He's baaaack! LRC coaching Guru JK (John Kellogg) AMA Wednesday 2pm eastern

There are some good questions on here. I'll jot some of them down for future weeks. We're going to start a regular "Ask JK column" or maybe it will be "Dear Distance Gurus" so I can answer one or two. I like the more mainstream questions that don't veer off into exercise physiology. It seems like there is a small part of the internet that loves to go off on the science behind it all and claim Tinman/JK, etc arne't using the right terminology and don't know what they are talking about. And hence you have the reason why he stopped posting on here 15 years ago. Email us at askjk@letsrun.com.

It's interesting that you asked that as I read an NCAA football article yesterday on Gus Malzahn. I can't remember who wrote it (maybe Justin Ferguson?). The writers said he revolutionized college football by bringing in the hurry up offense. Malzahn almost won a national title right away but now roughly 10 years later, his offense isn't very good. The author implied that Malzahan failed to evolve and others copied him. When Malzahan was asked does he watch other teams and steal their best plays when he got to Auburn, he said, No. We just try to do what we do better.

I literally asked JK yeseterday - What if someone claims you are running's version of Gus Malzahan. John was offended by my assertion. In running, physiology rules all. You don't need to react to what other people are doing if you understand running.

Those are the type of hypothetical questions we may start answering in the weeks to come. One I had was, "If Jimmy Wyner - our 3:41 guy at Cornell - only was allowed to run 50 mpw, how fast would he have run?"

Another was along the lines of, "If Cheptegei could only run 50 mpw and only run one workout (8 x 2 minutes on/1 minute off) how fast would he be?"

RunnerOneTime wrote:

John, what is your opinion on balancing maximizing mileage vs. starting tempo type workouts during a base building phase? Is it better to maximize the mileage, or better to sacrifice 10mpw and start doing tempos midway through the base phase, heading into a season?

You can have both, but the "faster" workouts need to be reduced in duration or intensity or both at first. I mentioned something along these lines in a previous post. It's good to begin introducing some of your eventual workout speeds fairly early in the pre-seasons and only briefly touch on them, spending such a short time there that you hardly have any chance to strain or hurt anything. From there, you can increase the mileage and still incorporate that tiny bit of "focused" running, gradually adding a bit more time at the "workout" speeds during the reduced mileage periods (you should be alternating high periods with low periods anyway when building up to all-time highs). It's all a matter of making a smooth segue to full-fledged workouts.

I've seen people that need to start out with stuff like 2 x 5 minutes at "high-end" pace with 3 min. walk/jog between reps or 4-5 x 10-15 secs, buildups (jogging back to the start between reps). If you've already been at 70 miles per week 3 months ago and raced a few 5s and 10s recently, you would of course not need to start the next pre-season with those super-short things as your first "focused" days (but you could if you wanted to or thought it was necessary). After a week or so of easy running and a few days with 2 sets of 5-6 buildups in them, you'd more likely start your "high-end" running with a fairly short progression of 30-35 minutes where you spend about 15-20 minutes at the high end (and add a few short strides during the cool-down jog). You'd probably also get away with doing another day a few days later that had a couple of sets of buildups plus 1 x 4 min. at "crest load" pace or maybe 6 x 200 starting at 5,000 pace and progressing down to mile pace (lots of rest to keep the overall effort very low). Stuff like that is so truncated from a real "effort" that it has little chance of hurting you during a mileage increase; actually, the variety can help you. Tinkering around with reduced "workouts" during the pre-season also helps runners find out what types of workouts seem to be their bread-and-butter ones, at least for the present. Over many seasons, this helps them develop their own "recipe."

