Ingebrigtsen is an amazing talent, however, has been outkicked in the 1500m by Brits who run more volume.
Ingebrigtsen runs 180 km/week during base phase. That is more than those brits do. He would also completely demolish them in a 5000m race. A guy like Almgren never do long runs a he has a better pb in both 5000m and hm than Farah.
The more important indicator is weekly mileage. Also Kessler is more 800/1500 than 1500/5k. Think as you aim more towards 5k the long run becomes more important.
Snell did not have anyone do anything. It was Arthur Lydiard who had Magee and co., do long runs.
Snell did become a noted exercise physiologist. When asked what he would change about his training, looking back, he said, "very little."
There are examples of outliers at both ends though. Sure, there are the athletes who manage 100-120 kms per week and somehow race well internationally. Then there are the Mo Farah and Cameron Levins of the world who would run 160 - 180 kms per week for Farah and 200 -plus for Levins. Their fastest performances are in the 2000m distance not the 5000m/10,000m/marathon that they competed in.
Farah: 3:28.81 in the 1500 and 8:03.40 in the two mile.
Levins: 8:14.69 in the two mile and 4:55.35 in the 2000m.
Neither competed at that distance regularly.
The cardiac efficiency allowed them to take in and utilize oxygen better, even at lactate-spewing efforts.
Sifan Hassan's third best event is the 1500, which is a European record. She trains around 120 miles (193 km) per week. She holds 11 national or European records from the 1000m distance to the marathon - another athlete with great range.
Walker was up to 110 miles per week. Long before the super shoes he ran 3:32/3:49.
Ingebrigtsen is an amazing talent, however, has been outkicked in the 1500m by Brits who run more volume.
Of course, you are right, it is Lydiard who prescribed the long runs. I meant to write "Lydiard" but wrote "Snell" instead, my mistake.
Here is John Walker's training at one stage of his career. I note:
1) 90 minute long run max during general conditioning period and after.
2) 5 x 1000m at 3k-5k pace during general conditioning period. Not very Lydiard-esque!
3) Saturday tempo run must be a misprint, probably more like 3:00 to 3:45/k.
4) Walker saying 80 mi/wk while not racing and 60 mi/wk while racing was his mileage.
5) These are described as "typical weeks of training" so maybe there were other weeks with other stuff, including longer long runs.
Ingebrigtsen is an amazing talent, however, has been outkicked in the 1500m by Brits who run more volume.
Ingebrigtsen runs 180 km/week during base phase. That is more than those brits do. He would also completely demolish them in a 5000m race. A guy like Almgren never do long runs a he has a better pb in both 5000m and hm than Farah.
Almgren does do long runs during the base phase especially if he is preparing for the HM, but he has explicitly stated that the long run is overrated for a 5k / 10k runner compared to total volume, especially during the competition phase.
And he is currently the best 10k runner in Europe.
This post was edited 12 seconds after it was posted.
Just got back from my long run. Ran first half easy, second half subthreshold, and last mile cool down. See you on the start line and hope you enjoy the backside view!
former sub 4 guy - during track season my long run was 45-50 minutes since my standard runs were 30-35. Occasionally I'd hit 60+ minutes during XC or in the summer. Mostly done around 6:30-7:00 pace. Sometimes would start slower and work down to 6:00.
No one was going to run a mile in 3:48 in the 60s. The record that Snell broke was 3:54.5. He'd have had to improve the record by almost six seconds. You have to back to 1861 when the record went from 4:55 to 4:49 to see that sort of improvement. The biggest improvement since came when Elliott took 3.7 seconds from Ibbotson's time to that 3:54.5. Snell's second record could have been much faster than 3:54.1 but his pacing was not at all good. On top of that Snell was probably more suited to the 800/880. He struggled with distance, that was a big reason Lydiard had him doing those long runs, so it's not surprising if his 800 record is the qualitatively better one.
Well, no one was going to run a mile under 4 minutes, until they did. No one was going to run a mile under 3:50, until they did.
