I was referring to alactic speed development, like 40m or hill sprints, not traditional speed work. Not anaerobic intervals with very long rest. Like what Hobbs Kessler does. Traditional speed work isn’t speed development I don’t understand why everyone is confused.
Also, add me to the list of people wanting to get this man in a proper race. The London scene is where he would absolutely run sub 15 and I would say more a 14:30 range. Hope he turns up to the 5k masters nationals which is itself round Battersea, probably hang a medal around his neck now.
I love sirpoc but I just cannot accept that someone with that running form can hit the pace for 14.30. There has to be a limit to it, surely!
I don't understand how this guy knows when to race or doesn't. There's just races randomly thrown in and he paces it like I've never seen before with such strong finishes and then just clicks off PBs like it's nothing. None of this is starting to make any sense to me. The mf ran a marathon 16 days ago and almost breaks 15 I'm guessing pretty much solo on a course that doesn't even look like it makes sense. Make it all make sense. Please.
I would agree that the one thing about Sirpoc that is particularly unique is his ability to rebound from races.
He has nicely outlined a method which many can replicate (adjusting paces slightly). He must be human because he chose this method of training BECAUSE the more standard training was getting him injured.
Yet he repeatedly races with no recovery. Even a 5k ruins my legs for several days. A 10k at even longer. But he can bounce back from a HM with no issue and 2 weeks after a full, does a 10k and a 5k in succession, ending with a PR. That ability is not easily replicated.
I remember a poster on here, AverageForFun, who was almost as fast and he recovered well from races w/in a day or so but he was very dialed in to his nutrition, sleep, recovery, lifting, etc. However I don't know if he ever knew about NSM and he hasn't posted here in some time.
This is a genuine post. Maybe it's just me, but can someone get this guy in like a proper race or something? One of the London ones? He's 41 and this can't last forever but this thread and this crazy MFs journey has me hooked. Must be one of those influencer types or something that can make this happen?
It's criminal he's running solo around courses that look like someone put a pin in a random map generator.
i can't be the only one who wants to know what would happen if you plonked him in the middle of Battersea park. I'm not even sure the guy knows how ridiculous at this point what he is doing is, given the pretty unique training, outsider approach and not forgetting again this is all happening at middle aged. That time today that he just ran solo , would win the British Masters National Championship in the 5k. He came to the thread as a average club hobby jogger. It's just wild.
I'm not really one for circle jerks, but hobby joggers gotta have someone to aspire to and if this seemingly really normal dude isn't it , I don't know who is. This thread makes me believe I can do all these things and run these times and not be a douche, have a normal job and be middle aged. I mean I know it's not going to be the case, but I also know looking at what this lunatic is getting up to is gonna serve me better than watching these idiots on YouTube flying to Keyna or worrying what Jakob is doing.
This thread should be pinned at the top like "LRC has the softest T-shirts/merch" and other ones, etc.
Would love to see more random LRC peeps (both genders) or advancedrunning peeps bust out this training out of nowhere (like markymark on reddit) and beat the influencers like Choi, FlofuziDemoor™ and the downhill ladies in Utah, etc.
The thing I don't understand in your situation is that these paces are meant to be roughly your 15k-30k race paces. We run far less than those distances in the workout though, and with frequent rest breaks on top of that. So these really should feel quite easy, I'm not sure why you feel so close to disaster with 1-2 reps left. All I can think of is that either your HR expectations are wrong (even though you said it shouldn't be off) or your HR measuring device is inaccurate. Have you tried ditching HR and focusing entirely on pace? How did you calculate your paces? Maybe double check your paces line up with your fitness by doing a 10k race or something? Otherwise I don't have many ideas
I'm using the target paces from lactrace.com's calculator. I thought HR was inaccurate on my watch so I use a dedicated Polar HR sensor that seems to be pretty accurate and consistent. I haven't raced for a while, so maybe I'll sign up for one and recalibrate based on that. I will say I've always felt the gaps between my mile - 5k - 10k - HM - M paces is way more than what seem to be estimated. More like 30-45 seconds apart than 15 seconds apart, which probably indicates just a lack of sufficient base.
