Lets say a pretty good high-school/college runner runs 6 minute pace for all his runs; long runs, tempos, "easy" days, and other runs of that sort. What would happen? Would he improve? Burn out? Anyone have personal experience? Discuss. Does 6 minute pace work?
Sounds like someone on your team is doing this and you wonder why? Whats his pr's a 14:50_15:10 5k xc runner should have a lot of miles in the 6's maybe not 6 flat, 16:00 5k definitely not that quick
Not really. You can be somewhat mediocre and still get down to 6 min pace on every run but won't get it done on race day. You'll have 1 gear.
It really depends on your goals and race distances. A lot of weaker college teams turn practice into daily time trials and race each other. That's why they don't qualify for nationals.
Training can get boring/repetitive, do different workouts, develop different gears. Peak when it counts.
This was me in college. This was how a lot of people trained in the early 90s
I did not PR in college, until my 5th year when I ran 8:58 for 3000m, which was a time I'd probably easily have done as a SR in high school but I did not run the 3200m that year.
HS PRs 2:02, 4:21, 9:53 (jog and kick first meet as a JR, easily in sub 9:30 shape as a SR)
Other HS teammates of mine who had basically the same HS ability level and trained better in college ran 4:06/13:59 and 14:15/29:20
I ran 15:45 and 32:59. Running under 4:30 in the mile did not happen much for me. I was massively overtrained and when I look back the only positive I can take away is that I survived 6 years of training like that without an injury or dropping out of school from the sheer fatigue.
Do not train like this. Worst possible training you can do.
I know a couple older (well relatively) runners who so something similar. One guy is 49, other is 37. They do about 3-4 runs a week & run 1 pace. One guy either does a 5 or an 8 mile run, always at 6:45 pace. Other runs a 4-5 mile run always at 6:30 pace. Both did quite well in college, so yes they are talented. Probably a lot of talented masters runners with limited time & who want to continue running to a small degree, do something similar.
They both do very well in the few road races they do each year compared to the mileage they run. 12-25 mile weeks, racing 28-29 min 8ks on hilly roads. Yes, not the fastest times in the race, but beating a lot of folks who run double the mileage & do structured weeks.
Lets say a pretty good high-school/college runner runs 6 minute pace for all his runs; long runs, tempos, "easy" days, and other runs of that sort. What would happen? Would he improve? Burn out? Anyone have personal experience? Discuss. Does 6 minute pace work?
In the 70s my club had several guys a few minutes on either side of 2:20 for the marathon and running almost everything at about six minute pace was pretty common.
I've read this article many, many times. People don't realize it, but this type of training is physiologically very similar to what Marius Bakken did back when he "invented" the Norwegian model. Except Marius was doing it in intervals, mostly 1000s, with very short recovery. On his page, Marius wrote extensively about how the kenyans could instinctively find that sub LT zone and hold it for extended periods of time. He rationalized breaking his sessions into intervals in order to frequently monitor blood lactate levels so that he wouldn't do his workouts too hard. You need to remember that at the time the above article was written (and Marius was in his prime), the dominant paradigm for western runners was to hammer a lot of stuff at VO2 max pace. Both Marius and Farrel's systems broke with that paradigm. Farrell had his kids do it by feel and Marius was very scientific about it.
Every day at 6:00 pace? It's probably doable, but I think you'd have to have already achieved a time in the neighborhood of 16:30. Your volume would have to be pretty low, but I could see a system, where as you progressed, you just added more volume at 6:00.
Do I think this would be optimal, running every day at 6:00? No. Could it potentially work for the right person? Sure.
HS 2 mile record holder Mortenson 6mi/day <6 but she of course had races for speed work.
Figure cap at 60/ week for a good male runner. May want to throw in some 200m hill reps 10.0 4% or sled resisted 100m reps 22 on turf w ~25% body weight load Not optimal but certainly smarter work than 95% HS programs Typically a great HS runner will want to train closer to 5:40/mi over distance
Certainly 6’/mi sufficient for <9 maybe < 8:40 if training at altitude and/or already < 12.5 100m capable
I've read this article many, many times. People don't realize it, but this type of training is physiologically very similar to what Marius Bakken did back when he "invented" the Norwegian model. Except Marius was doing it in intervals, mostly 1000s, with very short recovery. On his page, Marius wrote extensively about how the kenyans could instinctively find that sub LT zone and hold it for extended periods of time. He rationalized breaking his sessions into intervals in order to frequently monitor blood lactate levels so that he wouldn't do his workouts too hard. You need to remember that at the time the above article was written (and Marius was in his prime), the dominant paradigm for western runners was to hammer a lot of stuff at VO2 max pace. Both Marius and Farrel's systems broke with that paradigm. Farrell had his kids do it by feel and Marius was very scientific about it.
Every day at 6:00 pace? It's probably doable, but I think you'd have to have already achieved a time in the neighborhood of 16:30. Your volume would have to be pretty low, but I could see a system, where as you progressed, you just added more volume at 6:00.
Do I think this would be optimal, running every day at 6:00? No. Could it potentially work for the right person? Sure.
It could work pretty well in a Ron Clarke style but a need of frequent racing as Ron did. And the problem the runner has to reach a quite good level before can get well recovered after a 6 min mile paced easy run. 6 min/ mile is an easy steady run to most top distance elite runners.
To be sure, thought experiments like this are interesting. Farrell was essentially correct when he cited the Frequency x Intensity x Time to determine training load. If 6:00 pace is the standard, the question is what would you have to do to make it managable. I have a number of athletes that could go out and run a workout like 10 x 400 @ 90 seconds with 1 mn recovery every day. Some of them might even benefit from it. I have fewer guys that could go out and run 4k @ 6:00 pace continuous every day and still benefit from it. For most of my athletes, I don't think the increase in intensity would be enough to compensate for the drop in volume
After thinking about it more, I think that an athlete would probably already need to be closer to 16 flat in order to be able to do enough volume to make a system like this work (if doing the runs as daily continuous runs in order to stay with the spirit of the OP). A 16:30 guy would basically have to be doing CV pace every day, while a 16:00 guy would be pretty close to threshold or probably just a little below. The 16:00 guy could probably go 4-6k daily as a continous run, but he'd have to be the right type of 16:00 guy.
The faster the runner, the more realistic 6:00 / mile becomes
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The issue is that everyone at Harvard does it. For Blanks or Iverson 6:00 is a very reasonable easy pace. But they have their whole xc team, including 26 minute guys running pretty decent mileage at that pace, and it does not seem to work (expectedly so).
His 5000m PR pace is 4:07 per mile, so not quite the same thing.
My understanding is that other Harvard guys train that way - to mixed results. Keep in mind Blanks had a pretty substantial injury in college too and who knows how many other harvard guys have gotten injured.
It would probably work out OK if he was already quick enough to get reasonable mileage from it.
As long as someone does a decent amount of training, the level they reach is mainly down to talent and age they start running. Better training will make some difference and gets more important at elite level but they're basically getting where they're getting.