You wrote of Snell, "He struggled with distance, that was a big reason Lydiard had him doing those long runs..." but didn't Snell have everyone do the 22 mile hilly run, including Halberg and Magee who did not struggle with distance?
Snell's conversion from 800m (1:44.3) to the mile (3:54) was not that great despite 22 mile hilly long runs. Since other runners have better conversions from 800m to 1500m/mile even without such long runs, doesn't that call the importance of the long run into question?
Eventually someone ran a mile in under four minutes but no one did it when the record was 4:05. Records improve in fairly small increments. Okay, you don't like the long run and use Snell's mile time to try to make a point that his 22 mile runs weren't necessary and evidently aren't considering that those runs were instrumental in getting him to his superior 800 time, which is what he believed.
I don't know what you mean when you say Snell had everyone do 22 mile runs. Snell never coached anyone. But you're cherry picking here. You find one "inferior" performance from one of Lydiard's runners (you're a tough audience), ignore everything else, and use that performance to call the importance of the long run into question.
And I'll add this. Cerutty had his guys do long runs. Elliott was the first mile record holder to do them. Subsequently all record holders have done them in some form or other, generally less than 22 miles, with the possible exception of Filbery Bayi, I don't know much about what he did.
From Snell's book 'From Olympian to Scientist', "Research in Sweden by my PhD supervisor, Dr Phil Gollnick, showed that during exercise of moderate intensity the depletion of muscle glycogen occurs first in the slow-twitch fibres and then, after an hour, in fast-twitch fibres as well. According to Henneman's size principle, the slow-twitch fibres, which are connected to small motor neurons, are activated first. As the exercise intensity increases, fast-twitch fibres connected to large motor neurons are recruited to provide the additional force.
Gollnick's finding indicated that, as slow-twitch fibres became depleted of their glycogen and we're unable to contract, fast-twitch fibres took over. On the assumption that the adaptation of individual muscle fibres occurs only if the fibre is used, moderate-pace running over an extended duration of one and a half hours or more results in a training effect on fast-twitch fibres."
I think someone me tioned John Walker had most sub 4 minute miles. I believe that honor belongs to American Steve Scott. 136 sub 4 miles if I recall. Not sure about his training?
I think someone me tioned John Walker had most sub 4 minute miles. I believe that honor belongs to American Steve Scott. 136 sub 4 miles if I recall. Not sure about his training?
Some years back when US miling was struggling Scott said in an interview that he thought the problem was that milers weren't doing enough volume. Around the same time Ralph Doubell said in an interview that his Australian 800 record stood for as long as it did because Aussie 800 guys weren't doing enough volume.
Well, no one was going to run a mile under 4 minutes, until they did. No one was going to run a mile under 3:50, until they did.
You wrote of Snell, "He struggled with distance, that was a big reason Lydiard had him doing those long runs..." but didn't Snell have everyone do the 22 mile hilly run, including Halberg and Magee who did not struggle with distance?
Snell's conversion from 800m (1:44.3) to the mile (3:54) was not that great despite 22 mile hilly long runs. Since other runners have better conversions from 800m to 1500m/mile even without such long runs, doesn't that call the importance of the long run into question?
Eventually someone ran a mile in under four minutes but no one did it when the record was 4:05. Records improve in fairly small increments. Okay, you don't like the long run and use Snell's mile time to try to make a point that his 22 mile runs weren't necessary and evidently aren't considering that those runs were instrumental in getting him to his superior 800 time, which is what he believed.
I don't know what you mean when you say Snell had everyone do 22 mile runs. Snell never coached anyone. But you're cherry picking here. You find one "inferior" performance from one of Lydiard's runners (you're a tough audience), ignore everything else, and use that performance to call the importance of the long run into question.
And I'll add this. Cerutty had his guys do long runs. Elliott was the first mile record holder to do them. Subsequently all record holders have done them in some form or other, generally less than 22 miles, with the possible exception of Filbery Bayi, I don't know much about what he did.
