van aaken

If I may add that in regards to performance you should be able to do "the best you can with what you have on that day" Remember to a great degree it takes 1) ability(physical and mental), 2)opportunity (time, coaching) and 3)genes (next time be more selective when you pick your parents). Well its 0815 and time to go out for a run.

Vladimir:

We did a similar thing in Japan for our training camp--not 7 times a day but 5 (did it only once); no fasting though. I know another team in Japan who did somehting like five 5k time trial in each hour or something like that. That really is a scinario of kids play (as explained by van Aaken) or most likely some African people or South American tribe's men do...it's simply not structured as 1 hour run-1 hour rest. It's a concept of intervals, isn't it?

Now since you called it "hell week", do you do that 7 days in a row? Or you also mentioned lost 13 pounds in 7 weeks (of hell weeks?)"??? You wouldn't do this everyday for a few weeks, would ya? Or did I miss reading it in your post? In that case, I always have an excuse of being a dumb foreigner... Sorry!

Nobby, yes you did misread part of my posting, but I would blame me not you- I was in a hurry to get out for my run. The posting about weight was in regards to the individual who is running running the marathon in April and is dropping weight. Yes, hell week was seven days long- at times it seemed much longer. I still remember this fondly as the clock that we used (a cuckoo clock that I won in a race in the Black Forest) is still in my house. Jesuit High School in Citrus Heights, CA used to do a simular thing when they went away to summer camp- it was only for one or two days- the coach at the time (Walt Lange) always had very good teams. Your ability to read English and Japanese does not indicate "dumb foreigner"- if everyone would just learn the basis of other languages (hello, goodbye, yes, no, please, thank you, where is, how much is, 1-100 and time) travel would be so much nicer. Run over 2:06.18 time for a shower and then lunch.

Vladimir:

Here's a news for you; we can cover most of what you said (basic words) with one Japanese word we sometimes refer as a "magic" word: DOMO. "Domo" can be used for "hello", "good-bye", "thank you", "sorry", "excuse me", ec.... Okay, it would not cover "where is the bathroom?"

Now you can either lose respect for Japanese for "cheating" or praise them for their ingenuity!

Domo arigato, Nobby.

That would be "Benjo?", wouldn't it?

No, "benyo". Oh, wait! You're right; it's "benjo"...

Nobby, I have a list of about 30 phrases that I feel are required in addition to the above is where is the bathroom, what is your name, are you single,do you know her name, where do you live, what do you do for a living, how fast did you run, where is the start/finish. I have mastered these in English, German, French, Spanish, Swahaii, Latin, Porugese, and Italian. However, I am unable to read anything but English (at times I am not very good at that either) with any flow. As to how I view the Japanesse it has not changed- not that my opinion matters, but what we (USA) can/should learn from them is planning in all aspects (financial, family, athletically).

You forgot; "Would you like to go out with me?" or "I want to marry you."

The first phrase I learned in Spanish was "hello, what is your name, do you have a husband or boyfriend- is he big or small and where is he at? I would have used the do you want to go out with me, but the marry part is not a real area of interest.

Henryk Szorikowski of Poland, and I'm not vouching for proper spelling here, ran the mile/1500 on the US indoor circuit in the 70s. He got along just fine in the US despite the fact that the only English he knew were the words, "bar," "sex," and "group sex."

I see your point behind avoiding the day before marathon talks by the experts. Makes a lot of sense. Frank Shorter is scheduled to be at one of the afternoon sessions the day before my next marathon.

A former elite spoke the day before my first marathon and warned against ingesting the race's carb drink. I have ingested a fair amount of Powerade, Gatorade, and Ultima in some hot marathons that I've run. No problem for me.

Of course I'm on the course a lot longer than he was in his heyday.