30%+ of weekly volume LR is absolutely too much for someone still working into this style of training and trying to build volume. That functions as another hard day so you're running 4 hard days a week in a somewhat unfamiliar system -that's gonna leave anybody struggling.
You need to reduce something in the sub-T workouts -not sure it matters a whole lot whether it's pace, duration, or dropping to 2 sessions /week. In the spirit of this method I would choose a reduction in pace to keep up the session duration (would probably give the best training load). If you are not going to reduce the long run duration you should drop to only 2 sub-T sessions /week.
Also worth considering ditching the method altogether for a while and just building up more mileage with mostly/all easy running first. I bet your problems would resolve if you got comfortable at 45-50 mi/week and then came back to the method.
Do you have any recent time trial performance to cross reference with your HR target with? Sometimes HR alone can be tricky for any number of reasons.
No recent time trial, so maybe I'll hit a race in the next week or two and recalibrate. And just to clarify, I'm not doing 3 workouts + long run of 11 miles in a week ever. I'm usually doing 2 workouts, 2 easy days, plus the long run but occasionally I'll do 3 workouts and 3 easy days instead. The workout durations are all in the 20-30 minutes quality time range.
Maybe I phrased it poorly because I mostly agree with this.
My issue is with what's commonly prescribed on Lactrace and in the Strava group which more or less boils down to: Run 10x3 minutes at LT, 5x6 minutes at HM pace, and 3x10 minutes at 30K pace.
Most people won't be able to measure lactate so they just roll with that, but to me it seems highly unlikely that 3x10 at 2:30h pace (for a 20 min 5k runner) or 5x6 at 1:30h pace would get you to 2.5-3.5 mmol / the same effort. So they might actually often run the easy runs too hard but the workouts too easy.
Even the lactrace numbers don't make sense for slower runners such as myself (22+ min 5k racer), they suggest running 8-12 X 1k at 4:42-4:52/km OR 8-12 for 3-4 mins at the same pace.
It doesn't take a math genius to see that these are not at all equivalent, even though they are presented as such.
This is why I think if you want to use time, it's best to extrapolate from pace to begin with. The timed reps summarized on page 60 just work out nicely for the population under a 20min 5K or so, which is likely a lot of people willing to dig 250ish pages into the weeds on a training method on a running forum.
I love sirpoc but I just cannot accept that someone with that running form can hit the pace for 14.30. There has to be a limit to it, surely!
Well he's not exactly at the limit when it comes to stride length is he! A benefit of running at 50000spm is the other variable has plenty of room for improvement.
I love sirpoc but I just cannot accept that someone with that running form can hit the pace for 14.30. There has to be a limit to it, surely!
As someone who has raced sirpoc in real life, I would be shocked if he can't run 14:3x at Battersea in one of the quick events. Especially as he will be in an A race. I have ran 15:22 there and sirpoc has ran away from me in a 10k like I wasn't there and beaten me by over 2 minutes. I haven't ran the course he did last night myself, but it's a minimum of 25 seconds slower than Battersea, probably more if you get into the fast start fields. On the 5k he holds the course record for at his local parkrun, I've ran 16:41 there for context. He is a minute faster there which I find quite frankly ridiculous for anyone who has run that course, which I doubt is really anyone else reading this global forum.
Sirpoc runs a lot of this easy runs at 4:20 per km - This is similar to a 20 min 5k runner running easy at 5:47 per km -The reason he does this? So he can run everyday, so he is fresh for his next workout, so he can stack week on week of quality work on top of each other for 3 years. I see so many people on here and Strava running way too fast, they just dont understand how little is gained on easy runs by running 10 or 20 secs per km faster.
I think this actually confuses people a lot, especially the people newer to running. They look at his easy runs at 4:20 min/km and don't realise just how slow that is for a guy who is for all intents and purposes in sub 15min shape. And they also don't realise just how much better at running someone who is running a 15min 5km is than a 20min 5km runner.
