no interval work success?

tinman.

i like to mix it up a lot, get a bit of everything, hills, road (hilly and flat), track, forest trails of which there is precious little around here, we have some good grass trails up on't moors but they can be exposed to high winds a lot.

the thing about hills is that you can run up them at a much higher intensity as Jack Daniels pointed out you can achieve a much higher oxygen uptake on an uphill slope, as well as perfecting an economical running action.

tinman did you get my e mails, the thing that worries me is that two of my other e mails to another poster were not received, i don't understand the technicalities of this.

cheers

JonnyO

tinman

I don't think that I am one of those runners who can do strong distance work and then race well. I count A.T runs, Long Runs, and mileage as important...but if I don't get something atleast as fast as race pace in my schedule, I won't race well. So, I think some type of short speed endurance workout and/or long, aerobic capacity repeats must be implemented frequently for my racing success.

Johny O,

I don't think I received the emails you are referring to. I welcome your thoughts anytime, since you are reasonable, humble, and passionate about what you do. tinman at

runfastcoach@hotmail.com

tinman:

Your notes on this subject are, as always, quite thought-provoking. This thread seems to parallel one I was reading yesterday on the pace of recovery runs. The common

theme is that very little of the so-called "rules" of training is gospel. Each of us is an individual, and what

works for one person may not be as effective for another.

Even if one is doing well and making progress with a particular method or training program, there is always the

possiblity that even greater results could be attained with

a different approach. I'm not sure how to deal with this

dilemma, other than perhaps to experiment and see what works

best. Given that we all have limited time and energy, how

do others go about deciding how to optimize their training?

Many years ago I proposed to my collegiate coach that optimal training was the key to success, but of course that didn't go over too well. Al Carius (not my coach, but a friend) said that the key to training well is to do what works and keep doing it over and over. In a coaches meeting, he asked me about one of my athletes, a little guy who seemed overweight and muscular like a body builder. I told him that he doesn't run impressive workouts, but he races fast. Al responded in a matter of fact way that workouts don't mean much. He went on to say that he had national champions who ran thei 5 x 1 mile workouts in 4:50-55 on grass and teams that ran much slower in races that ran 4:35-40. His point was that training harder doesn't necessarily make one faster.

In an old post, I mentioned that I was a disaster in college. I ended up having two surgeries on my calves and one on my right ankle due to running intervals too fast and too often for my body. Oddly, after college, for two years, I only ran 5 mile runs and pracitically no speedwork at all, unless you count running a couple runs per week at what felt like LT pace, but for me, often it was only about 5:50-6:10 pace due to fatigue from my job. I jumped into three spring races on the second year, having run 35 miles per week at most per week for 3 months straight and ran the following races:

1st race....5km on the roads in 15:55

2nd race....5,000m on the track in 15:13 (two weeks after the first race;

3rd race....1500m on the track at a last chance meet in 4:01.89.

Now, the amazing thing is that I never ran that fast in college while running really hard interval workouts 3 x per week. My junior year in college I recall running 10 x 300m indoors one cold Febrary day with just 100m jogs, cutting down the times from 51 to 43 and the 100m jog took just took about 30 seconds to do, yet I could barely run 4:10 for the 1500m. In the 1500m that I ran with just LT and medium distance paced runs (mostly at about 7 minute pace), 5 miles per day, I ran the last 300m in 42. Now, doesn't that seem odd? Ever since then, I have devoted my free time to studying ex. physiology and trying to makes sense of it all. Out of failure and frustration comes the search for knowledge and insight.

"there is no success like failure and failure is no success at all"-------------Bob Dylan

Here is a possible way. Try running the following workouts and pay attention to how your body responds to them.

A 3 mile run at 25-30 seconds per mile slower than your 5km pace.

A 6 mile run at 60-70 seconds per mile slower than your 5km race pace.

A 12 mile run at 2-2:30 per mile slower than your 5km race pace.

They are about equal in aerobic stimulus stress on your body, but the 12 mile run is more trauma, impact stress. Do 2-3 recovery runs and then determine if your body is stronger (for running). If your training level is lower or higher than the what represents the above model, then you may want to arrange each workout to match the dimensions of the above model. For example, 2,4, and 8 miles at the appropriate paces or 4,8, and 16 miles.

You may come up with other comparisons too, so if you do, please share them with others. Thanks.

And I Have Nothing,

It may be an Aussie thing. John Farrington ran 2:11 for the marathon on hard, steady, distance runs.

Trackhead,

Jack Batcheler did do interval work. Not your standard 15x440 sort of stuff as a rule, but a more Igloi-like approach, e.g some 165s, a mile jog, 3x440, a 2 mile jog, some 110s, a jog, a 660, etc.

