Ingerbritsen response to interviewer question

I'm asking people to do some critical thinking, instead of just believing the hype.

So how do you propose that drugs can help you recover?

You might want to google anabolic steroids. They were developed to aid in the healing process. Anabolic steroids improve muscle repair and aid in healing contusion and strain injuries. They have also effectively repair orthopedic injuries by directly aiding in skeletal and muscle repair.

It’s easy to train less and be fast when you’re taking more PEDs than everyone in the Tour de France combined.

Watch the interview. It's clear he is not talking about mileage, or overall(cumulative) intensity. He's talking about running an ego workout in order to prove to yourself that you can hit certain paces. He's talking about being given a workout for X pace, and running faster than that for every rep to "crush the workout". Also, if you watch some of the clips from their show, it's clear that henrik has more difficulty running within himself than Jakob. I wouldn't be surprised that (for Jakob), "winning" a workout just means registering a lower mmol of lactate than his brothers, not running a faster pace.

So, expand on your thought. I’m interested to hear your take on training. This is coming from a recovering life-long classic over trainer….

Have a listen to the latest 'Conversations about Running' podcast with Swedish runner Victor Smangs. He went from 34min 10k to 29 without any 'race pace' workouts, and he goes into quite a lot of detail of how it works for him. This training technique evidently works for many different athletes; Jakob isn't some lone success story of the system.

Just because Jakob trains more doesn't mean he trains harder. Josh Kerr may be running 30 to 40 less miles every week, but Josh's workouts are harder than what Jakob does. I know guys like Jake Wightman who do lower mileage also run their easy days faster than Jakob does.

Yes those drugs give you more energy. I don't think that's really debateable lol

I'm not who you were replying to, but let me give it a shot...

It all revolves around running each session in a way that accomplishes the goal of the session in terms of creating the stimulus that your body will respond to in a way that will make you faster, but also in terms of minimizing the fatigue that impacts surrounding training.

The purpose of an "easy" run from a stimulus/response perspective is to try to improve basic aerobic function and running economy. In terms of the surrounding training, the purpose is to generate that stimulus/response with as little residual fatigue as possible. As long as you are staying below what a lot of people would call a "steady state" effort (a bit slower than aerobic threshold), the stimulus/response is very similar regardless of whether you run on the faster or slower end of things. However, faster paces can easily result in more fatigue, which impacts other harder sessions.

I think they were also referring to the fact that there are many runners that will do sessions that are supposed to be "easy" at an intensity that is not easy, thereby generating far more fatigue than they are supposed to. They might get a bit more aerobic stimulus (or even threshold, if they are really hammering) by going faster, but they are then carrying more fatigue into their more important sessions, and increasing their risk of injury.

This does not mean there is no place for moderate, steady-state, or aerobic threshold paces in training. You just shouldn't do them when you are supposed to be going easy.

So, where do you believe that extra energy comes from?

same debate as 20 years ago

Very good points. I think you are right about ego workouts that are too hard for one's current level of fitness.

But if Jakob is running at a lower lactate level, doesn't that mean that he can run more? Isn't that what training harder and smarter is all about?

Never been a fan, but Jakob is absolutely right about this tendency and where it comes from psychologically. I wasn't racing workouts in HS and college per se because I knew that was dumb, but I was convinced that I had no natural talent and the only way I was gonna get anywhere was by working harder than everyone else in practice. So I'd consistently hit each split a second or two fast, not take rest days, etc., and then wonder why I wasn't improving the way I wanted to. Since college, I've learned that running at threshold paces for most workouts produces better results, and I also just feel way better in training not redlining all the time.

Of course it's much easier to develop this mindset when you're already more talented than everyone else like Jakob is.

And you believe that?

So you have never trained really hard and recovered really quickly over and over for several weeks on purely endogenous hormones?

+1

I think the real key behind this style of training is the consistency it enables.

Blasting a single workout (or running a bit too fast on a consistent basis) is a recipe for burnout, breakdown, or needing to cycle down for a bit before resuming training.

It's not that a rep at LT pace produces more effective stimulus and adaptation than a rep at 5k pace, it's that by staying true to a pace like LT rep after rep, workout after workout, week after week, month after month, year after year allows an athlete to be remarkably consistent and get in much more total training, stimulus and adaptation in the long term than if they are blasting more than a few key workouts.

Another perspective - Jakob says others need to work harder than they are in order to compete with him, then chides others for overtraining. What he really means is that he trains incredibly hard by not overtraining. If he does two double threshold days, a short hill day, and a long run (even if it isn't that long), that is 6 substantial sessions per week. He is working very hard! The only reason he is able to do it (assuming no chemical enhancement) is that he very carefully controls his effort level in these sessions and on his recovery days, and does not overdo any of these sessions.

Didn't wejo post something similar in the early days of letsrun -- more mileage and really slow down on the easy days:

letsrun.com

Wejo Speaks: Why I Sucked in College

Weldon Johnson

By Weldon Johnson September 29, 2006 Editor's Note: Weldon Johnson, "Wejo", is a co-founder of LetsRun.com. Since founding this website in 2000, he went

Open link

Fact, you're wrong. To someone running 16+ for 5k, 7 minute pace is going to be easy.

18 minute 5k'ers like you, maybe not quite so easy as your inabilities will hinder you from doing that.

Says the guy who just ran a set of 6 x 800m, all under 2 minutes with two 1:49s at the end of the set.

“Most of the time overtraining is just another word for under-resting or
under-eating. Of course, overtraining is a real thing, and, of course,
you need to beware of it. However, if your gains stall, I recommend you
first look at the things you’re doing outside of the gym to recover from
your workouts. It’s more likely the problem lies there and not with
what you do inside the gym.” Arnold Schwarzenegger