intervals question?

Someone pissed in your cornflakes this morning?

Don't initiate a donnybrook by responding to any of my posts with "BOLLOCKS" - even if one of them contains an inaccuracy - and we might be able to broker a deal. If my "fizzyology" concerning this widely-accepted principle is out of date, I'm open to correction, but 1) I don't think it is and 2) finding out it was out of date would not imply we'd all better stop doing 10 x 400 fast and stick with only 20 x 400 at slower speeds because the faster pace doesn't bring about the precise changes we once thought it did.

Gee, was that a touch of civility? I'm only surprised "J.O." didn't respond to the "20 x 400 at 600 to 800 pace" remark with "BOLLOCKS."

J.O. = wellnow?

edumacator wrote:

J.O. = wellnow?

Hey, the light at the top floor is on...

Tanya Skagle wrote:

Don't initiate a donnybrook by responding to any of my posts with "BOLLOCKS" - even if one of them contains an inaccuracy - and we might be able to broker a deal. If my "fizzyology" concerning this widely-accepted principle is out of date, I'm open to correction, but 1) I don't think it is and 2) finding out it was out of date would not imply we'd all better stop doing 10 x 400 fast and stick with only 20 x 400 at slower speeds because the faster pace doesn't bring about the precise changes we once thought it did.

It has nothing to do with a principle of physiology being wrong, or out of date. It was your sciolistic attempt at assigning a singular cellular response to athletic training, and attributing that as the reason for a specific kind of workout.

Oh, fwiw, BOLLOCKS! no human being who ever lived could do either of those workouts as written. I'll await Antonio's clarification.

Who else could it be? cabana?

edumacator wrote:

J.O. = wellnow?

No he wasn't. He was talking about long repetitions to simulate race pace, e.g. just like your 10x1K at 10K pace:"... that in the considered long reps - the typical one 1000m/mile/2000m/3000m reps etc - that shall be done with quite complete rest, for the reason that the focus is in (race) pace or quite close and not in the incomplete interval to produce high lactic concentration, "And I still don't see how what you described above is relevant to this discussion. No one was talking about these kind of "long rep" sessions.

well. wrote:

Cabral is talking about more intense long intervals. A session like the one I described above would be completely meaningless with such long recoveries.

rekrunner wrote:

And I still don't see how what you described above is relevant to this discussion. No one was talking about these kind of "long rep" sessions.

Why do so many people wander way off topic?

Back to another thread. 1984 Olympic marathon 1-2-3 mens marathon, 1-2 womens marathon -- you guessed it....

Unless I'm severely mistaken, I think it's meant to be a sarcastic reaction.It's not easy to tell, the way it's written, but it's a reply to "well.", although he named you and "Tanya", but I think it's a reaction to how everyone can speak with authority, confidence, and rich accuracy about "intermittent" training, yet be so "wrong" with some fundamental concepts.I'm not saying your 10x400 at mile pace is fundamentally wrong (heck, I'm often the neophyte just repeating what I heard or read), but I have seen general criticism that Americans do interval training too fast, with too short recoveries, achieving the wrong purpose.

malmo wrote:

Antonio Cabral, unless I'm reading incorrectly or you are not communicating correctly, why you described are workouts that no human being who has ever live could do. Please clarify?

20X400m shall be done in a pace of 600m to 800m pb

10X400m in about 400m to 600m pb.

10 x 400 at 1500m pace and 1:00 rest is about as clean of a metric as it gets in this sport. This one training session is the Lingua franca of distance running, especially for 1500m runners. They all do it. They all understand it. What am I not understanding by your post?

I thought it must be a sidekick invented by J.R., due to his insistence in another thread that performance enhancing drugs are in fact not performance enhancing.

Thanks for the snappy comeback though, malmo. I guess I was foolish to expect any civility from a lazy, unrepentant heel-striker like yourself.

You forgot racist homophobe.

You are right that my 400s pace proposal are not human and impossible to run that workouts on that paces.

My communication it´s an irony based in nonsense to get you aware of your own misundertand and my disagreement with your pace proposal namely 10X400m 1.5k pace with 1:00 rest.

Not everybody takes benefit from that kind of 400s on that 1.5k pace and 1:00 rest.

For instance i did dinner with Carlos Lopes on last month. During the dinner we both did watch his NY WCC win on DVD. One of the 3 world crosses he did win. At one moment of the dinner he remembers me that he rarely did more than 10 times 400m and the best he could do was 64-65 average and he remembers me also that he needed 1:10 to 1:20 stand recovery.

64-65secs is related with Carlos Lopes 5000m pace.

My Conclusion is: may be he did what he did as runner because he did 400s so slow related to the ones he did win over and relate to what you and many more do recommend.

Yes, you sent me a photo of you can Carlos, remember?

Few things I read shock me, but your account of Lopes 10 x 400 is one of them. Heck I had college teammates that could do that workout whose best 10ks were 31:00, in 35 degree F temperature, with a strong swirling wind on a real crappy track. I don't think it ever gets that cold in Portugal does it?

FWIW, I generally took 1:10 jogging 200m recovery.

I would count Lopes as an extreme anomaly then.

When he ran 3:41, what kinds of training did he do? How fast could he run an all-out 400m?

rekrunner wrote:

Unless I'm severely mistaken, I think it's meant to be a sarcastic reaction.

Not sarcasm. Just irony, sweet soft mood reaction.

My deep sarcastic comment that one i keep for the folks that advise intervals with no pace or watch control. This is what is an idea from the period of the man of the cavern that is so outdate that my comment is in sarcasm mood.

Intervals with no watch or pace control. It´s the worst way to do intrevals. Might be good for one runner with experience and pace skill with good pace perception and good effort perception. Might be good for one runner in the ultimate stqge of his training for an important competition.

