fgfg wrote:
Ed Friggin Witlock jogs around that graveyard.
Ded is Ed...
fgfg wrote:
Ed Friggin Witlock jogs around that graveyard.
Ded is Ed...
High School - Run an hour a day
College - Run one and a half hours a day
Post Collegiate - Run 2 hours a day
That’s 99.9% of the cake to reach potential
I took my time to read through all the thread and of course a couple of things hit my mind.
1) It really strengthen my conviction that the term "junk mileage" is a proven phenomenon!))
2) It strengthen my conviction that there are a proven medium to individual success whichever runner you choose to improve.
Jan Stensson , Coach JS wrote:
I took my time to read through all the thread and of course a couple of things hit my mind.
1) It really strengthen my conviction that the term "junk mileage" is a proven phenomenon!))
2) It strengthen my conviction that there are a proven medium to individual success whichever runner you choose to improve.
Can I ask what you mean when you say that "junk miles are a proven phenomenon"?
Do you mean that they are valuable, or do you mean that they are a waste of time?
The simplicity of this type of training is beautiful. The freedom to run at a pace you feel on any given day is liberating!
A local coach recently told me the same thing. He basically told me "run more and run a little harder before even thinking about workouts".
In this coach's estimation: for many runners, improvements don't come from the workouts, but consistent mileage run at a good clip when feeling good and at slower paces as needed.
jtface wrote:
Jan Stensson , Coach JS wrote:
I took my time to read through all the thread and of course a couple of things hit my mind.
1) It really strengthen my conviction that the term "junk mileage" is a proven phenomenon!))
2) It strengthen my conviction that there are a proven medium to individual success whichever runner you choose to improve.
Can I ask what you mean when you say that "junk miles are a proven phenomenon"?
Do you mean that they are valuable, or do you mean that they are a waste of time?
The simplicity of this type of training is beautiful. The freedom to run at a pace you feel on any given day is liberating!
A waste of time if you want your easy distance sessions to be as effective as possible when
it comes to improve your race times.But of course entitled if you just run for fun and health ( and sometimes need a slow recovery run when tired from race or tough workout the day before)
I myself found the easy perfect paced runs to give great satisfaction and a sense of total control
of my body at a quite fast easy pace. Another kind of liberating and sense of freedom.
tinman wrote:
Many years ago I proposed to my collegiate coach that optimal training was the key to success, but of course that didn't go over too well. Al Carius (not my coach, but a friend) said that the key to training well is to do what works and keep doing it over and over. In a coaches meeting, he asked me about one of my athletes, a little guy who seemed overweight and muscular like a body builder. I told him that he doesn't run impressive workouts, but he races fast. Al responded in a matter of fact way that workouts don't mean much. He went on to say that he had national champions who ran thei 5 x 1 mile workouts in 4:50-55 on grass and teams that ran much slower in races that ran 4:35-40. His point was that training harder doesn't necessarily make one faster.
In an old post, I mentioned that I was a disaster in college. I ended up having two surgeries on my calves and one on my right ankle due to running intervals too fast and too often for my body. Oddly, after college, for two years, I only ran 5 mile runs and pracitically no speedwork at all, unless you count running a couple runs per week at what felt like LT pace, but for me, often it was only about 5:50-6:10 pace due to fatigue from my job. I jumped into three spring races on the second year, having run 35 miles per week at most per week for 3 months straight and ran the following races:
1st race....5km on the roads in 15:55
2nd race....5,000m on the track in 15:13 (two weeks after the first race;
3rd race....1500m on the track at a last chance meet in 4:01.89.
Now, the amazing thing is that I never ran that fast in college while running really hard interval workouts 3 x per week. My junior year in college I recall running 10 x 300m indoors one cold Febrary day with just 100m jogs, cutting down the times from 51 to 43 and the 100m jog took just took about 30 seconds to do, yet I could barely run 4:10 for the 1500m. In the 1500m that I ran with just LT and medium distance paced runs (mostly at about 7 minute pace), 5 miles per day, I ran the last 300m in 42. Now, doesn't that seem odd? Ever since then, I have devoted my free time to studying ex. physiology and trying to makes sense of it all. Out of failure and frustration comes the search for knowledge and insight.
+1
Jan Stensson , Coach JS wrote:
jtface wrote:
Can I ask what you mean when you say that "junk miles are a proven phenomenon"?
Do you mean that they are valuable, or do you mean that they are a waste of time?
The simplicity of this type of training is beautiful. The freedom to run at a pace you feel on any given day is liberating!
A waste of time if you want your easy distance sessions to be as effective as possible when
it comes to improve your race times.But of course entitled if you just run for fun and health ( and sometimes need a slow recovery run when tired from race or tough workout the day before)
I myself found the easy perfect paced runs to give great satisfaction and a sense of total control
of my body at a quite fast easy pace. Another kind of liberating and sense of freedom.
"Superior Coach" you don't know what you're talking about. There is no such thing as junk miles -- at least when it comes to competitive runners. Now quit hijacking every thread in an attempt to push your online coaching service.
Secondly. Contact rojo by email. We need to sort out which is your real username. Apparently someone has been hijacking yours. We'd like to fix that for you.
malmo wrote:
Jan Stensson , Coach JS wrote:
A waste of time if you want your easy distance sessions to be as effective as possible when
it comes to improve your race times.But of course entitled if you just run for fun and health ( and sometimes need a slow recovery run when tired from race or tough workout the day before)
I myself found the easy perfect paced runs to give great satisfaction and a sense of total control
of my body at a quite fast easy pace. Another kind of liberating and sense of freedom.