I reckon I am currently in about 17min 5k shape, maybe a tad under and I am doing my easy runs around 5min/km and often have to slow down from that, and to be honest, that really isn't very enjoyable a lot of the time.
I genuinely being disciplined on easy runs is the hardest obstacle to overcome for most people I think. It really hurts your ego to run that slow, it can often just feel crap to do, and running too fast on easy runs really has a completely unnoticeable effect on training in the short term (running easy runs fast probably even increases your fitness a little bit more quickly in the short term), and it only really messes you up after doing it for weeks or months in a row. Then people think they have plateaued (or become injured) because of the sessions, or because there is no speed work or no hard long run but it was really doing all your easy runs at 4:30 min/km when you should be doing them at 5:15 min/km and never really recovering from any of the work.
Yeah, governing the easy runs has certainly been harder than anything related to the workouts themselves. Running ~9:00/mi feels ridiculous, and it still takes effort to keep it there even now that I'm familiar enough with it to actually feel like I'm running while at that pace. But I'll be damned if I don't feel much, much better as I add volume.
I was referring to alactic speed development, like 40m or hill sprints, not traditional speed work. Not anaerobic intervals with very long rest. Like what Hobbs Kessler does. Traditional speed work isn’t speed development I don’t understand why everyone is confused.
What do you want to gain from this workout? Does the energy expended give the adaption rewards?
Improved top speed with the energy expended being nervous system fatigue and not the muscular skeletal fatigue you would get from anaerobic speed work or even LT work. I’m looking to adapt this overall method to the 1500, and am thinking the one modification I’ll make will be to add alactic speed work. If I didn’t want to run the 1500, I probably wouldn’t want to do this.
The importance of subtle pace changes over time is a key learning for me on this plan. In the context of a single hour-long run, easy is a pretty wide band, but when you add it up over time and in the context of 3-4 LT workouts a week (ala training load), going even slightly too hard compounds.
This post was edited 39 seconds after it was posted.
Since summer is getting closer, how does everyone complete easy runs in heat and humidity? Once it gets really bad, I find myself having to run probably 45-60 seconds a mile slower to keep my heart rate under 70% of max. Is this better than letting the heart rate drift upwards in order to hit a more typical easy pace?
Since summer is getting closer, how does everyone complete easy runs in heat and humidity? Once it gets really bad, I find myself having to run probably 45-60 seconds a mile slower to keep my heart rate under 70% of max. Is this better than letting the heart rate drift upwards in order to hit a more typical easy pace?
When top athlete go to the mountains for altitude training they won't run their usual paces. They run to effort.
Your body doesn't know what pace you're running. It just knows effort.
You may be slower now, in the heat, but come the colder months, when there are races, you'll reap the rewards
I was referring to alactic speed development, like 40m or hill sprints, not traditional speed work. Not anaerobic intervals with very long rest. Like what Hobbs Kessler does. Traditional speed work isn’t speed development I don’t understand why everyone is confused.
You can do some flying 40m's or short hill sprints on the easy day following the medium long run (assuming you are taking that run sufficiently easy) or do it as part of the warm-up right before a sub-T session. I don't know where the research stands currently but I would assume keeping them on separate days is more effective.
Again it's important to first identify what is your specific goal for speed development here? Is your all out speed actually limiting you in any way? If there some mechanical deficiency in your stride that seems to be limiting efficiency?
The confusion you're observing is that the philosophy here is for most hobbyjoggers (even some pretty fast hobbyjoggers) we're often better off cutting out all the extra stuff entirely and redirecting all that time and energy towards aerobic development. I'm not a pure sirpoc zealot in this regard, but I do believe firmly that when adding in stuff like speed dev, plyos, lifting, etc to a training plan we should target the minimum effective dose and assess the cost/benefit of adding whatever high intensity thing vs just more aerobic work. A lot of us are limited enough aerobically that the cost/benefit usually leans towards just more volume of aerobic work. Proper execution of any sort of alactic speed dev is going to include at minimum ~15 min of standing around -for most people I would rather them use that time for a longer easy run or a couple more sub-T reps. Also keep in mind a lot of folks here are older or otherwise may not have great resilience to high intensity.
