Loks like I have to revise my training thanks to Salazar

malmo wrote:

Farah is a 3:33/13:10/26:46 guy who is perfectly built for running, and ran a 60:23 HM on a downhill course with a tailwind after years of consistent training. I was much slower than that, yet ran 61:43 on 4 months training after a long layoff due to injury. Perhaps as Farah adjusts to faster training paces he'll run a HM in the 58:30-59:00 range? (not meant to be offensive)

Yep. It's all about the half.

Ya think Mo might, just maybe, be focused on some distances of a tad more import?

Based on Malmo's 61:43 half, McMillan calc suggests the following training paces:

Easy: 5:28-5:58

Long: 5:28-6:28

Recovery: 6:28-6:58

Anybody familiar enough with his logs to know how most of his runs match up with these suggested ranges?

You have to look at other variables comparing yourself to a guy (Mo, Rupp, etc) that has all the tools to recover as well.

If you were getting blood tests in the Nike Sports Research Lab every week and getting your hormone levels adjusted it is easier to lock into specific paces and recover quicker. One thought to consider is beforehand Mo was running slower because he didn't have all the recovery resources with his other group and coach.

Salazar is probably unintentionally oversimplifying Mo's training for the interview and stating that faster recovery days is the difference in his recent improvement. But it is more likely multiple things outside of just running.

look at the flotrack interview with bernard legat he's all excited that he average 530's for 8 miles so it seems unusual

I found the below quoted post very interesting; I've actually followed a similar pattern in my own training. I'm just wondering besides Mo Farah are there any other athletes or coaches that do this? ie, focus on quantity of mileage some years, and quality of mileage other years. Start with really high mileage and don't worry about the pace, then in later years reduce the mileage and increase the pace. I spent 4 years after college building up to where I could comfortably run 120-140 mi/wk with some workouts/races but a lot of my runs were relaxed pace; this buildup took awhile since I was a 55-60mi/wk type in college. But more recently I've dialed it back to an average of 80-90mi/wk (occasionally will hit 100) but I really go for quality....aside from 2 recovery days per week every other day is either a workout or a steady run at 5:40-6:00 pace, when I'm in shape. Just curious have others done or advised this type of plan?

In my experience, people tend to raise their milage at the expense of pace. Swapping 7 miles at 6:30 for 10 miles at 7:00 isn't going to make much of a difference. And if you're a person who tends to improve more from high intensity rather than high milage (although everyone improves from both), then raising your milage at the expense of pace is a terrible idea.

It took me 2 years to realize this, unfortunately, and I had a coach that didn't realize either. Adding just 2 runs a week of moderate pace was enough that I hit in 3 months what I could only hit with 24 months before (unfortunately I was only back where I had been 3 years before). And I did it feeling stronger, with more energy and better workouts. Oh, and 25 miles/week less.

I think part of what you're seeing is similar to what we saw with Ritz. His body is just responding positively to something that is almost brand new to him(and well planned). Very few elite runners reach this point in there career and can do something almost entirely "new". Ritz and Farah were both doing drastically differnt training than they were right when they switched. Salazar gave them some harder stuff and results followed. It was like building years of base and then tweaking it with some speed. Almost like a 5 year cycle instead of a 4 month cycle.

pre's mustache wrote:

long, slow runs make LONG, slow runners. it's as simple as that.

Are you saying that running slow actually makes you grow taller?