Duncan Kibet and James Kwambai : the role of Claudio Berardelli, and analysis of something new in training

xxx wrote:

tx. This was a comprehensible start!

to understand more about Canova's terms, you should have read his book on Marathon training (or one of the many excerpts/articles available on the net)

The book is a must-read... and is cheap (10 EUR, including shipment...)

tx. where can you buy it?

xxx wrote:

tx. where can you buy it?

go on the IAAF website and somewhere you will find a section where you can order the books/stuff published by IAAF. Print out the order form and fax to them with your CC number....

(sorry, I can not give u the exact link because the IAAF website is down right now...)

another option is to google for "canova marathon training" and you will find most of the content of the book in some articles written by Canova himself.

tired hips wrote:

to understand more about Canova's terms, you should have read his book on Marathon training (or one of the many excerpts/articles available on the net)

The book is a must-read... and is cheap (10 EUR, including shipment...)

Great book. Lots of good quotes in it too, "...shaming the organism".

Like all of this stuff there is no one magic silver bullet that works for all athletes.

I know from personal experience that running 60-90 minutes @ 90% of MP has led to the greatest improvements FOR ME. Part of this is gauging how long each work bout should be, and how much recovery between efforts. 1hr/day 4-6 days/wk? 2 x +90/week? Trial and error.

25km @ 102% of MP is a HARD run. Any athlete needs to recover from this before moving to the next step.

Mr. Renato Canova,

You system is based strictly to the exact speed.What about if you don´t know the exact speed of the race like in world xc champs?

Best regards,

xc runner

I will answer this question quickly. His advice is for serious and talented runners. Therefore, it is unacceptable to not know your speeds at every level. And if for some reason you don't know your speed levels, run a 1500m TT one week and a 3k or 5k tt another week.Then do the math.

1. Did Duncan Kibet do higher volume training before starting this recent program? Is Duncan Kibet able to improve on lower volume now because he did higher volume before? Is the innovation in his training that he backed down from higher mileage (after building sufficient base) and increased the intensity? Is this the new direction for marathoning - many years of high volume, followed by relatively lower volume and high intensity? Is this the main point of this thread?

2. At what age does one need to begin building base to maximize their personal ability? Can someone start running at age 25 and still come anywhere near their theoretical personal best? What happens if you quit running at 25, and start again when you are nearing 40? Can you use this (Canova's philosophy) to get good results (i.e. some masters runners are capable of 2:20-2:25...with this new training paradigm, could one expect to see masters who would have been 2:20-2:25 guys now able to run 2:15-2:20)?

3. If you were starting over from scratch, how long before one should start using one of these systems? Should one put in 3 months or 6 months or 12 months of just base building before even starting this?

I have a lot more questions but that's more than enough for now.

Very glad to see this kind of thread come up again. Let's keep it going.

What is Base building?

I guarantee that no-one on letsrun can answer that question without talking a load of pseudo-scientific bullcrap, the same old stuff that gets repeated over and over and over.

Mileage is important but over rated, which is a point that gets missed by many runners. I've been saying this for a few years here, perhaps even Renato is starting to consider it may be true.

I like a lot of what Renato says, but up until now he has over stated the importance of mileage. Improving running skill (better control of movements) is what running faster is mostly about. Aerobic capacity is mostly genetically determined, and only slightly trainable, BUT, most of us are already well enough trained most of the time that we can't improve our aerobic capacity in absolute terms.

wellnow wrote:

Mileage is important but over rated, which is a point that gets missed by many runners. I've been saying this for a few years here, perhaps even Renato is starting to consider it may be true.

I like a lot of what Renato says, but up until now he has over stated the importance of mileage.

Somebody here is suffering from severe delusions of grandeur.

Poster Formerly Known asGoober wrote:

bulldog35 wrote:

Did you see the post race interview at the San Jose Rock and roll half with Duncan Kibet(1Hr26Seconds) He told told Todd Williams in the post race interview he trains 3X's a day including 25K kilometers in the morning. What kind of Mileage do you think this guy is doing a week? Sounds like over 150 to me total? BTW- Kibet Younger brother in Kiptoo-Biwott who runs at oregon with Rupp.

Taken from a thread 3 years ago. He must have drastically changed his training to be down to 130-140km/week.

OK, this is what I wanted to see.

These guys already have the mileage base, to transition

to lower volume, higher quality training.

There is no magic innovation. At some point, you still have to to do the mileage. There is a sequence of steps.

Poster Formerly Known asGoober wrote:

He must have drastically changed his training to be down to 130-140km/week.

I believe I read Canova say the mileage wasn't so important after you have built up the base.

What I see by reading between the lines is that the emphasis of training should be at just below or just above race pace depending on the distance. The recovery should be run at a pace just slow enough to remove lactate but only long enough to do that. Piling up massive amounts of mileage at a very slow rate is a waste of time and energy that can be better spent training on the harder days closer to race pace.

If you compare the tables from Canova and McMillan, you will see Canova's paces are slower but the recoveries are very short.(just enough to remove lactate)

An example for a 5k runner would be to do 12 400s at 2 mile pace rather than 8 400s at mile pace with a longer recovery. More work at closer to race pace without getting worn down for the next workout.

