Conference Championship races are always tactical because all of the top runners have to run multiple events in multiple rounds so no one wants to lead the race at a fast pace and risk a crash and burn and no points. So they always go slow until the 2nd half of the race, which leads to a slow time. That's what happened to Nico and Colin. With Spencer he didn't race in a championship, so it was something else that made him slow.
I personally would not be showcasing my daily training if I was not able to deliver competitive results. A friend of mine commented 'he doesn't even LOOK like a runner.' Legs are too short. He wants Ferrari results but is only riding a motorized bicycle.
He did some really good workouts last year under the tutelage of his dad. So Brown deserves admiration for hanging in there and giving every ounce of effort. He's a persistent warrior. Doing nine repeat 1k's with a short rest is brutal and Spencer did that with regularity. Good workout times as well. Not nearly A-grade (another indicator to change course in life), but solid.
But what matters is that all those impressive workouts never translated to any real-world success at all. His body just can't do it. I was really surprised that he called it quits last year after a race or two. That indicated to me that he had hit the end of the line. In other words, keep running in your life, but find a career and switch gears....like everyone else has to do. Do road races and all-comers meets to keep the fire burning. But get an 8-5 job and capitalize on your education. The longer the delay in making that transition, the more difficult the transition will be.
If you gave me an athlete who's run 3:39 I could coach him to run faster than 3:55 guaranteed
He’s running 5:35 pace for threshold reps(watch last video). Any decent HSer can do that. That is a significant step down from what he was doing last year with his dad when he was running sub 5 reps for his threshold. He looked weak as hell out there.
A year long series where TAS dopes himself and documents the results would be fun to watch. Just slam EPO, train like an animal and then run one all out mile at the end to see how well it worked.
A year long series where TAS dopes himself and documents the results would be fun to watch. Just slam EPO, train like an animal and then run one all out mile at the end to see how well it worked.
Train like an animal? He barely trains like a lazy high schooler.
I find it odd that he didn't post any runs to Strava in the 2 days leading up to the race. Normally he's been putting his easy runs on Strava, so it's possible he's had an illness the past few days and tried to fight through it in the race. Let's wait until he posts the video for this race before we make any assumptions about what happened.
Update: He just posted all of his runs to Strava. He wasn't sick at all. He just sucks. I believe that the training he was doing with his dad was getting him where he wanted to be. He just needed to trust the process. He ran 7:58 and 3:42 tactical (would've had 3:40 at Bryan Clay if he didn't get tripped), so he was getting back to where he was in college. If he truly wants to get back to his PRs he needs to go back to the training with his dad but inject some speed and lifting early so that he isn't flat in the spring and needs to lose all of his strength to get his speed back. But he won't get there because he isn't mentally tough enough to do it. He should just quit running and get a real job so he doesn't have to mooch off of Allie or his dad.
He’s not a good candidate to run on “Pure Hate” as his life is too easy and doesn’t seem to have to competitive fire. Why run races if you don’t want to win?
I understand his inclination to develop his aerobic capacity, but don’t really understand the way he’s doing it.
His most recent workout has him doing 5:35 mile repeats in between a step-down ladder, and as he’s doing it Allie says something about “lactate,” doubling on what TAS has said before about his LT2 pace okay.
there is what your blood says about says, then there is what your body says. 5:35 pace for someone like him is marathon pace. Doing one mile repeats at marathon pace doesn’t make a lot of sense when wanting to build aerobic capacity.
doing one mile repeats at HALF marathon pace? Okay. 20-40 min at MARATHON pace followed by 200s? Okay. 10k-5k pace repeats? Okay.
But this LT2 stuff is for the birds, specifically, it’s for triathletes, who have to develop an engine for swimming, cycling, and running (abd in that order of priority), and who are spending hours a day swimming, cycling, and running.
if you’re a sub 4 miler running 60 miles a week, much of it 7+ minute pace, running a limited set of 5:35-5:20 mile repeats isn’t going to cut it.
I understand his inclination to develop his aerobic capacity, but don’t really understand the way he’s doing it.
