Did Viren Really Run That Slow On Most Days

Re: Running With the Legends....

While reading this, I remember being struck by the fact the Viren trained according to pulse rates AND that these pulse rates seemed absurdly low. I'm not quoting exactly, but I'm close when I say that he did 12k runs "keeping pulse below 86 beats per minute." That's what my pulse gets up to when I walk to the f***ing corner before I start my run. I'm thinking, "what the f***?" I've got a resting heartrate below 40, so what the f*** is wrong with this f***ing information?

1. Did Viren not know how to count?

2. Was he superhuman?

3. Reindeer milk?

4. Did he jog really slow?

5. ...........needles and needles

dont coach yet - i think you are wrong to tell this guy he can't make suggestions... i agree with what daniels says, many runners succeed even though their training is crap. AreYouWithMeSoFar? certainly seems to get a lot of his body... his times have progressed pretty well and as a result I for one value his opinions.lydiard, daniels... they weren't great runners, it doesn't mean i wouldn't love them as a coachi think many people do run their easy days too fast...it has been my experience that the 1.375 rule you guys quote is good but on towards the fast side (this is based on heart rate)... when everything is fine (legs not tired, not raced recently) my easy runs are right around that pacetotally unfair to tell the guy that because he is a 16:04 5K'er that he shouldn't be voicing his opinion

Dude this guys 14yrs old...

he said he was a soph in college, and look at the date, the thread started TWO years ago. He is graduated now I think (or a senior).

Did he ever become "elite" like he said he would? Did he run at the Penn relays??

I have no idea how fast or slow the greats run on a typical "recovery" day; indeed, I'm not even sure they know. However, my sense is that if you can run a 2:10 marathon--I'm thinking of someone like Shorter, for example--then a ten mile run at, say, 6:15 has got to seem pretty slow and relatively easy. No?

Viren ran a lot of those miles (or kilometers) in snow and ice as well as some soft surface of Scandinavian terrain. Effort is more important than minute-per-kilometer (though he did do lots of his runs at easy pace). You don't need to run PR everyday to be the Olympic champion.

Wow, I can't believe this thread has come up again. Well, I'm still running... kind of. I never became elite. But I did run some 8K XC PRs with my slow base building methods. Last fall I ran 26:45 (2005) and in 2004 my 8K XC PR was 28:46, then in JUUCO it was 28:18. I also ran a new 5K PR in 16:01 in my first race of the 2005 track season. This spring I didn't run to concentrate on my studies, however I did run a new mile pr, 4:46 with only base training around 7:30 a mile. My 70% pace did finally get to 7-7:30 min/mile (which means most of my mileage was around that pace), unfortunately inconsistent training and injury prevented me from realizing my potential. Anyway, I'm out of school now and trying to get back into running, only I'm 20 pounds heavier now. But at least I can be sure I'll never be as fast as Lasse Viren.

Back when the US was a dominate distance force the runners did a lot of slow miles- plus a lot they hammered, too. The key word is "a lot".

I was at the US National XC's in New York this Feb and I was driving down the road where the athletes hotel was. It was after the meet, around dinner time Saturday night. I saw Katie McGregor and some guy out running VERY SLOW. This was after she qualified for the worlds in the 8K.

Here's my take.

I have PRs of 15:48, 26:17-XC, and 32:52-XC. So let me start by getting this out of the way; in the grand scheme of things, I suck.

Anyway, I've been running 18-22 miles a day for a few weeks now and there's no way I could be running this mileage without running a lot of 7:45-8:30 miles. I do run 5:30 pace from time to time, today I did a fartlek, last week I did some 1500 repeats at a good clip on a XC course, but there's no way I could do this without a lot of slow miles.

Is this a good way to train? I have no idea. I'll find out after this year, but regardless, high mileage with a majority of <7:00 miles is impossible for me unless all I want to do is slow steady distance (which 6:15-7:00 pace is for me). Hell -- judging by the way I feel, I'm not all too sure that I could even do it that way.

Ge, you had a thread going where you were updating us on your training for a few weeks but then you stopped it. I found the whole thing pretty interesting. Things still going well?

i went into college as a walk-on, was a 15:30-15:45 kind of 5k (track) guy right away, and got down to 14:15 by my senior year. this was through a progression of mileage up to 100mpw, including extremely intense workouts, and almost NO mileage below 6:30/mile pace--a lot of it was much faster.

I know people will tell me "oh you could have been better if you took it easy, blah, blah...," and then they'll turn around and take their advice from a 16 minute 5k'er who runs 7:30/mile with nowhere near the level of intensity mixed in, but I'm just telling you what worked for me. I was not, and am not, nearly at the level of elite runners by any means. But this hard work took me from being a decent high school runner to a fairly competitive college athlete.

Don't go thinking you can roll through 100 (or more, as this Ge guy claims) miles per week at some easy-ass pace and get fast. When you hear stories about guys like shorter running slow, they are usually:

1) at least slightly exaggerated, and

2) leaving out the ridiculous workouts those guys do.

by the way, someone stated that working 40+ hours per week was part of the reason they weren't going up past 65mpw. I work way more than that, run 90-100, and still have time for a decent social life. I do not mean to say that there is ANYTHING wrong with 65mpw (that's plenty, and maybe you have a wife, kids, whatever...), but in a lot of cases, this is another lame excuse people use.

Do what works for you. Just don't try to find some scientific reason for why you should train like a wuss!

