The secret behind Britain's young female distance prodigies (good read!)

ukathleticscoach wrote:

When you are down the track half the club coaches never even discuss training with the juniors apart from the 2 inteval sessions they do every wk

Quite true. Even as an adult, I don't think any coach in any club I was ever in actually discussed "how to go for a steady run", or mumbled even vaguely about total mileage. If asked they'd say something like "10 more miles than last year" but nothing about how to do it. I suspect this is why so many youngsters think they have to push every run hard.

In my humble opinion, the best way for any runner to develop (almost regardless of age), after they have gotten past their initial acclimation to running, is as follows:

1) follow the stress and recover principle, one without the other doesn't work nearly as well. Some people get caught up in the hard work and never fully allow the recovery and thus don't get the benefit they could from that hard work.

2) work on a variety of paces, from short (50 meter) all out sprints, to 800 meter pace intervals, to mile paced intervals (Daniel's Repetition Intervlas), to 3-5k paced VO2 Max intervals, to longer 8k-10k pace repeats, to lactate threshold runs (15k-HM) to longer marathon pace tempo runs to even steady state long runs done at 20-30 seconds slower than marathon pace. Ignore one area for very long and you'll develop a weakness (weaklink in the chain) that will eventually hold back the progress of other areas.

3) Establish a consistent mico-cycle and meso-cycle design to your training, where you include stress days, recovery days, ancillary work and your pattern for stress days. Include the speeds talked about in #2 as well as long runs. Then be very consistent in your execution, taking a long term view that recognizes that no one workout is paramount but rather the whole meso-cycle of workouts stacked one meso-cycle after another on a consistent basis that will bring about improvement.

4) Within the framework of your micro-cycle and meso-cycle very slowly and incrementally build up your capacity. Adding a few miles/kilometers to your micro-cycle after you body has fully adapted to the previous mileage level adds a small stress and sparks improvement. This process has to be done slowly and in small increments in order to be sustainable. This is another area where many people mess up, they aren't patient enough and try and ramp up too fast. As your capacity increases the number of reps you can do or length of your tempo runs will increase proportionatley as well. Keep your stress workout lengths in the correct proportion to your mileage.

5) Similiarly to #4, very slowly and gradually over time increase your frequency of runs. Build till you are running 7 days per week and then start adding in secondary runs until you ultimately reach 13 runs per week or whatever is the right number for you. But just as talked about in #4 you have to do this very slowly and incrementally over a long period of time (i.e many years).

You are careful and follow the 5 principles above I think you will be very successful, balanced, and stay away from injuries.

I can not tell from the article if this group follows all of these principles, but if they are I'd expect that we continue to hear/read about their success stories.

ray wrote:

You are absolutely correct sir. Most Kenyan kids spend the majority of their youth watching TV, playing video games, getting rides to the club, school, town, game, etc., eating crap food and texting their mates 18 hours a day. All at sea level in $150.00 shoes, I might add.

No moron, but most Kenyan teen-agers are not getting coached by experienced coaches, getting feedback by nutritionists and NOT running 70 mile weeks. And I don't understand the remark about 150.00 shoes. How would an American kid with 150.00 dollar shoes be a disadvantage? If anything, hAving the best running shoes will a slight advantage. And another thing, most of the American runnin ggeeks I knew back in high school avoided snacks and soda. Meanwhile, kenya is one of the highest per capita consumers of cola drinks in the fukin world.

captainrobbo wrote:

Quite true. Even as an adult, I don't think any coach in any club I was ever in actually discussed "how to go for a steady run", or mumbled even vaguely about total mileage. If asked they'd say something like "10 more miles than last year" but nothing about how to do it. I suspect this is why so many youngsters think they have to push every run hard.

Off topic - greetings captainrobbo! It's been twenty-something years.

Back on topic ... If I remember correctly, the Aldershot age-group girls teams have often been extremely good, going back decades. So there's probably some reasonably good evidence on how many have continued to shine beyond their early 20s.

Colin! Great to hear from you again. Where are you these days? I can be reached as [my login name]@gmail.com, or as [my login name] on facebook, where quite a few from our Uni days have hooked up. (In fact an amazing number of the old gang were at the Surrey League a few hours ago, still scoring points in our forties...)

Letsrunners, you are in the presence of greatness. Colin was once perhaps the world's leading track-and-field trivia specialist. I watched once in amazement in a pub when we turns to quiz him on track trivia. Nobody could catch him out. Finally someone asked something like "what was the inside leg measurement of the girlfriend of the silver medallist in the hammer at [Insert some championship here...]" and he KNEW.

great article. not sure how a 'well marked' course has runners of that caliber doing 3:30 1k's and 1:56 to 2:06 600s, though maybe the hills were tough. but what is particularly good about the article is that it shows, without the author holding this opinion, why Britain is developing female distance prodigies without developing great senior female distance runners. They don't have a clue how to warm up or cool down properly. You could argue that picking up the pace about 20 minutes before a hard workout or race is going to help with the lactic acid, but you still wouldn't drop to that pace so quickly or hold it that long and you wouldn't cool down at threshold pace. And then going hard at workouts is great and they are competitive, but racing your workouts is not a good idea for long term development. No wonder they are all getting injured.

Uh oh. wrote:

No moron, but most Kenyan teen-agers are not getting coached by experienced coaches, getting feedback by nutritionists and NOT running 70 mile weeks. And I don't understand the remark about 150.00 shoes. How would an American kid with 150.00 dollar shoes be a disadvantage? If anything, hAving the best running shoes will a slight advantage. And another thing, most of the American runnin ggeeks I knew back in high school avoided snacks and soda. Meanwhile, kenya is one of the highest per capita consumers of cola drinks in the fukin world.

Don't understand much of anything, do you? Life must be very lonely for you. We're all here to help. Just doing our part.

trollism wrote:

Do those races test?

I guess it is rather funny. I bet they're certainly laughing on their slow warm-ups. And so are their pimps, oops I mean agents.

No way. If they tested, all the American would be disqualified

Ray L wrote:

Meanwhile, kenya is one of the highest per capita consumers of cola drinks in the fukin world.

[/quote]

Wrong.

here's a great chart on coca cola consumption in different countries around the world as it has grown over time. kenya is fifth in Africa but way, way behind (around a tenth of U.S. consumption per capita) the top consumers. incidentally, in some countries, like number one mexico, people drink coke and other soft drinks because of the oral rehydration salts and because the water in them will not make you sick. but they tend to be more for special occasions, at which people will drink coke after coke or fanta after fanta (pretty nauseating) as if it were beer.

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/ar/pdf/perCapitaConsumption2008.pdf

smit wrote:

Ray L wrote:

Meanwhile, kenya is one of the highest per capita consumers of cola drinks in the fukin world.

Wrong.[/quote]

Hey! I didn't write that!