When is it ever a good idea to train with rivals?

loch ness monster wrote:

Training is busting your ass so you can crush the competition when you race them. Period. It's not some social club, everybody be lovey dovey and hold hands. I don't want to train with my competitors because I hate them, that comes from my competitive drive and is what is required to make myself hurt in a race when they try to go around me. I hate them, I will not let them beat me. You are one who doesn't get it.

Who are you kidding?

malmo wrote:

Who are you kidding?

Malmo, either this guy is trolling you or he's so far out of left field he's wearing a funny hat and selling peanuts to the college kids like me who only buy cheap seats.

A group of kids from all the high schools in the area used to meet on Sundays for a good long run when I was in. Sometimes we'd tear each other apart, and that was fun, and sometimes we'd jog along and talk, and that was fun too. During races there was no quarter given or asked. Wouldn't trade it for the world.

I love reading the training logs of the Malmo generation (pretty much my generation as well) and seeing how the studs would train together. Steve Scott's 1981 log includes workouts with Walker and some other heavy hitters. One of the great things about the early days of Mammoth was meeting so many good runners out on the trails and jumping in with them.

NEVER NEVER train with Rivals. A few years back I trained with Rivals and I got a stress fracture in my left fibula. I do not recommend training in racing spikes. I have since upgraded to real training shoes and I feel much better. Haven't been injured since.

Hope this helps.

A few years ago I moved to a new city and looked up a running club. Ran with them a few times and met a guy who ran about my pace so I asked him how many miles a day he ran. He told me he ran 10 miles a day which was the same as I was running so we started running together every day. This went on for a couple years but I couldn't understand why he was so much better than me in the races. One day I had to go away on business and returned very late. As I was driving home, I saw my running partner out running. I asked him the next day about running so late. He told me that he ran every night at that time. I thought you told me you ran 10 miles every day, I said. "I do" he said. "I run 10 miles every day and 10 miles every night".

i've always taken advantage of this when the opportunity presented itself. if someone is faster than me, i want to know what they're doing differently - so i train with them.

craigmac4h wrote:

Malmo, either this guy is trolling you or he's so far out of left field he's wearing a funny hat and selling peanuts to the college kids like me who only buy cheap seats.

A group of kids from all the high schools in the area used to meet on Sundays for a good long run when I was in. Sometimes we'd tear each other apart, and that was fun, and sometimes we'd jog along and talk, and that was fun too. During races there was no quarter given or asked. Wouldn't trade it for the world.

Is that why you were a shitty D3 runner?

loch ness monster wrote:

Training is busting your ass so you can crush the competition when you race them. Period. It's not some social club, everybody be lovey dovey and hold hands. I don't want to train with my competitors because I hate them, that comes from my competitive drive and is what is required to make myself hurt in a race when they try to go around me. I hate them, I will not let them beat me. You are one who doesn't get it.

Why would being friendly with a person during workouts change the way that you feel about them during races? It's not as if running a threshold workout with a guy renders you incapable of wanting to beat him on race day.

loch ness monster wrote:

Is that why you were a shitty D3 runner?

Look in the mirror.

I think we can safely say this is a troll. Albeit a very successful troll.

D3 runner . wrote:

Look in the mirror.

At what? A former succesful D1 competitor and a highly succesful post collegiate runner?

If you do the same workouts, you'll get equally fit. The idea is to train harder than your opponents isn't it? And we can shake hands after the race, of course.

loch ness monster wrote:

At what? A former succesful D1 competitor and a highly succesful post collegiate runner?

In your dreams.

not all the time, but every once in a while its good to beat them so you get the mental edge, just don't show that you are straining or act like it was a hard workout after if you can.

Some of these responses are idiotic. You guys have obviously never done any other sports. I dont think that training with your competitors is the worst thing in the world, but I can definitely see where the OP is coming from. One of the things that drives me crazy in basketball is seeing players from other teams palling around with each other before games. Same thing in running. If Im racing against a guy and really trying to beat him, I dont want to be practicing with him, making small talk, etc. I want to beat him, and thats it.

Seymour Frishberg wrote:

Some of these responses are idiotic. You guys have obviously never done any other sports. I dont think that training with your competitors is the worst thing in the world, but I can definitely see where the OP is coming from. One of the things that drives me crazy in basketball is seeing players from other teams palling around with each other before games. Same thing in running. If Im racing against a guy and really trying to beat him, I dont want to be practicing with him, making small talk, etc. I want to beat him, and thats it.

I have no trouble crushing my friends in races. I have been trying to beat one guy for 30 years and I finally did it this past summer. Didn't feel bad at all when I passed him during the race.

When some guy I don't know crushes me in a race, I go meet him and do a cooldown with him and I now have another friend I add to my list to try to crush at a later date.

Whether I beat him or not doesn't make a difference 2 minutes after the race.

I think that this depends on a few factors. If you are better than your rivals, why help them out? if you are typically get beat by them, go for it. Also, consider if their training...if it is relatively poor then definitely do not help them out.

As coach I would want to help a person out but also I would look out for my kids and team.

Could you have imagined Seb and Ovett training together, certain great rivalries on the track just would not allow for training together. There are no doubt some great training groups in Kenya and Ethiopia but i can gaurantee that to a man they are all doing some other training on their own that they think will set them apart from the group. I used to do sessions at the club 2 times a week and group training runs but i would get out a few times a week on my own and either do a gut busting hill session or something.

54321 wrote:

If the opportunity presents itself to do the same workouts with guys who are enemies on race-day, is it better to take a pass? I know that running with fast people will make you fast and will even make the workouts more doable. but something tells me that you can lose that "edge" when showing all your cards in training. Thoughts?

Sebastian Coe once said: "The great thing about athletics is that it’s like poker, sometimes you know what’s in your hand and it may be a load of rubbish, but you’ve got to keep up the front."

What Coe says, I believe, is spurred by the times in a workout when we may feel like we have crap to play with, nothing to give. That is inevitable. It is not possible to feel "on top" every time. But we still have to get the job done, don't we?

So because of this, what is also inevitable is that in spite of our limits being tested (with or without the push that "fast people" offer in workouts), one has to learn how to keep a poker-face, how to take the beating and yet tell nothing incriminating about one's suffering at the point of time. If training is about replicating the process of winning, how better than to do it with the same guys you will be facing on race day and learning how to play poker with them just like in a race?

Those familiar with Lance Armstrong will know that he, at his peak, speaks of putting up a straight face in spite of the pain he feels when he overtakes his rivals. This, again, is reflective of the inevitable pain an athletes goes through in the process of pushing the limits and the necessity to learn to cope with that inevitability.

What I have talked about so far, to paraphrase, is that the concern with "showing [one's] cards" is actually the concern with showing weakness(es) to one's rivals. And my challenge to that thought is to be focused instead on honing one's ability to mask the weakness(es), because who amongst us doesn't has any? Moreover, you have recognised that training with "fast people will make [one] fast and [...] the workouts more doable," so it is really about your aim as well. If an athletes simply aims to go faster and have someone to pull him/her along during a workout, this decision may seem easier. But of course, I believe you have voiced a concern with a lesser chance of winning because of training with a rival. To that, well, you may want to ask: "Does training with a rival indeed lessen my chance of winning and why?" But that is question for another thread. Haha.

Hope this contributes to the conversation. Cheers! ; )