This is a pretty fair assessment. I cringe every time I read the stellar advice of 'just run' or 'do as much mileage as you can' or '100 mpw will make you run XX:XX.'

This is not an easy game. It's hard to train well and it's hard to know how to train well. 'There's no secret' doesn't mean that you run super hard or super long week after week and a+b+c = results. It doesn't work like that.

The hard reality of this sport is that the truth is only known after a long time of steady, intelligent, hard and often soul-searching training where you figure out what works for you. If you have elite potential, this probably means you're going to find that it takes really hard work.

People doing 100 miles per week sensibly are not just hitting that number at all costs. It comes from a good mix of steady mileage, hard workouts and recovery enough to hit your workout paces on the hard days. It requires periodizing and a good coach who will allow you to plan properly and realise your potential.

Myself, I feel that anything much below 7 minute pace is a waste of time - for me. My best 10K is 30:13, and while it's not very elite I have a little insight about what it takes to run fast times. The bulk of my mileage during my fittest days were at 6:00 to 6:10 pace on my easy runs and 6:30 pace on my morning runs, no slower, and three hard workouts and a long run a week.

You need years of consistency to build up to a fitness level where (in my case 90-100 mpw) was what it all added up to on the week. But, it's not the 100 that did it. It was the volume of intense running combined with the recovery runs. Big mileage helps you run lots of workout miles and recover quickly.

If I were in Jack Daniels' book, my little sentence about what I think is the most important part of training is a good volume of quality running that made me fast. A high volume of fast running three times a week. Run lots to maintain the ability to do that the rest of the week.

borrower wrote:

Ge, you had a thread going where you were updating us on your training for a few weeks but then you stopped it. I found the whole thing pretty interesting. Things still going well?

Yeah, I'm still training hard like I planned. I stopped updating my thread because I didn't want to get caught up with trying to prove anything. Right now I'm doing more mileage then I had originally planned. I'll post the my last 10 days at the end of this post just incase you're interested in seeing what I been up to.

Anyway -- for me this is a confusing situation because sometimes I wonder if what I am doing is right. I know and feel like I am working hard as shit, but what if it is all in vain? What if I'm supposed to be doing 90 miles a week with a lot of tempo running? What if I'm like Renato Canova said, a pure marathoner who needs to be doing stuff like this? What if a pure marathoner isn't even supposed to be training like I am right now? Ahhh... anyway my last 10 days:

SUNDAY pm: 19 miles

MONDAY am: 8 miles, pm: 12 miles

TUESDAY am: 9 miles, pm: 12 miles - 5:38/5:35 last two miles

WEDNESDAY am: 7 miles - 5:40/5:40 pm: 12 miles - 5:37/5:41

THURSDAY am: 7 miles, pm1: 4 miles + 4*1500mXC, pm2: 5.3 miles

FRIDAY am: 7 miles, pm: 9 miles - quicker and shorter than usual b/c of rain

SATURDAY am: 12 miles - 5:45/5:38, pm: LAZY/RAIN

SUNDAY pm: 22 miles

MONDAY am: 8.5 miles, pm: 12 miles - 20 minutes of diagonals

TUESDAY am: 6 miles, pm: 8.5 miles - 40 minutes of 1/2/3 repeat fartlek, pm2: 6 miles

Low 29s for 10k here off of relatively slow (6:20 to 7:00 for virtually all runs, other than 2 workouts/week) running.

My point isn't to say "aha! So slow mileage is the way!", just that obviously different things work for different people. To claim that the human machine's response to training is universal would be oversimplifying the matter greatly.

The dumbest thing someone can do is not listen to their body. If you need to go fast to run fast times, then by all means do so. You'll probably know if you're capable of doing more safely, and you'll probably know if you're overdoing it.

turn right wrote:

Don't go thinking you can roll through 100 (or more, as this Ge guy claims) miles per week at some easy-ass pace and get fast ... Just don't try to find some scientific reason for why you should train like a wuss!

I know that I shouldn't let this bother me but I just can't help it. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I know what I am doing, but my training is neither easy or 'wussy.' I should know since my heart feels like it's about to pop straight out of my chest!

Wow a formula for what pace you should run on your easy days.

When I sucked my #1 complaint to my coach was "I just have to start running faster on my easy days."

Once I got got good I was running with a masters runner (40+). He said, "This is the pace you run on your easy days?"

I replied yes and asked if it was too fast. He laughed and said it was a lot slower than he ran every day.

How about just running the pace that feels comfortable on your easy days. I guarantee it didn't seem slow to Viren.

I had dinner with Viren a couple of years ago when I lived in Finland. If I remember right his comment on this was that the slow days were seriously slow because the fast days were seriously hard. His 10k runs were in 46 or so. That would be very slow for him.

Going back to Viren's alleged 7min pace and conditions in a finnish winter:

I'm sure i read that much of the winter running was done wearing two tracksuits!! Thats got to make 7min pace worth a bit extra.

That is a very valid point. I remember way back in the day when Minnesota had a bunch of good distance runners (Bjorklund, etc)an article in Runners World (when it catered to runners) talked about how they said their success was due to the fact that they slowed down in the winter because of the conditions. Running slower, they ran more miles while their warm weather counterparts were running faster and racing and burning out.

On another note- the US went through a low mileage stage, "coaches" said that "junk" miles were worthless. Distance running in this country hit rock bottom at all levels.

Then, Bob Kennedy made a statement to the effect that he couldn't compete with the world's best running low mileage. He increased his mileage and got great.