Using gradual increases from those meager beginnings, it's logical and easy to see that you can keep the "focused" days easy during forays into higher-than-normal mileage and can become gradually more familiar with the quicker speeds (and fitter) by incrementally adding small amounts to the time spent at the quicker speeds (or shortening the recovery intervals or having a slight pace increase) during the lower mileage periods. By the time the regular season begins, you should be pretty well up in mileage and ready to go on some pretty strong workouts. The trick is to orchestrate the pre-season stuff in such a way that it almost always remains at easy to medium effort, only going "hard" for a fairly short rep or two at the tail end of a "workout" every couple of weeks. More of the regular season stuff can be moderate to hard. Note: I like to have a couple of low mileage weeks right before the regular season starts, especially for people who are about to go back to school, so runners can come into the new situation (which has added stress of its own) with fairly fresh legs. They can also re-increase mileage in the same fashion for awhile during the season so they avoid losing base fitness by reducing too much too soon.

Osiris wrote:

For a start, doing 24+ minutes of work at fairly strong speeds (or doing a long run at easy to medium speeds) may not recruit the "fast twitch" muscle fibers, but it will use glycogen in ST and FT fibers, and by then recruiting the FT fibers, there will be a strong stimulus for those units to take on more aerobic properties.

Can you provide a reference for the fact that glycogen is used in a muscle fibre which is not recruited? That does not make sense to me a priori: the glycogen stored within a muscle cell is for local use (within the cell), i.e. recruitment (use of the fibre) is a prerequisite for the glycogen to be used.

wejo wrote:

sceptic wrote:

This will probably be deleted, but I see no evidence that JK is other than a creation of the Johnson brothers. A link to a source mentioning him not involving the Johnson brothers or LetsRun would disprove that assertion.

Here you go

Thank you for not deleting, but this sort of just throws oil on the flames, given that the link just references some writings of JK (from LetsRun I think). What I meant was something like a newspaper clipping for example explicitly naming him as a coach at your high school.

The 'biography' in the Tinman/Kellogg link is even worse, as the tone of it looks like something made up.

It doesn't matter if JK is a created character, but it would be good to be honest about if so.

sceptic wrote:

wejo wrote:

Here you go

Thank you for not deleting, but this sort of just throws oil on the flames, given that the link just references some writings of JK (from LetsRun I think). What I meant was something like a newspaper clipping for example explicitly naming him as a coach at your high school.

The 'biography' in the Tinman/Kellogg link is even worse, as the tone of it looks like something made up.

It doesn't matter if JK is a created character, but it would be good to be honest about if so.

If rojo and wejo created JK it would be the greatest troll in the history of LetsRun. I wouldn't even be mad.

I assume that this, like most diet advice, is based mostly on a hunch you have. If I cut out sugar from my diet, would I get stronger than if I ran better workouts or raised my weekly mileage from 35 to 50 miles, or worked in the garden twice/week? In my experience running and coaching, moving from a normal diet with moderate intake of unhealthy foods to a strict diet of any kind is as likely to hurt as to help. The "best way to keep your strength" is to train smarter.

I can attest that JK is in fact a real person. He was at Cornell right along side Rojo the whole 5 years I spent in Ithaca. We talked together quite a bit and he helped time a lot of our workouts/splits. Sometimes Wejo would even show up as well!

sceptic wrote:

wejo wrote:

Here you go

Thank you for not deleting, but this sort of just throws oil on the flames, given that the link just references some writings of JK (from LetsRun I think). What I meant was something like a newspaper clipping for example explicitly naming him as a coach at your high school.

The 'biography' in the Tinman/Kellogg link is even worse, as the tone of it looks like something made up.

It doesn't matter if JK is a created character, but it would be good to be honest about if so.

S. Canaday wrote:

I can attest that JK is in fact a real person. He was at Cornell right along side Rojo the whole 5 years I spent in Ithaca. We talked together quite a bit and he helped time a lot of our workouts/splits. Sometimes Wejo would even show up as well!

sceptic wrote:

Thank you for not deleting, but this sort of just throws oil on the flames, given that the link just references some writings of JK (from LetsRun I think). What I meant was something like a newspaper clipping for example explicitly naming him as a coach at your high school.

The 'biography' in the Tinman/Kellogg link is even worse, as the tone of it looks like something made up.

It doesn't matter if JK is a created character, but it would be good to be honest about if so.

