Running well without intervals

"Running is so strange - we honestly have no idea what the best way to train is."

I was thinking about this the other day after talking about how some of us trained in HS.

Here is my UN-scientific, UN-published, hypothesis:

Some people are genetically gifted to be really good distance runners and it doesn't matter what kind of training they do, as long as they are running they will be successful.

Jim Ryun would be a great runner whether he was given intervals or 100 mile weeks. Peter Snell, Seb Coe, etc..

I was thinking about posting and asking about something like this!

The problem is, for me volume trumps all, and doing intervals and even hard tempos just takes too much energy and recovery out of me so that the volume suffers. I'm 38 so I have to be careful about how to spread my energy.

Great to read that Levy article too!

agip wrote:

Running is so strange - we honestly have no idea what the best way to train is.

Good point but I'm not sure it's that we have NO idea. Instead, I'd say laying down large volumes of base as easy as you please will put you in position for just about any other stimulus such as fartleks, hills, hill repeats, strides, tempo runs, tempo intervals, progression runs, racing yourself into shape, etc (even in the smallest amounts) to make you faster. It's all about the stimulus that's most effective for you personally, makes you the happiest, makes you confident and leaves you the freshest/healthiest over the long haul. In that respect, in over 10 years of running now I'd say my best stimuli that check those boxes are long tempo runs, progression runs and the long hilly trail runs. Short intervals and even strides leave me completely wrecked and unhappy so I don't do them.

I pretty much think you're right. As long as someone is running enough, not overdoing badly, and getting some faster stuff into the mix, and avoiding being consistently stupid they'll get very close to their potential.

Getting it "right" may get them incrementally closer to that potential but not as much as the discussions here would usually have you believe. It really comes down to creating an overload and recovering.

I don't see how you non-intevals folks get enough race-specific work (besides racing, of course). For example, how can you go out and cruise around town at 6:30-7:30 pace (with an occasional hard finish or hill workout), then drop a 15:00 5K?

HRE got his speed "through the back door" by racing a lot, but how about those who don't race much? How are you able to hold a 5 minute pace if you rarely run faster than 6:30 pace?

SEVA wrote:

I don't see how you non-intevals folks get enough race-specific work (besides racing, of course). For example, how can you go out and cruise around town at 6:30-7:30 pace (with an occasional hard finish or hill workout), then drop a 15:00 5K?

HRE got his speed "through the back door" by racing a lot, but how about those who don't race much? How are you able to hold a 5 minute pace if you rarely run faster than 6:30 pace?

My guess is that a very specific type of runner is successful from a "steady run only" type program. When those types of runners see a thread titled, "running well without intervals" they respond. Then, since most people posting on the thread run well without intervals, you get the impression that everyone might run well without intervals.

My guess is that most of the people posting on the thread get plenty of harder running, but since it is not structured, they don't count it as hard running. In college, I trained almost exclusively in the hills during the summers. If you asked me at the time, "do you do any hard running?" I would have said no. However, looking back, some of the longer mountain runs would have climbs that took 15-20 min and I would run them pretty hard. You could call this tempo work. Some of the other runs had shorter hills that I would also run fairly hard sometimes (interval work). Sometimes I would finish at the track with a fast 800 or mile tacked on the end of a 10 miler. During the summers, I would run all comers meets and never be that far off of my best track times. I'd run a 5 mile road race on July 4 and not be too far off the times I could run for 8k in cross.

Once our season started, we would run lots of HARD intervals and I'd get faster for a little while then crash by the end of the season. Looking back, I wonder, if I would have been able to simply continue adding mileage to what I had been doing during the off season, would I have continued to improve, or would I have plateaued?

HRE wrote:

PS,

I never paid much attention to pace. I let it find me and generally ran as fast as I could while staying comfortable enough to do my next day's run. A lot of it in my later years was around 6:00 pace once I got loosened up and moving but if I was tired I'd run much slower. Usually the faster runs felt better.

You could do some time trials

I would try to go for my 3 mile training course record or just time from a certain point on a training run. If you are training on your own it can be easier to just run hard without stopping for rests

I posted earlier, and you're correct - I did get a good amount of harder running in. Progression run, shorter tempo run, and a long run (that was not at 'easy' pace but harder than that) pretty much every week. Plus, since I lived right down the street from UF's track, I would occasionally swing by and knock out 4-8 x 200m. That sustained me very well for any longer race. But, every now and then I would want to run a really good 5k, or even jump in as an unattached in a track meet. For those, I would tune up with a few weeks of some type of intervals.

Also, to answer SEVA, by that time in my life that I referenced above in the thread, I had been racing all through high school and college. I knew how to race. I knew what it felt like. I knew how to monitor my body and what I was capable of on the day.

I could have done some time trials. Sometimes I did but by the second phase of my better years I really was just doing what I wanted to. And to whomever said I got speed by racing, yes, at times. But I also had phases where I didn't race much at all.

What I found was that a couple of races brought back any lost sharpness no matter how long I'd been away. I stole the idea from Bob Deines who trained on nothing but slow runs. He was a very frequent racer most of the time but had times when he'd not raced for a while and said that he found that one race brought about a ten second per mile improvement in his next race.

a lot of people here that don't count hill repeats as intervals....

Another thing is that most people who don't do intervals have an ugly running style.

And lets be honest it's very easy to do some intervals per week, 10x 200 or 3x 1000 or whatever after a long run.

Is it mentally so hard to do some??? p-u-s-s-y-'s:)

I knew Joe back in the 1970's. I often ran with a training group of his on Saturdays. He made it really plain to me that you had to race. You couldn't just run fast on long slow distance.

It's not that I never ran intervals but I used them sparingly and to tell me what shape I was in rather than using them as a development tool.

But mostly I raced myself into shape.

I did run 8-10 miles per day year around for strength.

Mentally hard? It depends on your tastes. But if you don't get faster by doing intervals why would you?

"Hills are speed work in disguise" Not sure where I read/heard this first, but have always believed it to be true.

Post collegiate, I went through cycle after cycle of pushing the limit - injury - recovery - pushing... until (after kids put life in perspective)I finally realized slow running is better than no running. It didn't take long before I was racing my old times. The consistency that slow running (7-7:30 pace) gave me eventually made me faster. I naturally fell into a routine of 1 hour a day most days and about once every 10 days a fartlek up to 90mins total. At 44 years old my 10k is only 2 mins slower than 20 years ago.

(ironically, I always admired Nenow, but never trained like him until 'forced' into it)