Should slower runners train by time instead of distance?

Sure seems like it. Most proponents of time will have 5k runners do something like 4 x mile in 5 minutes for sub 16 guys and then 4 x 5 minute repeats for slower runners. Are you suggesting having the slower people do something like 10 x 5 minutes since it is unrelated to the faster group?

No, I’ve consistently said the goal should be time and not distance. So if it’s 4 x mile @ ~5min for faster runners, it should be 4 x 5 min for slower runners; that is at least if the goal of the workout is to work on pace at or around vo2max.

In significantly longer races, there is an argument to be made for making the key goal of workouts different. In this regard, going by distance can accidentally make more sense. For instance, a runner doing a HM under an hour is looking primarily at threshold pace. A runner doing a HM over two hours is really doing a physiologically different event (for them) and would be better served by marathon style workouts.

I had an adult casual training group where all the runners (no matter how slow) ran "400m" repeats together. Faster runners were in lane 9, typical runners were in lanes 1-3, and the slowest runners got a head start. Everyone finished together. It gave such a great sense of community, and it meant we all trained by time. The goal was to finish together, and if someone was running too fast, they were encouraged to move out a lane.

I think this would be great for highschool coaches to adopt.

That is precisely what I said earlier when you said you wouldn't use the time from the faster workout to develop the time workout for the slower runners. Now that we know, why is that a good workout when there was no science used to come up with the distance based workout? Maybe you should develop a workout out of the sky of 5 x 4 minutes for the slow runners and then have the fast runners do the same thing.

I’d prefer if you quoted what I said, as I don’t understand your attempts to paraphrase what I’ve written in this thread. The general feeling I get is that you’ve misunderstood.

That's not how physiology works.

Vo2 max does not correspond to a set distance, but time.

You can only hold vo2 max for 6-8 minutes (perhaps slightly longer in highly trained athletes, and slightly less in undertrained runners). Therefore, the closer the effort is to that all-out 8 minutes, the higher percentage of vo2 max a runner can sustain.

Therefore, for a 15 minute effort, runner A can sustain perhaps 95% vo2 max. If the same runner did a 20 minute effort, he/she could only sustain a lower portion of vo2 max, perhaps 93%.

It's also worth noting that Runner A could likely also sustain a higher portion of vo2 max for a 20 minute effort than Runner B, because Runner B likely isn't as well trained.

Well trained athletes can not only hold their vo2 max for longer, they can also sustain higher percentages of it for longer. That's why the best marathoners in the world are running close to 90% vo2 max for 2 hours, while your average club runner would struggle to do that for a 10k.

This.

We have the convention of labeling workouts by distance-pace, so 5x1k at 5k-pace. But an elite runs 5k at 13:00 and a new runner might run it at 26:00. The second repeat takes twice as long, and thus this is not the same workout for them as it is for the first runner.

A better way to approach is to have workouts defined by time-all-out effort. So if the workout is 5x1k at 5k-pace for an elite runner, it should be translated as 5x1k at 13-min-all-out-effort, which is 5x2:36 at 13-min-all-out-effort. When you take this approach the second hypothetical runner from above will have 5x0.5k at 13-min-all-out-effort which is 5x2:36 at 13-min-all-out-effort (which is probably a little faster than 2.5k pace for them).

This is also exactly why an hour at MP effort is much more challenging and taxing for an elite than an hour at MP effort for a slow hobby jogger. Ideally all workouts should be thought of as time-at-all-out-effort. If an elite wants to do a 1h MP run, to emulate that a hobby jogger should do maybe 1h 30k-effort run. If they are much slower (i.e. 4 hour marathoner), they should run that hour at their half-marathon effort.

But in the end this mistranslation of workouts probably doesn't make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. Run quite a bit and do same fast running (and/or race) every once in a will probably get you to 90% of your potential.

What workout would an elite 10k runner do? 5 x 2k at race pace. That is why a 26 minute 5k runner doing 5x5:00 at race pace makes more sense than 5x2:30. So many of you want to have them do the same amount of time of training as an elite 5k runner even though their body goes through the same time and effort as an elite 10k runner in a race.

My man, this is the problem with your contributions to this thread. The points you’ve made have already been made fivefold with nuanced looks at what the goal of the workout actually is:

1. Is it race specific? For a significantly slower runner, the distance 5km is physiologically a different event, and therefore the workout could be done on distance *within reason*. The risk on scaling things this way is that thresholds aren’t all evenly spaced, so there’s a good chance the workout is poorly designed. From your example above: How many workouts are designed around repeats at your 26min maximum effort pace at any level? This seems like a bit of a no man’s land between vo2max and threshold, and might be overly taxing without really giving the body the right signals to adapt.

2. Is it a discrete physiological goal, i.e. is it targeting a particular energy system or threshold? Then it should be done by time.

It seems wiser to me to look at what the goal event represents physiologically for the runner at hand, then do time based workouts targeting systems that are specific to that event for them.

Making the same points as others have already made, but positioning oneself as some kind of expert that is smarter than the rest through weak language like “so many of you” is not adding to the discussion. In fact, I don’t really know if there’s much more to be added to this discussion. Nuance obviously comes in balancing these time tailored workouts out over a team with greatly varying ability, or making sure to communicate effectively what the goals are, but that’ll be highly case-specific.

How would you suggest a 29 min 5k runner train to run a 26 min 5k?

You are confused. The poster is correct that if a beneficial workout for an elite 5k runner is 5 x 1k and for 10k would be 5 x2k, then a beneficial workout for a 26 minute 5k runner would be as 5 x 1k which would take the same amount of time as the 5 x 1k for the elite runner. It is essentially the same effort level that the 10k runner is doing for their 27 minute 10k.