According to published articles, Ovett generally did not run over 10 miles in training, although 2 x 10 once a week appears to have been pretty typical.
I’ve recently found out that a lot of elite athletes up to 10k that don’t do long runs. They run huge volumes because of double or even triple days, so saying that a long run isn’t necessary for hobby joggers who want to improve their 5k PB because the pro’s don’t do it, isn’t quite right.
Found that as I've gotten older I can do fairly long threshold work consistently week after week (true strength), but absolutely suck at legit long runs over about two hours. Long runs are the weakest aspect of my training (very much the opposite used to be true). Suspect it's from how I've optimized my fitness curve over the years. So it depends on the race and your natural inclinations imo.
This is my experience as well. I could run 1:16 half, 2:40 marathon at 23, 1:15/2:38 at 24, now in my mid 30s, I run more like 1:16/2:45, although I run the same mileage and probably run more long runs than before. I thought you are supposed to get better conversions to longer distances as you age... And the super shoes - they do nothing for me.
From Snell's book 'From Olympian to Scientist', "Research in Sweden by my PhD supervisor, Dr Phil Gollnick, showed that during exercise of moderate intensity the depletion of muscle glycogen occurs first in the slow-twitch fibres and then, after an hour, in fast-twitch fibres as well. According to Henneman's size principle, the slow-twitch fibres, which are connected to small motor neurons, are activated first. As the exercise intensity increases, fast-twitch fibres connected to large motor neurons are recruited to provide the additional force.
Gollnick's finding indicated that, as slow-twitch fibres became depleted of their glycogen and we're unable to contract, fast-twitch fibres took over. On the assumption that the adaptation of individual muscle fibres occurs only if the fibre is used, moderate-pace running over an extended duration of one and a half hours or more results in a training effect on fast-twitch fibres."
Sure. But is that more or less effective than running at say MP where you can recruit those same FT fibers? Hence the while threshold craze where you can fast enough to recruit those fibers and slow enough to get in volume.
In the end a lot of this comes down to what is a long run? Some 90min run. Sure. It doesn’t require much recovery time. Start banging out 2 hours+ runs and you could be spending energy that would be better spent elsewhere when running HM and under distances…
Eventually someone ran a mile in under four minutes but no one did it when the record was 4:05. Records improve in fairly small increments. Okay, you don't like the long run and use Snell's mile time to try to make a point that his 22 mile runs weren't necessary and evidently aren't considering that those runs were instrumental in getting him to his superior 800 time, which is what he believed.
I don't know what you mean when you say Snell had everyone do 22 mile runs. Snell never coached anyone. But you're cherry picking here. You find one "inferior" performance from one of Lydiard's runners (you're a tough audience), ignore everything else, and use that performance to call the importance of the long run into question.
And I'll add this. Cerutty had his guys do long runs. Elliott was the first mile record holder to do them. Subsequently all record holders have done them in some form or other, generally less than 22 miles, with the possible exception of Filbery Bayi, I don't know much about what he did.
According to published articles, Ovett generally did not run over 10 miles in training, although 2 x 10 once a week appears to have been pretty typical.
I could swear I read that Ovett did longer runs somewhat regularly but could well be wrong. But a day with a couple 10s is probably going to get you most of the benefits of a longer run. I remember seeing that Ian Thompson did 30 miles on Sundays. It got me to a phase where I was doing a 28 to 30 mile run on weekends which as far as I could tell did nothing but get me to dread weekends. Recently I learned that he did that as three 10 mile runs.
I used to know a guy called Jack Maheurin, probably spelled incorrectly, who was a low 2:20s marathoner and was getting a Ph.D in exercise physiology. He said that in his research he found that there was a damaging enzyme released into your muscles when a run went longer than an hour. So he never went longer than that in training. His weekend "long run" was three ten mile runs in about 58-59 minutes. But I've never seen any other reference to that enzyme.