Tinman,

Great thread. I seem to recall that one of the Kenyans at UTEP in the 70s, I think it was Wilson Waigwa, ran 3:56 for the mile and claimed never to have done interval training. I got the sense that the same was true of Phillip Ndoo after listening to a talk he gave after the 1974 Charleston 15.

When I ran for the Washington Running Club many of our best guys did very little interval work. We had a guy do 2:18 on nothing but about 100 mpw at 6:00 pace or a bit slower, another who did 2:19 on pure distance work at below 6:00, and a guy who had done 2:16 on a 20 miler at better than 6:00 and two or three 10s at 5:20 or so. The last guy was British and told me that he had a friend in England who trained similarly and did 47 for 10 miles that way.

Sheldon Karlin won NYC in 1972 and qualified for three Olympiuc Trials Marathons and I can't ever recall Shelly telling me he was doing intervals. The heart and sould of his training was the Sunday 20 and the daily 10 at a pretty good clip.

Bob Deines was twice 6th at Boston in the 60s and ran 2-3 hrs a day at about an 8:00 pace. Of course he raced almost weekly, but still, no intervals.

More recently, Bryan Berryhill went to New Zealand in his senior year at CSU and ran 1:47/3:56 for 800m/mile. On returning home, Track and Field News did a story about him which reported that he did that off of the training he did for cross country; about 70 mpw of distance work.

Alf Shrubb also trained on steady runs at a decent pace.

I have found intervals to be useless at best. After turning forty I had a couple of occasions when I really wanted to have a good series of races in the 5 mile/10km range and began doing a session of quarters once a week and another fartlek session. I added nearly 4 minutes to my time that way and spent months undoing the effects of intervals.

All of this is not to say that people shouldn't do intervals. Obviously, they work well for lots of people. But they seem not to work for some of us. Barry Magee told me that in maybe 30 years of coaching he's had four athletes who did not benefit from interval work.

HRE,

Thanks for your informative post. Any more examples?

tinman

Base, race, ace the pace = PR

I am currently evolving back to my orginal program of very few intervals.

Since September, I've done all of about 3-4 interval sessions, mostly stuff like 5x1mile and 5x1000.

I will probably do a couple of sessions like 10x800 and 6x1000 before the Trials.

The focus for me is always on the long hard runs of 16km/26km/32km/36km/40km.......

Jason

tinman:

Most folk's never approach the pinnacle of consistent running that they can handle, therefore the intervals become "premature withdrawals" from the bank of mileage base

they try to build.

Intervals for me were about one percent of my overall running focus, but a very important one percent.

From Joe Henderson's book published by T&FN 1970.

Ambrose Joel Burfoot. 6'0'', 140 lbs. Born Aug. 19, 1946. Began racing at age 17. "Serious competition will probably cease for me before jogging does. I believe I will continue running or a very long time." Self coached influenced by John Kelly.

Best Times: 440 yds-57.9; 880yds.-202.5; mile-4:19; 2mile-8:45.6; 3miles-13:44.8; 6miles-29:26; Marathon-2:14:28.8 Favorite race, marathon.

Training: (1968 season) twice a day (6:30 a.m., 3p.m.) 7 days a week 12 months a year. About 115 miles per week. longest ever training run: 38 miles.

Description: "Under ideal conditions of good health, sufficient time (both for necessary training and the even more ecessary relaxation) and proper motivation, I would train as follows:

Mon.-Sat. 10miles a.m. 15miles p.m.; Sun. 25 miles.

I accomplished this schedule during the first two weks of February 1968. All running was at approximately 7:00 pace. Without any speedwork at all, I then went onto the track (indoors) and ran 8:45, which is still far nd away my most startling running performance. I ran with an ease which absolutely amazed me. I then began thinking about more track meetsand adding a little speed, and got slower every week. By mid March I was a consistent 9:02 2 miler.

I spent the fall of 68 training 5 or 6 times per week. My weekday runs were 15 milers, while on the weekend I got out for longer runs including a 38 and a 36. I averaged 85 over this period and only topped 100 once. Yet, I felt very good and began doing "Oslerian pickups" (gradual accelerations). On my 15 I would run easily for 2 miles, do 7x800m pickups in the next 10-11 miles, and then do hard, short pickups for the last two miles. (This is the training that led to his 2:14 race in Japan which was within 1 sec. of the then AR. held by B. Edelen.

two guys i know,both ran 2:00 and 4:30 when they were 17.