Assume a hobby jogger runs 10k at 56:00 and wants to emulate the training of an elite who runs 10k at 28:00. If the elite's workout is 5x2k at race-pace, that is simply a 5x5:40 at 28-minute-all-out-effort pace. If the hobby jogger wants to do the same type of workout they should do 5x5:40 at 28-minute-all-out-effort pace, which would be little slower than 5k pace (27:10) for the hobby jogger.

So 5x2k at 10k-pace for elite runner is the roughly same effort with similar adaptations with 5x1k at 5k-pace for the hobby jogger (rounding some numbers to make it easier).

Both would be running 5x5:40-ish at 28-minute-all-out-effort pace (plus/minus 15 seconds as hobby joggers 5k pace is actually 5:26, not 5:40).

However, since workouts are defined by distance and and distance-pace (i.e. 2k at 10k-pace), the hobby jogger does the wrong workout by doing 2k at 10k-pace if their goal is to emulate the elite athlete. The elites workout is quite different than the hobby joggers workout. The solution is to define workouts by time and time pace (5:40 at 28-min-race-pace).

it's funny when relative to serious distance runners i would have been your "slower runner" -- at least at first, when i began just over 20 -- but every time i offer my experience it gets downvoted and the fast kids blabber among themselves about how to theoretically train those like me.

i am going to ignore the downvotes and keep talking til someone hears.

i am telling you that the kids like me -- who aren't already the milers from junior high track -- will usually be 2 types.

kids who play other sports, but don't have a distance background at all.

kids who never played sports.

for group 1, kids from other sports likely got nudged to do XC because they performed well in some sort of quasi-distance test. i was usually a sprinter/hurdler in TF but when the athletics period did the mile as a regular test i would be top 5, ahead of some of the actual distance people. so every summer i would get bugged to do XC. the thing with group 1 is we are usually busy. i was playing soccer from august to may. so it's like, you're asking me to add more to my plate. my plate usually meant 1-6 soccer games a week plus 2 practices, independent of what you want to load me up with. and what i would show you in a mile reflected already doing a lot of running and being picked for teams in part based on footspeed and sufficient endurance to play well for most/all of a game.

for group 2, they are new to sports, they start from zero mileage. their bodies may not be fully toned. they don't know their right pace. they have built up no endurance to know what they even have. i remember when i first started playing team sports feeling like i was going to puke. by college i was the guy the soccer team could leave on the field all game and not sub.

y'all are group 3. you have been running distance since grade 7. you are not at zero. you run fairly fast. you run all the time. if you have more than one sport, it's usually not at the same exact time. you can thus dedicate to distance demands without (a) hurting your other sport, (b) overcooking yourself by adding two sports of work together, or (c) pretending like kids walking in the door with no sports are ready to do 40 miles a week.

i think group 1 needs to be pitch counted. reduced mileage or run to a time limit. i am already doing 3 hours of running at soccer practice plus at least one 90 minute game on top of your work.

group 1 can run with your best runners -- and will usually dutifully do so at practice -- but shouldn't be doing their full shift of work if you want them healthy and quick on saturday.

i think group 2 needs to be ramped up which is its own pitch counting. if someone is new and you want to keep them interested and working hard, ask a little less but demand they try to keep up for that chunk. otherwise you get someone like i was when i first started, feeling like i wanted to puke, and just dragging myself upfield. and they run 25 minutes. and you have them run 40 miles. and for someone like that to do 40 miles it's just jogging, and not very fast.

what you really want to do, IMO, is have that noob working hard but within a pitchcount limit, shorter distance or time. run as fast as you can as far as you can. rest. do it again. it's like what you're asking group 3 but they simply don't have the foundation.

a lot of XC training is premised on group 3. group 1 can do it but you should be the adult in the room and shut them down after an amount of time or miles, or else they are actually working harder than group 3 counting their other work, and they will blow up. group 2 may have group 3 in them but only after some time. to me a lot of people can give good effort for a chunk. tell them to do that chunk plus some bit.

to me a lot of teams are built for group 3, and tend to blame groups 1 and 2 for not handling things. i think it offends your group 3 sympathies to have folks say they are tired, or run slow. i am telling you the reduced mile or time limits are how to keep groups 1 and 2 on the team, and try and ramp them to similar effect as group 3.

re group 3, i would defer to the distance runner specialists on what is best training for them, but it's weird that HS mileage sounds like it's approaching college when the race distance is a fraction. the answer sounds like it is always run 1 more mile than the next guy. my college soccer coach seemed to have this approach and we peaked week 1 of every season, and like we could use more shooting practice to score goals and less running. a mile is a foot race. i think for all but the best they'd do better with more footspeed as opposed to more mileage. as it was my experience i could take my 300H/400/soccer speed and with much distance training at all mop the floor with half the XC team.

to me you need to try and find your kids' speed at shorter distances or you're just training up joggers from group 3. or later recommending they do speed work.

you know who could beat me at the mile from XC? usually athletic milers who could run low 50s 400s and could maybe have been bad sprinters if they wanted.

I like this thread, but it's cornfusing.🌽

If you adapt a much faster runner's training, based on time, then you are training for a shorter, probably non-existent event.

Both. Time first. Then distance. Work your way up in time until a point. The you work on increasing the distance as youget faster and start incorporating tempos and speed work and the such.

NVM, I didn't read the entire question. You guys are making this way too complicated. I'ma just say say go with Jack Daniel's on this one. He talks about how much time you should spend on each type of interval and workouts. Probably better to do it based on time rather than distance. As Jack Daniel's says, going longer than that time you are just beating yourself up worse and not getting anymore training benefit.

It is hard to go against the coach with so much science behind his methods.