His most recent workout has him doing 5:35 mile repeats in between a step-down ladder, and as he’s doing it Allie says something about “lactate,” doubling on what TAS has said before about his LT2 pace okay.
there is what your blood says about says, then there is what your body says. 5:35 pace for someone like him is marathon pace. Doing one mile repeats at marathon pace doesn’t make a lot of sense when wanting to build aerobic capacity.
doing one mile repeats at HALF marathon pace? Okay. 20-40 min at MARATHON pace followed by 200s? Okay. 10k-5k pace repeats? Okay.
But this LT2 stuff is for the birds, specifically, it’s for triathletes, who have to develop an engine for swimming, cycling, and running (abd in that order of priority), and who are spending hours a day swimming, cycling, and running.
if you’re a sub 4 miler running 60 miles a week, much of it 7+ minute pace, running a limited set of 5:35-5:20 mile repeats isn’t going to cut it.
*there is what your blood says about endurance, then there is what your body says
I understand his inclination to develop his aerobic capacity, but don’t really understand the way he’s doing it.
His most recent workout has him doing 5:35 mile repeats in between a step-down ladder, and as he’s doing it Allie says something about “lactate,” doubling on what TAS has said before about his LT2 pace okay.
there is what your blood says about says, then there is what your body says. 5:35 pace for someone like him is marathon pace. Doing one mile repeats at marathon pace doesn’t make a lot of sense when wanting to build aerobic capacity.
doing one mile repeats at HALF marathon pace? Okay. 20-40 min at MARATHON pace followed by 200s? Okay. 10k-5k pace repeats? Okay.
But this LT2 stuff is for the birds, specifically, it’s for triathletes, who have to develop an engine for swimming, cycling, and running (abd in that order of priority), and who are spending hours a day swimming, cycling, and running.
if you’re a sub 4 miler running 60 miles a week, much of it 7+ minute pace, running a limited set of 5:35-5:20 mile repeats isn’t going to cut it.
But don't even high level Norwegian runners train like this? Pretty sure Simen Halle-Haugen says they do controlled 2k repeats at marathon pace in the AM
The Norwegians also do this twice a day 2 days a week with a faster session also in the week and running 90-100 miles a week. This type of training only works if you run the high mileage, and Spencer refuses to do that despite having no other responsibilities than running. Also, for LT2 the blood lactate meter should be reading 4.0, not 2.5 like Spencer and Ari have been doing.
Have no idea why he stopped training under his dad. He was getting strong and actually looking good in the workouts... He needs to go back to his Georgetown training or his dad. What he's doing now is clearly not progressing him.
TAS has many other responbilities. Being a youtuber is a full-time job plus he has to ask his dad and Allie for money to fund his olympic endeavors. He probably puts in more hours than most of us merely editing in Mario screen effects.
He’s running 5:35 pace for threshold reps(watch last video). Any decent HSer can do that. That is a significant step down from what he was doing last year with his dad when he was running sub 5 reps for his threshold. He looked weak as hell out there.
THIS.
Go back to your Dad coaching you and end this BS.
I think I remember his dad said he would only coach Spencer if he thought Spencer would be 100% committed to the training. If I was him, I wouldn't be enthusiastic about taking TAS on again after watching him goof around with Ari for the last 6 months. I think TAS made it clear he wasn't happy with last year's results too, so I doubt he wants to go back either.
His training was much better structured last year (as a lot of us have noted), but thus far it seems like he's determined to believe that this current system is clearly superior. Maybe he'll change his tune if the results don't pick up, idk.
Olympic endeavors? Coebra had a better chance of making a USA steeple team than Spencer has for winning a Seattle all-comers 800 or mile race. He currently isn’t even close to competing against no name D3 runners. I don’t mean to be overly harsh, but his YouTube celebrity is overrated considering his current running performances.
Colin Sahlman and Nico Young just ran 3:49 (Colin won) in their conference championship this week. every race is not a PB race or even necessarily a fast race (think Centro), so without knowing more, it’s hard to say 3:55 was a bad run.
hopefully a video will be posted.
That was at altitude and they probably closed faster than TAS could run an open 400.
LT1/LT2 is still very relevant to mile racing, as it builds the aerobic foundation for speedwork. But doing 6 miles of LT1/LT1 at 60 miles a week is horrible. He needs to do 90 mpw minimum at this point in his career, with 16+ miles at threshold, to truly stimulate the aerobic system to a large degree, and get big gains.