Good point. I’m dubious, but I’ll will try this with my children and beat them like Gjert when they don’t comply. Look for them in the Olympics in a decade. Thankfully since the USA is being made great again, parents will be able to beat their children for years to come. The Kenyan had to cut their foreskins off to get good, they stopped and they aren’t winning anymore.
I think what your asking is more hard workout oriented. Say you run 2k hard and your hitting 3k effort. Maybe it takes 5min before you feel good enough to go again and you only get 1600 at relatively the same pace and so on. You can do workouts like this but if your truly hammering these you can necessarily be doing them all the time. There was a 90s/2000s runner (forget) his name where training for world xc he would start every interval hammering these first 400 before settling in trying to maintain pace over the whole say 1600 interval. And over time his body was able to adapt and those times for the whole interval dropped as his body learned to handle the increased lactate levels early.
I think that would be a bit like the "supersets" idea suggested by Owen Anderson. I don't remember exactly, but if you were running a 1000m rep it might involve running the first 400m hard then easing back to 5000m (?) pace for the rest.
He also had a "lactate stacker" idea which was a minute hard (faster than V02max pace) then two minutes jog recovery.
The difference between this and what the OP posted is that these would only be a part of the jigsaw in a range of other sessions, where the OP "run to exhaustion - rest - repeat" appears to be the whole picture. As others have said, that doesn't develop enough different adaptions.
Here's a cycling workout I did frequently not too long ago when racing cyclocross fairly seriously.
Ride a few miles to warm up.
Ride 20 minute at an increasing pace to reach my threshold level.
Ride 8x2 minutes at just over threshold level, recovering two minutes between.
Ride a few miles to cool down.
Now, I started running when I was 11 years old, won state in high school, ran D1, ran at NCAA XC Nationals three times, won lots of road races in my 20s until I was bored, then started racing bikes. I never did a running workout like I described. Why I just said all this I don't know.
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronge" is an old, worn out cliche that isn't always true because obviously what doesn't kill you can also permanently injure you.
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronge" is an old, worn out cliche that isn't always true because obviously what doesn't kill you can also permanently injure you.
I know it sounds stupid, but for long distance runners, why not run as long as they physically can, then rest until they can again? If running success is rest + work, why wouldn't this be a common strategy? I know this is idiotic, but I can't put my finger on why. Please, don't make fun of me.
To compete successfully in most events, you need strength and endurance in addition to speed. A training plan like this does not develop either.
What if you just ran at "Zone 2" as long as you can? Would that result in any endurance gains?
(Disclaimer: I am not actually advocating for this, I am just asking a hypothetical to contribute to the discussion.)
To compete successfully in most events, you need strength and endurance in addition to speed. A training plan like this does not develop either.
What if you just ran at "Zone 2" as long as you can? Would that result in any endurance gains?
(Disclaimer: I am not actually advocating for this, I am just asking a hypothetical to contribute to the discussion.)
I guess your aerobic base would become godly, but if you'd really, truly ran in zone 2 as long as you could, you'd go for miles and miles until you collapse, then the instant you could run again you would. Over and over.
Running primarily involves two energy systems: aerobic and anaerobic. Long distance running is overwhelmingly the aerobic system, which is your muscles using the oxygen your blood supplies. When you run faster than your blood can supply oxygen, the muscles use another energy system.. the anaerobic system. It works for short bursts of speed, but then it's quickly used up. (Okay, that's oversimplified, but hopefully, it gets the point across.)
In short, running really hard, recovering, and running really hard again is training the wrong energy system. Your distance running won't improve very much. You'll just get better at doing more reps of running fast and then recovering.
Now, for adult recreational runners, there is a third approach: it's called Jeffing or the Run/Walk Method. You run a little faster than your steady state running pace for a set time, say three minutes, and then do a walking recovery of one minute. Beginners who are struggling to run at all might run 30 seconds and then walk for 2 minutes. Gradually, the running portion becomes faster and longer, while the recovery drops to one minute and stays there.
Jeffing is a good way for injured distance runners to get back to their former fitness level after being away from running for several months. The runs portion isn't fast enough to get deep into the anaerobic system and the walk allows the muscles to drop back to the lower range of the aerobic system. It's an aerobic workout, but you're learning to run faster when you are actually running.
However, for younger runners who aren't training to "finish" a marathon, eventually you'll need to start doing some steady state long distance running.
The reason Jeffing works for older runners... say, age 40+ and out of shape... is that their "run" pace of 12-14 minutes/mile or slower isn't really running... it's a shuffle. Over time, they can learn to shuffle faster, but they never actually lift their foot very far off the ground so they haven't learned the range of motion to actually run.
OP, in short, your idea won't work as you described it, but if you read up on Jeffing, it could help you get in shape faster.
Except it is not called "Jeffing." It is called Scout-Paced Running and was inspired by Jeff Galloway an Olympic Marathon runner out of the University of Oregon!
I know it sounds stupid, but for long distance runners, why not run as long as they physically can, then rest until they can again? If running success is rest + work, why wouldn't this be a common strategy? I know this is idiotic, but I can't put my finger on why. Please, don't make fun of me.