What I find confusing is that Canova's runners like Lel and Cheruiyot are doing 150+ miles a week. Maybe this just goes to prove that there is no one way to prepare a runner to run fast.

I want to precise that Lel and Cheruiyot are not my runners, but are, like Kibet and Kwambai, with Claudio Berardelli. When we speak of Claudio, we speak also of dr. Gabriele Rosa, that is the "mentor"of Claudio, giving him the first phylosophy about a correct methodology of training. Rosa was the first giving to Kenyans runners the correct idea about marathon training.

Now, we try to understand WHY for some athlete volume is a must, for some other not.

But, before going to analyse different situations,and to answer to many questions, let me finish to explain what we do during the SPECIFIC PERIOD.

In this pereiod, we INCREASE THE SPECIFIC VOLUME, in 2 directions :

a) WE RUN MORE REPETITIONS AT THE SPEED OF THE RACE (if we use the same distance)

b) WE EXTEND THE LENGTH OF THE REPETITIONS AT THE SAME SPEED.

This is what we do for EVERY event of endurance.

For example, if for an 800m runner (1'44") we were able to do 5 x 600m in 50" rec. 5', we try to add another 400 (6 x 400), or we try to EXTEND the distance, running (always with the same recovery of 5') 4 x 500 in 63".

For a Marathon runner, THE LONG FAST RUN (the final 2 times before the race) BECOME LONGER (34 - 38 km), THE SPECIFIC MARATHON SPEED ENDURANCE also becomes longer (for ex., 4 x 5000m with 1 km at 3'30" recovery become 5 x 5000, replacing one long run, because are 29 km), AND THE MODULATION GROWS.

You must remember that we NEED QUALITY, and it's possible to develop it ONLY IF THE ATHLETE IS NOT TOO TIRED.

So, while during Fundamental Period we continue to have high mileage for every day (so never the athlete run very fast, but never runs very slow), and during the Special Period we have already the right speed for th race but not yet with high volume, during the SPECIFIC PERIOD we have to do very easy training the 2 days before the SPECIFIC TRAINING, and we must recovery very well for the next 2 days.

I personally use, once every 3-4 weeks, a SPECIAL BLOCK (during the SPECIAL PERIOD) or a SPECIFIC BLOCK (during the specific period). Later I explain what they are.

So, THE PHYLOSOPHY FOR EVERY EVENT IS TO ENHANCE THE VOLUME OF SPECIFIC TRAINING, and the other type of training (Special and Fundamental) have the task to allow the athlete to do it.

The final question is :

HOW MUCH SUPPORT, and WHICH KIND OF SUPPORT, we need in order to reach that goal ?

When we speak about MILEAGE, we speak about something generic, that has very little influence in the real training. Mileage, without speaking about SPEED OF THE MILEAGE, is something useless.

Really, somebody can suppose that, for an athlete able running 42 km under 3' / km, RUNNING AT A SPEED OF 6:00 per Mile can be a useful training ?

Thanks for clearing that up, and its amazing how logical the training is as compared to classic Western models when the purpose of the runs are examined. You mentioned that the running two days before these specific training workouts is very easy to ensure they are well rested. Now by very easy did you mean 3.40-45 km pace or did you mean much slower paces?

renato:

what are your feelings on diet. I think that sometimes it can be difficult maintaining a normal, healthy diet in America with so much refined, unhealthy foods available.

do your athletes follow specific dietary guidelines?

Easy means at the pace of Regeneration. When we speak about regeneration, we must also remember that running too slow means to remain more long time in contact with the ground, losing muscolar tension and increasing the eccentric contraction when you have to absorbe the impact with the ground. That's the reason because, normally, top athletes prefer regenerate running at 3'50" / 4' per km that at 5' : under the point of view of ORGANIC FATIGUE, there is no difference, but about the biomechanical of the action, the athletes feel more comfortable running a little bit faster.

This guy did:

Kenyans don't have a genetic advantage, they have a psychological advantage on western runners because they dominate races. They have a 3rd world uprbringing that makes them tough, we Americans don't want to suffer, for us its just sport, for some of them it is a way to be prosperous, they are driven to succeed.

the late A. Lydiard said there are "champions everywhere". This is so true. There is talent in industrialized countries too, look at italy, spain, portugal, japan. All of these countries have great coaches who have the right knowledge on how to make their runners champions.

I think that L. America has a lot of unused talent. L.America is the future.

Renato,

First, a sincere thank you for the food for thought you provide a difficult but still like-mindedly obsessed community.

My question with regard to running mileage at a pace of 6' per mile for a marathoner capable of sub 2:06 (sub 3' km) is this: is not the pace of regeneration and the pace of fundamental running able to be so fast because the 2:06 runner has already increased enough their ability to train in high volumes at fast paces? Certainly for a beginner just increasing volume will be a concern, but my question is for those in the middle: Say, a 30 minute 10k runner. This person has likely not been at a given mileage for any longer than one year, and even when total running volume stablizes, it seems like a 30' 10k runner would likely have much room for improvement in terms of increasing their ability to handle their current total running volume at a faster pace, closer to the ideal pace of support training for that runner's goal. Is there not a level of training more general than the fundamental training? A sort of "training to train" category? And what time period would you say a runner could expect before he is able to handle running at the ideal support fundamental and special paces with appropriate volume?

Thank you very much.