VO2 max for 10k?

I agree with everyone on here. You have to do what works for you.

For the very average person seeking to improve, lots of tempo and moderate long runs do seem to work better than any number of sessions at 10km pace.

It gets back to basically getting some "talent" with higer mileage and high end aerobic stuff before even thinking of adding repeats.

I think the average runner never comes close to even maxing out the gains they would get from just running more and doing more and more of that at a faster pace.

I have seen many people learn to actually run for what will be the duration of their goal race at a hard pace and get much better at racing than they do by practicing fast stuff with breaks in between.

I helped a girl drop 8 minutes from her 10k time without doing a step of actual race pace work and then when she tried to do reps at that pace she couldn't even come close and never ran the same since.

What Malmo says SHOULD be true but if you try it and it doesn't work then you have to find what does for YOU.

The 10K is run between VO2 Max and Anaerobic Threshold pace. You develop Anaerobic Threshold by doing long sustained runs. Lydiard called it "steady state". You develop VO2 Max with intervals. However, your AT is pretty much determined by your base running (Long and steady state running). VO2 Max intervals only widen the gap between AT and VO2, therefore making 10K faster. However, your gains will be short term if you neglect the long and steady state running.

Part of the problem with the "information generation" is that everything needs a title. When you worry so much at AT, Vo2max, long run, etc you miss the forest for the trees.

If you've seen some of Malmo's training you'd see that many of his easy days were no where near easy and many runs were very uptempo. Another problem is that too many people cling on to outdated '90s training philosophy. AT became "the thing" simply because it can be easily measured. Science does this sometimes, it happened with Vo2max.

When you worry too much about the internal (Vo2max, AT, etc) you lose sight of the external (race pace).

You know the most important factor in training for a 10K? CONSISTENCY. Records, fast times, and medals, have been set by those running rarely any interval training (Nenow) and those running a lot of interval work (Mills) while there were many in their respective generations training the exact opposite.

In the end it's all about overload. Train in such a way to overload your body and reach new heights.

Alan

bump

can we have a vote where people to login (to give the vote credibility) in order to designate a standard language spoken among distance runners? that would be nice.

Here is my vote, and of course everyone thinks there method is the best!!

***********************************************************

1. Aerobic Conditioning

conversational pace to marathon pace.

2. Anaerobic Conditioning

20minute run 20 seconds slower than 5k pace for 5k runner.

40minute run at half marathon pace --> approaching 10kpace depending on how you're feeling.

60minute run 10-20 seconds slower than 1/2 marathon pace

3. Aerobic Capacity

6-8000m worth of intevals @ faster than 5k all the way to 3k race pace

longer repeats 800m-5 minutes

1:1 recovery

4. Anaerobic Capacity

3-4,000m worth of intervals @ faster than 3k race pace all the way down to 800 pace.

recovery is double running time?

malmo wrote:

...

Endurance training IS a high priority for the 10k. The problem here is that people are fooling themselves to believe that long runs and tempos runs are the most important, or even highly important for developing endurance. Most important 10k training would be consistent and frequent (read doubles) training stresses of any kind. Preferably, those include regular sessions at or near race pace. Anything else is gravy. Tempo runs and long runs are ancillary pieces to the puzzle -- they are not the necessary pieces.

So, was Mark Nenow fooling himself?

is that your only evidence? mark nenow.

whats good for the goose is good for the gander.

thanks for contributing nothing.

Whenever Malmo training ideas come up, I think a complementary (note, not identical) discussion of the philosophy of Ernst Van Aaken would be helpful. There were some pretty good threads on EVA on Letrun. My takeaway from a close reading of what he's written in English (and, would someone please translate he longer work Programmiert für 100 Lebensjahre?!) is that frequent runs well within the aerobic bounds are ideal. He liked runs to be broken up, too. He focused on the amount of time spent running, but the with the caveat it should not occur in single chunks here and there. But, something often left out of discussions is that he also thought, for the competitive runner, practice at goal pace (or near goal pace) should also happen often. Again, while it was practice at the race pace, he did not see value in doing this pace work in large chunks. Break it all up, make it digestible by the body.

altoroad wrote:

So, was Mark Nenow fooling himself?

No. Mark Nenow did not stress long runs or tempo runs as being "most important."

While he didn't train on the track very often, he regularly put in repeat miles during his road runs and ran 13 sessions a week. He also ran a long run that was proportional to his weekly mileage.

D- for you.

Runningart2004 wrote:

If you've seen some of Malmo's training you'd see that many of his easy days were no where near easy

You are wrong Alan. Easy is a relative term. What would be difficult for you, would have been very easy for me.

&(_*&UY)REY wrote:

You just want to disagree with Malmo. Regular is not exactly equivalent to 2x per week and 2000m reps are way different than 800s. Have you actually tried racing 10k when you are struggling on tempo runs? You may not be as bad off as you suspect.

One year I tried basing my training around mile repeats and the next year I based my training on hard 10 mile runs. I ran the same time on the same course once weather (15sec) was taken into account. The difference was with the mile repeats the race hurt like crazy but I wanted to hurt and had trained for it. With the 10 mile runs the race was really easy but I just couldn't get going.

And you just want to agree with malmo. I've been in this situation and my personal experience tells me its worthless for 10k. I have a decent 5k time (right around 15:00), and my 10k time doesnt match up. My best seasons have been where I have been able to use the interval sessions in conjunction with tempos/fartleks to get stronger. The interval sessions definitely helped, but I just thought 2 per week were overkill. Not to mention tempo runs help with concentration and maintaining pace for extended periods of time. I feel like anybody can do repetition after repetition with a decent amount of rest. Ive seen so many other runners kill track workouts only to be slaughtered by tempo runs and longer races like the 10k.

malmo wrote:

altoroad wrote:

So, was Mark Nenow fooling himself?

