I went from 36:40 to high 33's and eventually 32's by running consistently 70+ miles a week and also by running with people much faster than me. I ran many long runs with them where I was dropped every week until eventually I could hang with them for the whole run.
Lost 12 pounds
Decreased resttime between intervals on interval day
Increased milage and tempo of long weekend run (20 - 24 miler)
More hill workouts
I'm really fascinated by this from a physiological standpoint. Would you consider yourself to be a slow/mid/fast twitch type of person? May I ask what your 200/400 time were back in college (or just your all time PBs period)?
Good art wrote:
In 30 years of training, I hve recall of only few experiences that seem to have a significant relationship with my subsequent performance . It would seem plausible to argue for some causal mechanism.
Other ideas that I've drawn from experience seem significant, but I would find that making the argument of some causal structure perhaps interesting, but perhaps too weak.
From that, I can make some generalizations that apply to my own, but not necessarily others training.
The following were the major events that I believe were most significant and I believe are worthy of mention.
1. My first posted example on this thread. ( Taking 10 weeks off due to injury)
Qualifications: - These may have or may not have influenced the outcome, but seem valid and worth note.
. First qualification: I had a solid amount of training prior, e.g. 90+ miles hard intervals, etc. ( I was training at UO as a student athlete at the time.)
. I was swimming during the break.
After resuming training it was as if I had become a new runner. I was amazed by just how easy my aerobic runs had become. Prior, typical pace was 6:20 per mile with occasion to dip to 5:55s etc. After 3 weeks or so, my paces were between 5:35-5:55 per mile, and that felt good, perhaps even much better than before the injury. I recall I was as light as a feather.
2. The following example provides my conclusion from my first example further strength.
The last time I had run under 16 minutes, I was 39 years old. I'm 46 now. The months prior,that happened within that year, I was training very long and hard. I recall feeling frustrated that I was constantly feeling stale and that my performances were stagnant.
I had always and continue to solicit advise from those who's judgment I trust and trusted. Knowing from prior experience, I believed that rest would have been beneficial. I assumed this was the best way, but I guess I needed to have confirmation anyway.
I asked my old friend Dick Brown, coach of many prior great runners, most notably, Mary Slaney, to help me out. He told me that he would, but first I would need to take at least 5 weeks off. If I did, he told me he would help me with my training, but that if I didn't he would not.
I was hoping that would be the advise I would receive, as I had good reason to believe this would be a good choice. Having someone else that I trusted and whom I believed had good sense and experience made the choice to take time off easy to do.
There was always and still is a certain amount of difficulty taking time out as not only do I feel addicted to running itself, I am also someone who finds it difficult working to goal by conserving energy rather than the habitual, relentless drive to expend it.
So after taking the 6 weeks off, I did start to notice my energy for running not only returned in a big way, but I was having more fun with it, I recall having had in years.
I recall getting out of my car and running in the parking lot to the store I was visiting. I wanted to stride out like I was sampling some new found freedom.
Well after resuming training, I had gone from having a difficult time running 3 miles at 530 pace to running an all comers meet 5k in 15 44. 530 pace, that was formerly a lactic affair, was completely aerobic for me after the break.
As I had mentioned, there were other experiences I have had, methods of training that I experimented with that I could infer, and I have good reason to believe I could generalize from. It does seem however, as indicated here in this post, taking a number of weeks out, especially after a hard period produced my most significant results. These results, I have a hard time believing would have come if I just continued to run during that time off.
The ONLY thing that I changed in the summer between freshman and sophomore years in college was to increase mileage from 30 mpw to 75 mpw. This resulted in mile time dropping from 4:25 to 4:07...800 went from 1:58 to 1:53. Further, in cross country, I went from number #6 man to number #1 man, eventually running 23:45 for 5 miles. This approach TOTALLY changed my outlook on training and even as a 58 year old today, I still run 40-60 mpw (70-90 if prepping for a marathon). So...perhaps mileage increase doesn't work for everyone, but for those that I coach, higher mileage has been a universally acceptable tool.
I had consistency my first breakthrough, this was form that lasted a long time.
I then upped mileage and dropped half a stone for another breakthrough.
The third one which led me to take 2-3 minutes off some rivals in the space of 8 weeks was due to running how i felt. If i felt fast run fast. If i was itred then crawl. In saying that i was overtraing slightly when i had to adjust. Basically i went from being top 40 to top 10 in 8 weeks. I hadn't been out the top 10 in 3 seasons so i guess i just trained too hard that season.
one or two things wrote:
I had consistency my first breakthrough, this was form that lasted a long time.
I then upped mileage and dropped half a stone for another breakthrough.
The third one which led me to take 2-3 minutes off some rivals in the space of 8 weeks was due to running how i felt. If i felt fast run fast. If i was itred then crawl. In saying that i was overtraing slightly when i had to adjust. Basically i went from being top 40 to top 10 in 8 weeks. I hadn't been out the top 10 in 3 seasons so i guess i just trained too hard that season.
This is how I'm training now. After all the years, I still find I can hammer past the point of good returns , convincing myself that doing so is fine as the energy drain can be quite difficult to recognize, considering it seems to be subtle.
When fresh, during a week, or two of intense training, I find recovery after an easy day or two is not a problem, but when the weeks of intensity become months, a day or two may result in recovery, but not as full as the weeks prior.