The sub-T work does still develop neuromuscular qualities of speed and efficiency, albeit slower than high intensity would. If you're running anything 800m-mile it's obviously worth integrating some true speed development, but if you're targeting longer distances I'm not convinced it's a default requirement of good training.
It's also totally cool if you simply like to throw in some sprinting for fun -but It's important to acknowledge that's a choice outside of the framework used to develop this particular system of training.
Edit: posted this without seeing the other comment that you are targeting the 1500m. What is your current 1500m and 400m ability? Strategy will vary depending on close your 1500m is to your sprinting speed. Some people are in a situation where they can still improve at the 1500m with little/no speed dev.
This post was edited 6 minutes after it was posted.
I love sirpoc but I just cannot accept that someone with that running form can hit the pace for 14.30. There has to be a limit to it, surely!
As someone who has raced sirpoc in real life, I would be shocked if he can't run 14:3x at Battersea in one of the quick events. Especially as he will be in an A race. I have ran 15:22 there and sirpoc has ran away from me in a 10k like I wasn't there and beaten me by over 2 minutes. I haven't ran the course he did last night myself, but it's a minimum of 25 seconds slower than Battersea, probably more if you get into the fast start fields. On the 5k he holds the course record for at his local parkrun, I've ran 16:41 there for context. He is a minute faster there which I find quite frankly ridiculous for anyone who has run that course, which I doubt is really anyone else reading this global forum.
If he really can run 14:30 as you suggest, that makes his marathon a bit more of a relative underperformance. I’m not suggesting 2:24 is bad for a debut marathon for a 41 year old—it’s incredible. But a 14:30 5k would be much stronger and be more equivalent to a 2:19 marathon.
Maybe I phrased it poorly because I mostly agree with this.
My issue is with what's commonly prescribed on Lactrace and in the Strava group which more or less boils down to: Run 10x3 minutes at LT, 5x6 minutes at HM pace, and 3x10 minutes at 30K pace.
Most people won't be able to measure lactate so they just roll with that, but to me it seems highly unlikely that 3x10 at 2:30h pace (for a 20 min 5k runner) or 5x6 at 1:30h pace would get you to 2.5-3.5 mmol / the same effort. So they might actually often run the easy runs too hard but the workouts too easy.
I dont know what point you're trying to make here - For a 20min 5k runner the paces would be
3-4 min reps @ 4:15 to 4:25 per km
6-8 min reps @ 4:21 to 4:31 per km
10-12 min reps @ 4:27 to 4:37 per km
To me these seems very reasonable paces for reps with 1 min walking recoveries. The paces themselves in 1 or 2 reps arent the "silver bullet" it is the continuous 3 sessions a week, week over week. You ideally want to probably want to be closer to the 2.5mmol than 3.5mmol as you want to feel refreshed in 2 days for the next workout
And better to err on the side of caution because maybe you are running your workouts in non-carbon shoes, after a day's work etc.
It's not bad to run a little slower than those paces, but it would certainly be a mistake to run too fast.
When top athlete go to the mountains for altitude training they won't run their usual paces. They run to effort.
Your body doesn't know what pace you're running. It just knows effort.
You may be slower now, in the heat, but come the colder months, when there are races, you'll reap the rewards
Houston runner here for a decade plus. I keep hearing this about a boost in pace once the weather cools, but that just hasn't been my experience. I find I actually lose some fitness over the extended summers here, in part because I also cut back volume due to lengthening pacing as an adjustment to the heat/humidity. I then spend a portion of our limited fall/winter simply trying to regain that fitness. Admittedly I am terrible in the heat, despite practicing all of the typical advisements to adjust. My sweat rate is a liter plus per hour and easily over 1000 mg sodium loss. Also, if this is universally true, how is it that no elites/pros train in hot/humid environs?
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