No. Mark Nenow did not stress long runs or tempo runs as being "most important."

While he didn't train on the track very often, he regularly put in repeat miles during his road runs and ran 13 sessions a week. He also ran a long run that was proportional to his weekly mileage.

D- for you.

Yes, his long run was proportional to his daily mileage. He thought it important enough to get one in most weeks. I'd call that "more important", at least. I'm not so sure about the repeat miles thing, though. As I recall, he started doing some mile repeats at the suggestion of Alan Storey around 1986 or so. I think his hard workouts before then weren't so structured, but were more in the nature of getting in some hard miles. And maybe there was an occasional hill workout.

So I reject your grade.

&(_*&UY)REY wrote:

You just want to disagree with Malmo. Regular is not exactly equivalent to 2x per week and 2000m reps are way different than 800s. Have you actually tried racing 10k when you are struggling on tempo runs? You may not be as bad off as you suspect.

One year I tried basing my training around mile repeats and the next year I based my training on hard 10 mile runs. I ran the same time on the same course once weather (15sec) was taken into account. The difference was with the mile repeats the race hurt like crazy but I wanted to hurt and had trained for it. With the 10 mile runs the race was really easy but I just couldn't get going.

And your personal experience proves to me how important tempo runs are. You ran similar times with just doing tempo runs. I'm not denying the importance of the interval sessions, but you basically just said that had similar success without them so how can you say they arent important? You busted your ass and dealt with the "pain" of interval work but ran the same time with steady 10 mile runs.

malmo (and others), I'd be curious what you have to say on Bill Adcocks, Ian Thompson, and Jim Alder. All slow (~57 400 speed) guys who never did much at 5k/10k, btwn 14:05-14:15, but ran really impressive marathons btwn 2:09-2:12. A lot of steady running, don't recall hearing about adcocks doing any specific sessions towards the end of his career. But they did race every weekend or more.

Good marathon training but not for the 10k?

Taken from the thread "RENATO, can you comment on the 2011 World Championships preparation", and qutoed from Renato himself.

Here we have 36 of Merga's sessions over 19 days in August leading to Worlds (And 2 sessions that took place in Daegu). Out of the 38 sessions we were given to look at, 9 were what I would classify as a Workout (basically anything that wasn't labled easy/moderate/regeneration, and done close to/at/faster than race pace). Of those 9 workouts, 7 were done on the track with intervals ranging from 200m to 3000m (I counted the 8/04 AM session as a Track workout even though it's a fartlek b/c I HIGHLY doubt those 30-45 second intervals were done at tempo/threshold pace since the time interval is so short, they were probably done closer to race pace covering ~180m to 280m depending on the time interval he was on)

You can see that while the slower treshold/tempo type of work wasn't completely neglected (his AM sessions on 8/08 and 8/11 were of that nature being 10-16k runs at 3min/km pace), that kind of work was no where near the emphasis of the program. GRANTED, this is an elite level runner fine-tuning tons of preparation for the World Championships to be run on the track so the application to a typical runner working towards a local road 10k might be a bit of a stretch, I don't think you can completely dicount what's presented either. Malmo's assertions that fast work done at/faster than race pace is of high importance is certainly supported by this. Make of the evidence what you will, I just wanted to throw this out there.

Out of curiosity, for what sorts of events would you consider tempo runs/threshold work to be of high importance?

Also, for someone training for 10k do you still support the idea of some "threshold" work in the sense of running to the barn if you feel good on certain days?

CG2 wrote:

Out of curiosity, for what sorts of events would you consider tempo runs/threshold work to be of high importance?

Also, for someone training for 10k do you still support the idea of some "threshold" work in the sense of running to the barn if you feel good on certain days?

Please go back and read the topic of this thread. The original poster and a subsequent poster(s) said that tempo runs and long runs were "important" and "the most important" sessions for 10k training. I disagreed.

I've never suggested not doing either tempo runs, or long runs. I have probably done more tempo runs and more long runs than anyone posting on this thread. I merely stated that they aren't the end-all, and that a 10k runner could certainly get away with not doing either. I also said that repeats in the 800-2000m range at or near race pace are the most important sessions. Simple statements. Factual statements.

To answer your question: tempo runs starts becoming more important as the race distance gets longer -- 15k and above. The significance here is that the paces of tempo runs is closer to the target race paces at those distances, which, conveniently goes back to the reasoning behind why repeats in the 800m-2000m range are most important for 10k training. Simple: if you want to excel at a specific pace, you should be getting in training sessions at that pace. That's not a difficult concept to understand, is it?

Technically, he didn't say they were "important", but "of importance". My English skills are deteriorating, but this sounds "weaker" to me.

Perhaps one way to judge the relative importance of tempo/threshold and long runs, is to observe the number of 10K training plans which don't include them, and evaluate their effectiveness against controls.

For me, this discussion of "importance" is missing a few elements and perspective. What is important is not one type of workout versus another, but developing qualities, like speed, stamina, and endurance. We need to answer questions like what does a 10K race require, what does an athlete need to develop, and which training will bring about the desired changes?

Typical 10K training solutions use tempos and long runs to develop (and maintain) a good foundation, and then finish that training with something like speedwork on the track.

"You busted your ass and dealt with the "pain" of interval work but ran the same time with steady 10 mile runs."

So many details so little time. I did not say steady, I said hard. As more of a middle distance guy, the 10 milers were much harder than the repeat miles. Before the race, I thought just like you. I thought I was going to run 2 or even 3 minutes faster. I had run my 10k pace for 8k in practice. But in the race there was no more. Every other race I have ever ran I could out run my training but with the hard 10 milers, that was it, no faster. I think it has to do with the importance of variety and the marathonish pace of the 10 milers just wasn't different enough.