A session on Tuesday for example could make Thursday or Friday quite difficult, and Saturday, Sunday and Monday could just suck, despite the fact that I'm running " easy".
So rather than take a monster break, I choose to run with the goal of never feeling tapped out, in fact, I hope to feel good after each run.
I've been tired for a long time( months), so I recognize this will be a long process. What I don't want is to get to February with that energy depleted state. After all, to get fast, intensity seems to be a prerequisite, and so I hope to be in a position that I can handle it without getting tapped.
Why not take a long break? I find that I am addicted to exercise, and so I'd rather take a risk under training the intensity, but keep the body in motion. I'm a bit heavy and I would like to continue keeping the furnace burning my fat.
The hard part is to hold back when those good day come, but that is tricky. We shall see.
[quote]Cewrioos wrote:
I'm really fascinated by this from a physiological standpoint. Would you consider yourself to be a slow/mid/fast twitch type of person? May I ask what your 200/400 time were back in college (or just your all time PBs period)?
No idea on muscle composition or Vo2 or any other measure:
220: 27 within a 30/30 sesion
440: 56-7 wout
2 miler 200s (30/40) 9:20 with team
880: 203 wout
3/4 mile: 306 wout with team
1 mile: 4:24 wout with team
5K 1448
10k 3100
Found longer races not too interesting, but had some good training e.g. 12 miles at under 5:30 easy I recall.
I am a 400m runner and in between my freshman and sophomore year I did a crapload of Lydiard's hill training and a lot of stretching. I went from 52.5 to 49.78 (although I had a 51.7 split in the 4x4 at state freshman year) Some of it could be attributed to growth but I didn't grow a lot (from 5'11 to 6'1) and i didn't get stronger really, I was still pretty skinny relative to other 400 guys.
I had two breakthroughs, I'd say.
The first isn't that interesting. I went from running 30-40mpw in high school to 70-80. I wasn't very fast before (19min 5k), and I wasn't all that fast after (16:40), but I got a lot better in a year.
The more interesting one came the year after college for me. I didn't really have the motivation to do the training I'd done in college (90-100 mile weeks, 6x1 hard miles, etc etc). I also, like you've mentioned, was afraid of getting myself to the point of barely being able to hobble after some really hard workouts or races etc (from a motivational standpoint I knew it would make it hard to keep training, and I knew I needed to keep training).
So, what I did was run about an hour a day, but much faster than usual for me. Usually would do about 10 miles, somewhere between 59 and 64 minutes, always starting out slower and finishing off pretty quick, sometimes last couple miles in the 5:20-30 range. And I did strides or 200s or something 3-4 days per week, but not ever really a workout. 5x200, tossing in a couple quarters in the middle of a run, 8x100 strides, that kind of thing.
In college I'd run 31:10, 15:15. I ran a 14:35 that fall off about 70mpw as described above, with maybe 2 traditional workouts (mile reps, quarters).
Then I stopped running most of my mileage fast and I got sick and lost it. I think the key, though, was getting under 6 minute pace almost every run, and doing some speed at least half the days. Didn't seem to matter that I wasn't ever doing hard workouts.
Got my f***ing mind right.
increased recovery time between workouts
I'm enjoying this thread. It seems to embody the concept that different things work for different people. Thanks to all posters.
As much as I hate to admit this since I am an obsessive compulsive runner: I began to take one day off per week.
It was unintentional. I just began skipping this one day and it became a habit I couldn't get past. Out of guilt, the next day I started doing this absolutely killer track or tempo workout, thinking that maybe since my overall mileage would sink, that I would upgrade the quality even more.
I ran my best tempo of my memory in that segment which honestly felt like a dead sprint start to finish and followed up a month later with a career best, 2:15 marathon.
In retrospect. It's not that this was the way to train indefinitely, it just was some request my body had just decided it needed at the time while I tried to grind out typical 20-mile training every day.
I unconsciously lost 4-5 lbs from eating correctly (the right foods at the right times). This took me from a 4:08 to a 4:02 in a season. Huge breakthrough.
Thanks for the info. More stuff for me to chew on.
Consistancy:
For me, my biggest improvement came between soph and junior years of HS. My HS coach forgot to enter me in our FS league finals meet during track. I was determined that he would not forget me again.
As a soph in cross country, I had been about a 19:30 5k guy. Over the summer leading to my junior year, I made the goal to run every day, no matter what. I didn't run that many miles (averaged 35-40 per week) but almost every run had some good hills in it.
Also, my dad had bought me a road bike for my birthday and I rode that about 75-100 miles per week. Every ride, I would find the steepest possible hills to climb.
One night, after having ridden 60 miles in the mountains with a friend, I was sitting around the house and realized I hadn't run yet for the day. I put on my shoes at 11:00 PM and headed out the door. I only went a mile, but for my mind, that was probably the most important mile I ran all summer.
I had been a 19:30 guy as a soph and ended up running 17:09 as a junior.
Putting in more miles on a consistent basis helped me go from a 3:30 marathon to a 2:54 marathon.
Lots of rest leading up to the breakthrough and weeks of consistent training leading up to the performance. I was running great workouts leading up to my breakthrough and had extra confidence from that as well.
This thread has some great info in it. I wanted to bump it.
Did two things during the summer before my biggest jump of an XC season.
- more mileage
- lifting