Guy A had a coach and followed a high intensity-low mileage shedule:About 40-60 slow mpw in the winter and in Febr. he always started to do 2-4 Workouts on the track,most were 1500m pace or quicker, raced as much as 8 times/week during the summer,probably 30-40mpw during track season(incl.the workouts).

Guy B had no coach and simply ran for satisfaction, no shedule just by feeling:60-100mpw from Winter to Summer with a lot of hard running,ocassional he went out too fast so that he was forced to do some kind of fartlek and in Spring he started to do about one Vo2max session/week on the track but the rest was between 5min-8min/mile.Some weeks before the Competitionphase he always started to typical Workouts like 8x400,.. but maintained about 60mpw during the trackseason.

3 years later:Guy A has improved zero in 800/mile and slowed down!!! in 2 and 3mile.

And i(Guy B) have improved down to 1:52,4:05,8:51.

I could give you tons of other examples,very talented guys who improved zero because of too much interval and not enough distance work.

sorry its 2-4work outs/week and 8 races(middle distance)/month of course.

I experimented with some different training last year. Spring didn't go so well, illness, laziness, etc. I tried maintaining fitness with intense tempo runs up to 40 minutes but that didn't work well. I tried repeat 400's and that didn't help improve things either. In June I ran about 17:24 in two different 5k's and felt I was maxing out. About the same time I began running mostly easy 10-14 miles a day 4-5 days a week. I ussualy left my watch at home. 6-8 weeks later I ran 16:58 and it was easy! two weeks later I ran a 10 miler in just over 58 minutes. In that time I did no speedwork or racing other than occasionaly pick up the pace to 6:00 a mile for a few miles. After that I tried 5X1000 around goal 5k pace (16:00). I kept this up through most of the fall. I noticed much improvement in my ability to handle more intense paces and improved fitness throughout the entire fall, but improvements in the intervals were not so dramatic after the first 4-6 weeks. I also began building a long run at the same time, progressing further and faster begining with 15 miles and going up to 22 miles. Toward the end I realized I could only handle an intense 20 miler every 10-14 days (intense being defined as 20-30 seconds slower than guestimated marathon pace). Between the intense long runs I did occasional shorter and easier long runs. I also Occasionaly did a tempo run of 3-4 miles or so. I did little or no running between all these sessions. In terms of overall fitness I improved, but not nearly as quickly as the summer when I consistantly and frequently ran longer runs. The end result was a 1:16 half-marathon and three weeks later a 2:49 marathon on less than 40 miles per week (yes, I admit I bonked in the marathon). Toward the end of the fall I was getting some nice effects from a set of intervals similar to the following order: 1000m@5k goal pace, 1.5-2.5miles@threshhold pace-15 seconds per mile, 800m@3000m pace, 1.5-2.5miles@threshhold pace-15 seconds per mile, 400m@ mile pace and sometimes 200m all out to see how fast I could go (my top speed is nearing what it was in highschool, but I have much more endurance and stamina now). Between the intervals I jogged 400m@very easy pace(8:00/mile). My plan this spring is to run more miles like I did last summer, keep up an occasional extra long run and regularly play around with the last set of intervals I mentioned. Maybe try some strides and later a short period of speedwork. My favorite races are 15-25k but Ultimate goal is still a sub 16:00 5k. Just a little more time and I'll make it.

tinman,

tinman,

I know you remember a kenyan by the name of Michael

Musioki(sp?)back in the early to mid 80's. I think he was labeled "persona non grata" and thrown out of the US. But anyway, I once saw something about his training and he claimed he only ran 1 hour a day. The catch was that some days he ran 8 miles in that 60 minutes and some days he ran 12!

and one day in 1985 he ran 13

Mike Musyoki, twice half marathon world record holder:

Philadelphia 1985 1.00.57

Newcastle 1986 1.00.43

I think that a lot of you are not looking at some important aspects.The aspect of the races being a way to get faster.Athletes can get faster without doing any interval training because they are racing frequently.Don't forget that the most specific way to run a faster 5k is to race a 5k.Race a 5k every week or every other week for 5-6 weeks,keep your mileage consistent,and do no speed work.Most likely you will run faster toward the latter weeks.In addition you have to take into consideration that some people take longer to recover from hard workouts than others.Kenny Moore and Pre are good examples.Pre could get away with more hard days in relation to easy days.Finally the individual athletes slow twitch versus faster twitch muscle ratio.The high ratio of slow twitch runner may beable to do better with the approach of faster tempo like running on more of a daily basis.While the higher ratio of fast twitch runner may do better with less mileage and more interval type work.Individuals require individual approaches.