"Superior Coach" you don't know what you're talking about. There is no such thing as junk miles -- at least when it comes to competitive runners. Now quit hijacking every thread in an attempt to push your online coaching service.
Secondly. Contact rojo by email. We need to sort out which is your real username. Apparently someone has been hijacking yours. We'd like to fix that for you.
Malmö, glad to see you posting in this thread! Do I realistically need speed/interval work to 'race' local 5k races well? I'm 30 years old with a history of sports. I ran 25:06 for 5k at my easy conversational pace. Could I expect to see sub 18 or sub 17 etc. without speedwork if I am very consistent?
jtface wrote:
Malmö, glad to see you posting in this thread! Do I realistically need speed/interval work to 'race' local 5k races well? I'm 30 years old with a history of sports. I ran 25:06 for 5k at my easy conversational pace. Could I expect to see sub 18 or sub 17 etc. without speedwork if I am very consistent?
You don't "need" to do anything to run local races, but to do them well, you should do some speedwork. Just doing random farlek runs a couple days a week is a lot of bang for the buck
A nice trip down memory lane with the old regular posters from back in the day. Looks like I posted under a couple of random names back before registration was incentivized. I and the athletes I coached benefitted a lot from these discussions (medals at the national masters level track and road wins). Now just happy to be healthy and running free of worry.
malmo wrote:
jtface wrote:
Malmö, glad to see you posting in this thread! Do I realistically need speed/interval work to 'race' local 5k races well? I'm 30 years old with a history of sports. I ran 25:06 for 5k at my easy conversational pace. Could I expect to see sub 18 or sub 17 etc. without speedwork if I am very consistent?
You don't "need" to do anything to run local races, but to do them well, you should do some speedwork. Just doing random farlek runs a couple days a week is a lot of bang for the buck
Thank you for the advice! Yes, I am hoping race them well!
Bumping a classic LetsRun thread. This was peak Tinman. The wisdom herein is as applicable now as it was when this thread was started.
I know a local park runner who does 6:30-6:50 for about 10-15 mpw at most and runs 18:30-19:00. The caveat is he races parkrun every week... so that is his speed work.
stinkdog wrote:
Here's an interesting way to train (primitive though, but it worked).
I was in 7th grade(am a college frosh now) and I decided to become a runner. My mile PR from 6th grade(untrained) was 5:40, in the spring during gym class. Sometime starting in late january of 7th grade, I ran one mile a day, pretty much as fast as I could( not on a track, but around the block). Every other day I ran a hard mile once I got home from school, than another hard mile in the evening. Mind you, this was about 95-99% every time. I did this for about 3 months taking a day off once a week. And yes, I had no idea what to do for training. This is what I thought you had to do to run a good mile. Also, I ran in racing flats.
Track season started up in mid-april, and of course, training was cake for middle school practices...the "monster run" of 2 miles, or a mile easy, or 8 x 100m sprints, etc. My first 1600 I ran a 5:24(very windy, no warm-up, etc). Than a week later, under great conditions, I ran 5:05. A few days later, again the same time, 5:05. Next meet, 2:20 for the 800. Then finally, I get some competition(2nd place was 5:00), and a NICE all weather track/rubberized for the first time, and I run 4:54.
Now, I never did intervals, but no long steady runs...just a mile a day at 95-99% effort. Has anyone ever done anythiing like this?
5k I did last year, 19 year old girl ran something like 17:09 off no more than 15 mpw. Very short runs like 2 miles hard or 1 mile then 8x400.
I encounter two problems with intervals
1. I plateau quickly because I can't run them any faster
2. My endurance couldn't keep up
and I have nothing wrote:
Ron Clarke, Derek Clayton
I think a certain kind of runner can run fast times of that work - one with a lot of slow twitch (they tend to recover faster).
Carlos Lopes did do intervals, but his steady runs and threshold runs were very quick.
I will note that while Clarke was superb at running fast times, but he had very little anaerobic power.
lbird wrote:
I don't believe that Ric Sayre did a lot of interval work in the mid 80s, early 90s and he had a very good marathon career (2:12:?? I believe, 4 Oly trials and quite a few wins around the US/World).
I had a gal I coached who, after we changed her training from the traditional "base, drop mileage/add intervals" to "base and just fartleks and tempos" from 39:00 to 37:30 in under a year. The main thing she said is that when we did something 8 x 400 @ 78, she felt like crap for 3-4 days after. But, if we did 12 x 400 @ 88-90, she felt great the next day and also felt like it just made her stronger.
I've found that athletes that I've coach who have poor leg speed tend to benefit from this type of training. High intensity intervals seem to be like kryptonite to most of them.
Just my two cents.
Classic profile of a runner with a lot of slow twitch.
I'm opposite. The long run would beat me up (to the degree we moved them to once every two weeks), but I'd feel good with fast reps (for example, back in the day 10x200m in around 27 sec).
Cavorty wrote:
I will note that while Clarke was superb at running fast times, but he had very little anaerobic power.
I'm not sure what you mean by "very little anaerobic power." Clarke was the world junior record holder in the mile. Doesn't that take a bit of "anaerobic power"? Clarke's later failures in major competitions despite massive world records at longer track distances led to some sort of belief that he was just an aerobic machine, but he had a lot of speed that could be seen on the rare occasions when he relied on his kick instead of pure aerobic superiority. He was the best two-miler in the world for quite a while, and vastly better at conventional track races than he ever was as a marathoner.
tempo only wrote:
I encounter two problems with intervals
1. I plateau quickly because I can't run them any faster
2. My endurance couldn't keep up
There are ways to overcome this like doing shorter reps, resting less between reps at a slower pace, doing longer reps at a slower pace, etc.