It is confirmed, sage canaday is also fake, a creation of the Johnson brothers

S. Canaday wrote:

I can attest that JK is in fact a real person. He was at Cornell right along side Rojo the whole 5 years I spent in Ithaca. We talked together quite a bit and he helped time a lot of our workouts/splits. Sometimes Wejo would even show up as well!

Ok, thank you!

This is really interesting to me because I have a lot of respect for JK - but this mindset shows a fundamental disregard for innovation that breeds success.

Psyiology rules all, sure; but the science also evolves over time as we learn more. “Reacting to what other people are doing” is NOT about insecurity over your method; it’s about having humility with your method and understanding that maybe somebody else found a better method somewhere along the way.

Obviously we have our foundational and fundamental physiology that grounds us, but should that prevent us from ever trying to find new ways to improve?? I think it’s possible to react to what other people are doing to always be in search of ways to improve, while also staying true to our core principles. Innovation is what breeds success. I’d be curious what JK has to say in response - maybe I am misunderstanding him.

You have a very good point there I think.The reaction of JK on my question about the wizard JS and the claim that it's possible to optimize individual results on about 50-60 mpw he just dismissed with an absolute requirement of doping in such a case.

Well, I still stand by what I wrote in the post above, but I’m going to have to side with JK on THAT particular innovation. “The Wizard” JS is a clown

GuruMagicFormula wrote:

Osiris wrote:

Posting as Osiris!

The hard truth? This is the way that drugs have ruined the sport the most. Not by taking away honors from clean runners, but by poisoning the well of training information for all runners. There are no ways to make 50-60 mpw more effective than having much more substantial base other than through PEDs. Running economy cannot be fully developed by running so little. Even 20 years of 50-60 mpw won't get it done. I would say "discus" but there's nothing to discuss. Think "1995 Moroccans" and their "medium mileage, plyos and weights" tripe. It was code for drugs then and it still is.

Oh really? So how do drugs improve energy kinetics?

How do drugs circumvent thermodynamics?

By magic oh great and wise Guru?

Hey, Jon Orange came out of the woodwork on this thread too.

Other than being one of the founder's of this site's coach, who is he?

Is he of the level of the Wetmore's, Powell's, Eyestone's, of the US?

S. Canaday wrote:

I can attest that JK is in fact a real person. He was at Cornell right along side Rojo the whole 5 years I spent in Ithaca. We talked together quite a bit and he helped time a lot of our workouts/splits. Sometimes Wejo would even show up as well!

Damn it Sage you ruined it. Only on LetsRun would I have to prove that someone who I know hundreds of people on here have met is real. Like we just pulled the same guy off the street 20 years later and had him in our photos, etc.

Ganbatte wrote:

If rojo and wejo created JK it would be the greatest troll in the history of LetsRun. I wouldn't even be mad.

would have been epic.

Maybe now it’s a good time to introduce the third Johnson brother.

wejo wrote:

Damn it Sage you ruined it. Only on LetsRun would I have to prove that someone who I know hundreds of people on here have met is real. Like we just pulled the same guy off the street 20 years later and had him in our photos, etc.

There is a great deal of weirdness on this site. This JK is somebody who for all we know appears to have coached nobody in 20 years and only Wejo and his fellow high schoolers before that, whose job is described on a Facebook page as a 'dogsbody' at LetsRun, whose biography in that Tinman thread is bizarre, etc. It's in some ways even weirder that he exists than if he was a creation.

GuruMagicFormula wrote:

Come on JK coaching genius, don't be a coward

Tell me how so called PEDs improve energy kinetics?

Tell me how they circumvent thermodynamics?

Do you even understand the question?

Do something really useful with your life and learn some basic physiology. And stop with the idiotic drug endorsements.

Well?

VIP in the peanut gallery wrote:

Fine to disagree, but please be civil.

Thanks for the comments on CV pace, JK. Interesting.

Please be civil? While JK endorses doping?

How long do we have to put up with this delusional nonsense?