This has been a very educational thread to follow for the last little while. I heard of Dr. Van Aaken a few years ago but never really knew of his approach to training. I am curious as to how to tell what is a good pace for dailly runs. When one hears that he had world class runners training at 8:00 minute mile pace it makes me question why a 39:00 10k runner like myself trains at the same pace. I would like to experiment with some of the things I have learned on this thread but I want to make sure I do it right.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge

The main ideal with training slower is to make sure that you are keeping a running form. If you are able to retain a running form at any paceit will be ok. Instead of looking at how fast someone trains look at it in relations to % of race pace. For example if you are a 2:11 marathoner and train at 7:30 pace per mile you are racing at 150% so a 2:37 individual should go 9:00 (150% of the racing pace). The problem is when a 3:30 runner tries to train at 12:00 per mile they are no longer keeping a running motion. This is where the good doctor had indviduals run 350 and then walk 50 still a strong running form, but did not wipe you out.-- Bottom line enjoy your runs- anything you enjoy you will continue to do and then improve.- Time for my morning run.

The question of how slowly you go relative to your racing paces has intrigued me more and more as I've gotten older and slower. Assuming I last into my 80s and am still doing this, I'll probably be racing at 9:00-10:00 paces and wonder whether there would be much point to running at, say 12:00-13:00 a mile and did think that running at a faster pace than that but with walking breaks makes sense.

That sort of brings us back to Peter Snell who had the idea that 7:00 pace was some sort of minimum. His advice, for those who cannot handle that pace without really pushing too hard was to run it as "intervals."

Back from my morning runs 1:45.06(including 26 x 50- 50 walk). I cannot accept the solid 7:00 training pace. Even if it works for the elites (or most of them). The same 7:00 along a nice flat bike path is going to be a killer if you are running in the Alps. Death Valley is nice and flat, but a 7:00 pace for even a few miles is quite difficult. Once again this is MY opinion with nothing to back it up other than what I have seen and done myself. Will these also lead to a label of runner or jogger depending upon your training pace- if so I have no problem being labeled a jogger (I am introduced as the guy who jogs in the snow by my inlaws), but I know that others (my wife for one) will kill someone who labels her as a jogger. Her training pace is around 8:00-8:30 per mile - I guess during races she is a runner as she has dipped just under 3:00 in the marathon. When (not if) HRE reaches his 80's and when he runs- I think he will still be maintaining the same form during his 12:00 training runs as he does during his 10:00 race pace. Shower & lunch time.

We're doing very similar things with our running right now. You've been doing about 10 minutes a day more than me whenever you've mentioned something specific, though I don't time runs to the second.

I didn't mean specifically a 7:00 pace at all times. I've got all the reservations about Peter's statement that you do. But I know that he isn't opposed to the idea of walking a bit during a run and keeping the pace for the running bits faster than it would be if you were running without interruption.

One reservation I do have on walking break is, from my experience, when you stop running, particularly in the case of very fit well-conditioned runner, their HR immediately start to come down. By the time you start running after, say, 1 minute break, it could be already as low as 100. I don't know if it really affects you at all but with that, your legs will have less blood supply already and the heart will have to start working it up. Not that I'm opposed to walking break at all--I do that quite often now (not by choice but by necessity!). I would not recommend "runners" to take a break during the race for that reason. Of course, training is a different story... I don't think Peter was fully aware of what you (HRE) were asking him when you brought up the topic of Galloway system. He was talking more in terms of training; stimulating more muscle fibers by running faster than otherwise would.

In regards to running slow, the late Sasaki (the LSD guru of Japan) often said that, if your running form is inbalanced, you will have hard time running slow. I believe that there's some truth to that. Interestingly, one of the father of Japanese marathoning (not Mr. Kanaguri, HRE) by the name of Hibino (I believe his name was...I had some literature but got damaged by a flood) used to teach young competitors to run very slowly around the track...only slightly faster than walking speed; and he used to say that if your form is inbalanced, you'll have a hard time performing a slow jog. This, we're talking about 1920s!

My experiences lead me to think that vladimir is right. I do not think that I can run a 5K at 10 min pace if I tried. Your mind set often has to change. That is true especially if you're body is all banged up like mine. I am happy to run and jog at 70 and will continue to run/jog walk what I can as long as I can. Since age 40, I have run/jogged as I felt. (I managed a 3:30 marathon at age 51.) My mind set is to enjoy.