High school running is better than college running, which is better than pro running. Most runners should peak in high school, then move on to other activities or road racing.
Age grading should use a percentile based on the distribution of race times, not a percentage of the age-group WR.
Finding a portapotty in time is more important than anything else you do before the race.
Marathons suck.
90% of the time when a marathon goes bad, it's not because of nutrition or electrolytes or the long run or the taper or anything else. It's because you started out too fast.
Most pro athletes who never fail a drug test really are clean.
GPS watches, super shoes and Strava are good.
"Run more miles" is nearly always the right answer.
Things are only meaningful if we can relate to them and if they exist within a cultural or historical context.
This is why "Grand Slams of Track" will never be the actual Grand Slams of our sport.
The Grand Slams of tennis are Wimbledon, French Open, US Open and the Australian Open.
The Grand Slams of horse racing are Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes, and the Preakness Stakes. I don't even watch horse racing but I knew that.
You can't "make up" four meets out of whole cloth, label them "Slams," and expect us to instantly grant them legendary status with stories from when we were young or when greats from the sport battled it out for a spot on the Olympic team. Sorry, these events are just made up.
The real Grand Slam of track (for an American fan) would be like: The Millrose Games, the US Trials, Prefontaine Classic, and the Olympics or World Championships (depending on the year). Then you have one indoor meet, one pro meet, one national championship, and one world title.
All of you are doing way too many hard workouts every week, far more mileage than you need, and your easy workouts should be closer to Z1. None of you listened to Hadd in all the years he gave advice here before he passed.
The first time an elite coach finally bites the bullet and has their runners train more easily and cuts their mileage down to 60-80 mpw, and wins doing that, it's going to break most of you because (as they all do) you attach your egos to how fast you run, how many mpw you do, and sticking to outdated research and traditions.
You are not the first to come up with this idea. It was tried and failed miserably. It was called the 90’s.
Shoes cost much less than doctors or PT. For all but the most gifted in natural form and injury resistance, replace your shoes by 250 miles or as soon as you notice a new pain that seems connected to mechanics changing due to shoe wear, whichever comes first.
It’ll cost less in the long run.
Does anyone really do this though? You could be throwing away a pair of trainers every 3 weeks. That's a huge amount of shoes per year.
whether it's running with ankle weights or wearing a mask to simulate altitude, what is a belief you hold that most runners scoff at?
i'll start: core exercises are largely a waste of time as we do not "move from the core"
That anything with hill(s) can be a xc course. In my HS, the home course was on a hard gravel road and went through a paved parking lot. The “hill” was a measly man-made slope. My daughter’s HS course was all on pavement with some fairly steep slopes, essentially a road race. Please, xc means exactly that. Give us grass, give us trails but minimal pavement if any!
And guy with 4:20 speed that runs a marathon at 6:05 pace is either horribly undertrained or literally hobby jogging the race. Either way there's not a single thing anyone can learn from them. The 5 minute miler that can run 2:40? He probably actually went through some serious sh/t to get there. I'd be interested to know how he did it.
Slowpoke spotted!
In this hypothetical both have a goal of 2:40. You can critique his goal of 2:40 as being soft or say he hobby jogged it, but that's entirely irrelevant to the conversation.
My point is the 4:20 guy has an easier time of achieving his goal due to his speed. He gets better results off of less work. That's the dream, the holy grail of training for any sport: maximizing returns and minimizing stress.
Yeah but how far down does that go? Does someone with 11s 100m speed find a 2:40 marathon easier than someone at 13s? If 100m speed is irrelevant then where's the cutoff between 100m and mile. Ie what's the correlation between sprint, mid d and distance?
In this hypothetical both have a goal of 2:40. You can critique his goal of 2:40 as being soft or say he hobby jogged it, but that's entirely irrelevant to the conversation.
My point is the 4:20 guy has an easier time of achieving his goal due to his speed. He gets better results off of less work. That's the dream, the holy grail of training for any sport: maximizing returns and minimizing stress.
Yeah but how far down does that go? Does someone with 11s 100m speed find a 2:40 marathon easier than someone at 13s? If 100m speed is irrelevant then where's the cutoff between 100m and mile. Ie what's the correlation between sprint, mid d and distance?
the 100m benefits from fast-twitch fibres and raw power (muscle mass). Neither of which are that helpful in the marathon
It’s better to be 90% of the runner you could have been and be injury free and a lifetime runner than try to find and ride the line and discover your ultimate potential.
In this hypothetical both have a goal of 2:40. You can critique his goal of 2:40 as being soft or say he hobby jogged it, but that's entirely irrelevant to the conversation.
My point is the 4:20 guy has an easier time of achieving his goal due to his speed. He gets better results off of less work. That's the dream, the holy grail of training for any sport: maximizing returns and minimizing stress.
Yeah but how far down does that go? Does someone with 11s 100m speed find a 2:40 marathon easier than someone at 13s? If 100m speed is irrelevant then where's the cutoff between 100m and mile. Ie what's the correlation between sprint, mid d and distance?
Critical thinker spotted! Good comments
It obviously doesn't scale infinitely, Usain Bolt would not make a great marathoner because of his speed. At a certain point, you're fast enough for your target times and getting faster can only realistically help with the closing stretch of a tight or tactical race.
My comment was largely aimed at the semi-serious club runner level, usually local and regional 5k through marathon racers. Much less aimed at elites, HS, and college athletes. From my experience, the vast vast majority of them do absolutely zilch to develop speed and athleticism. Usually they call reps at mile or 5k pace "speed," even if their target race is an upcoming mile.
If they were to spend half an hour or so per week, learning and practicing running faster, all their under-distance PRs will drop sooner or later. Their speed reserve is up and they've got a lot more wiggle room on what paces they can tolerate for extended periods of time.
If this weren't at least kind of true, someone with a 5:00 mile best could run a 2:20 marathon. But we all know, you can't fly that close to the sun for that long.
The Boston Marathon course is a PR course. People think it's hard because the location of heartbreak turns bad days into terrible days, but on a good day you get to scorch the last 5 miles.
Many “good” college and post-collegiate runners run their easy days too slow. Too many runners stuck running 7:00-7:30 pace and not pushing the needle at all in the name of “recovery”.
Obviously recovery from workouts is important. I’m talking about the runs 2-3 days after a hard session, not the day after.
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