The main reason is that with centuries of trial and error, we know what training creates running success.
Running success isn't about maximizing the efforts (stimulus), but optimizing the efforts to maximize adaptation (response).
It is through repeated cycles of stimulus, recovery, adaptation with super-compensation that creates running success.
In a sense, we are already doing cycles of "work + rest".
Running primarily involves two energy systems: aerobic and anaerobic. Long distance running is overwhelmingly the aerobic system, which is your muscles using the oxygen your blood supplies. When you run faster than your blood can supply oxygen, the muscles use another energy system.. the anaerobic system. It works for short bursts of speed, but then it's quickly used up. (Okay, that's oversimplified, but hopefully, it gets the point across.)
In short, running really hard, recovering, and running really hard again is training the wrong energy system. Your distance running won't improve very much. You'll just get better at doing more reps of running fast and then recovering.
Now, for adult recreational runners, there is a third approach: it's called Jeffing or the Run/Walk Method. You run a little faster than your steady state running pace for a set time, say three minutes, and then do a walking recovery of one minute. Beginners who are struggling to run at all might run 30 seconds and then walk for 2 minutes. Gradually, the running portion becomes faster and longer, while the recovery drops to one minute and stays there.
Jeffing is a good way for injured distance runners to get back to their former fitness level after being away from running for several months. The runs portion isn't fast enough to get deep into the anaerobic system and the walk allows the muscles to drop back to the lower range of the aerobic system. It's an aerobic workout, but you're learning to run faster when you are actually running.
However, for younger runners who aren't training to "finish" a marathon, eventually you'll need to start doing some steady state long distance running.
The reason Jeffing works for older runners... say, age 40+ and out of shape... is that their "run" pace of 12-14 minutes/mile or slower isn't really running... it's a shuffle. Over time, they can learn to shuffle faster, but they never actually lift their foot very far off the ground so they haven't learned the range of motion to actually run.
OP, in short, your idea won't work as you described it, but if you read up on Jeffing, it could help you get in shape faster.
Except it is not called "Jeffing." It is called Scout-Paced Running and was inspired by Jeff Galloway an Olympic Marathon runner out of the University of Oregon!
Running primarily involves two energy systems: aerobic and anaerobic. Long distance running is overwhelmingly the aerobic system, which is your muscles using the oxygen your blood supplies. When you run faster than your blood can supply oxygen, the muscles use another energy system.. the anaerobic system. It works for short bursts of speed, but then it's quickly used up. (Okay, that's oversimplified, but hopefully, it gets the point across.)
In short, running really hard, recovering, and running really hard again is training the wrong energy system. Your distance running won't improve very much. You'll just get better at doing more reps of running fast and then recovering.
Now, for adult recreational runners, there is a third approach: it's called Jeffing or the Run/Walk Method. You run a little faster than your steady state running pace for a set time, say three minutes, and then do a walking recovery of one minute. Beginners who are struggling to run at all might run 30 seconds and then walk for 2 minutes. Gradually, the running portion becomes faster and longer, while the recovery drops to one minute and stays there.
Jeffing is a good way for injured distance runners to get back to their former fitness level after being away from running for several months. The runs portion isn't fast enough to get deep into the anaerobic system and the walk allows the muscles to drop back to the lower range of the aerobic system. It's an aerobic workout, but you're learning to run faster when you are actually running.
However, for younger runners who aren't training to "finish" a marathon, eventually you'll need to start doing some steady state long distance running.
The reason Jeffing works for older runners... say, age 40+ and out of shape... is that their "run" pace of 12-14 minutes/mile or slower isn't really running... it's a shuffle. Over time, they can learn to shuffle faster, but they never actually lift their foot very far off the ground so they haven't learned the range of motion to actually run.
OP, in short, your idea won't work as you described it, but if you read up on Jeffing, it could help you get in shape faster.
Except it is not called "Jeffing." It is called Scout-Paced Running and was inspired by Jeff Galloway an Olympic Marathon runner out of the University of Oregon!
On Facebook, Jeff Galloway himself has referred to his method as Jeffing. There are articles on Jeffing in Runners World and Marathon World. The terms Jeffing has become more popular in the past couple of years, probably because it's shorter to write and say than the Galloway Run/Walk Method. It was disparaged a lot here on LetsRun years ago, but it's becoming more popular, especially among adult recreational runners who typically have more modest running pace goals than the typical LetsRunner.
I was looking at Mike Mentzer directly, and thought it could carry over to long distance running.
Kind of from another planet angle, if someone said how do you get better at running a mile fast, to the uninitiated you would indeed probably not guess running 8 x1/4 of a mile with rests and slow 6 miles etc.. You would say run a mile fast... and try to get better! Just like golf, or basketball. Running is the only sport where we train around what we want to do, but never do that thing in practice. It's a bit of a mind bender. Running is just so harsh, you gotta train around everything.
having said that, do we really believe Mentzer? The dude was Arnold's size and cut to shreads on 1 set per body part? BS. Ive never bought that old story.