, "Oh, we've got ten miles to go and I'll do that at my marathon pace." You might well do that at your marathon pace, or you might do it a bit slower or a bit faster.

Regarding Brogan Austin’s training in general, a few things to consider are:

1). His training history

2). His life outside of running

I’m not sure what his mileage was in the past but it’s possible that this was more than he’s ever done.

For point 2, the man has a full time job! Time was likely a limiting factor for his mileage. Stress is stress. Whether it’s physical, from running, or stress from work. All of this affects his ability to recover. Tinman is fantastic at finding the right balance of stress and rest for his athletes to not overtrain them.

The part that I don’t get is how Tinman thought, based on his workouts and training, that he was ready for 2:10. How does anything that he did in training indicate that?