But intervals with no control as an universal procedure to adoptg or for the neophyte runner, i bet that he starts in faster pace than he woukd finish and i bet that on the day of the run he would do the same, no manage pace aquisition, he will start like a rabbit and will finish like a turtle.

To copy some training approach with the argument that we have seen someone do it and gets lots of success, but copy with no critera or some coach undertand is what gets my sarcasm.

By the way. You are right rekrunner. Different interval training approaches comes from different training concepts.

But the problem it´s that if some approach is better than other one or the other ones.

Oh no no no. That wasn't the intent. First, to clear up the non sequitur here, I can mention one and only one cellular response to training if I want to and it doesn't follow that I see that as the only such response from said training or that it was a "sciolistic attempt" at anything. The fact somebody might read it that way doesn't make it that way.

Now, if fizzy-o-malogical responses were the only reasons for doing a certain workout (and people who do approach it from that angle are missing some of the point), there is unquestionably a whole long list of itty bitty cellular responses that occur at 3k pace which aren't as pronounced at 5k pace (even if you run longer at 5k pace), and - although practically insignificant as stand-alones - the sum of those tiny benefits does carry some weight. If it sounded sciolistic, maybe it's because I only included one of those small benefits. What I am supposed to do? List them all? I didn't have time and I didn't feel like typing anything else at the time anyway. I'm pretty sure nobody knows them all anyway, but if I had listed a dozen more of those little cellular responses, would that make the info less sciolistic? ... or more sciolistic because there was more fizzy-o-crap? Maybe if I added this: "None of these changes is overly significant in itself, but taken together, they confer a slightly different overall benefit than you'd get from running at a slower pace." Something tells me that would still be more than pedantic enough for "J.O.," who came off as snooping around for something to be contentious about. Maybe if I listed none of the cellular responses ... naaah. See my third sentence above. I can mention one if I want to.

In any event, I never did attribute the mitochondrial boost as "the" reason for that workout (IIRC, I mentioned 2 or 3 other benefits to be had). Actually, it's not even "a" reason somebody should choose to do 10 x 400 instead of 20 x 400. It's just one small effect bestowed by having done the work. The other things I mentioned, specifically the variety and the familiarity with another pace, are better as reasons for doing different workouts from time to time.

Obviously there's some kind of misunderstanding on one end or the other regarding those numbers. But as long as we're all piling on ... "20 x 400 at 600 to 800 pace? BOLLOCKS!" from me as well.

I remember you said "training and run(compete) are diffrent animals. There you got the answer why your tammates did faster than Lopes and on that X day he did win over them all. All my life i´vwe seen folk runners that did workouts that can figure on the Guiness Boook of records, but real runs doesn´t stops and recovery, this is the problem.

Some moments ago i said that diffrent training approaches comes from diffrent training concepts.

Namely it´s true that for different interval training approaches. It´s true that Lopes did it that way. I´ve seen doing it that way. Lopes training concept on short intrevals namely the 400s is that the main interest of that kind of 400s is to get race pace perception more than aerobic-anaerobic stimulus that workout can bring. For improve the race pace perception he thinks the runner can´t run 400m in one pace too much distant than the race pace and not faster but sometimes slower tahn race pace.

If he goes for 1500m he did try 5X400m in 60secs but with some 1:30 recovery or some 7-10X300m for 43-44s with some 1:30 to 2:00 recovery.

For 5000m-1000m, cross or road runs he did try 10X400m in about 64-66secs. He says "why i should run for 57s if during the race i don´t run at that pace ?"

Another Lopes training concept that he considers very important is the resistence concept - i guess that in english you say strenght endurance. Reistence is defined by to delay certain pace for long distance. For this resistence training concept he did use long intervals (from 1000m to 3000m) and also tempo runs. This 2 workouts are the Carlos Lopes main training stuff, because are the hard ones to complte, but also the best ones to get the resistence hability or quality.

ps - the pic i sent you it´s not fictional or photoshop management. It´s real and we did both "liquid sport". Wine drink sport, liquid sport !

Ah, well played. I was worried for awhile.

I've seen people who require cones placed every 50m and a timer that emits a loud noise when the runner should be at each cone ... and some of these runners need to use this setup for years before they get any sense of rhythm. Other people seem to set their inner clocks very early in their careers.

Yes, there are many things that some people never see about the inner workings of a successful runner's (or group's) training, not the least important of which is how these runners arrived at their current ability to "train by feel." That is a growth process that normally goes hand-in-hand with improving fitness. Yet many inexperienced people will attempt to adopt some of the successful runner's principles and be improperly prepared (both physically and in understanding) to apply them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said this: "The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble."

Too many people try the methods, sometimes equating them with the principles, but more often failing to recognize how much experience is required to truly understand the principles enough to successfully apply them to a variety of situations or methods.

Agree with you and Sir Ralph. Connect knowledge with experience and vice-versa and concepts with dual-connection with practice tends to an individual approach of every issue. The example of the runner with cones at every 50m is fantastic as argument against my intrevals done with watch what is my own confine proposal.

Leonardo da Vinci said this:

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Antonio Cabral wrote:

Not sarcasm. Just irony, sweet soft mood reaction.

I see from this thread, beyond any training knowledge, I have to brush up on my English (and even some Latin) skills.

I often hear people use "irony" or "ironic" or "ironical" to describe what I would call "sarcasm" or "sarcastic".

Not to mention having to look up words like "donnybrook", and "mulligan" and "sciolistic".

Antonio Cabral wrote:

By the way. You are right rekrunner. Different interval training approaches comes from different training concepts.

Of course you would say I'm right about intervals. 90% of my theoretical research on the subject are from threads you wrote.