On the speed thing, I'm quite slow and when I time myself on the track I'm never under 16 seconds for 100m. I can run about 18 minutes for 5k but most people who run 18 minutes are quicker at sprinting. I'm not suggesting this is some sort of limit but running a whole minute quicker 17 minutes seems very fast for my speed and I don't think there are probably that many 16-second runners that can go 17 or under for 5k. When you get to 16 minutes I imagine it would be very rare indeed, possibly unheard of. I also timed myself doing a 400 and got 68.x.
So crudely, I'd say for a given 5k time in minutes take away 2 and if you can run that for 100m in seconds you should be OK. That's not to say 13-minute runners can run 11 seconds but the proportion is obviously greater at that point and I don't think 18 minutes is actually the limit for me, just where my speed starts more noticably working against me.
You could also do a conversion for 400m times based on them being approx one second per 100m slower than the 100m time in the formula.
"hard to break 13 without 50 speed. hard to break 14 without 54 speed hard to break 15 without 58 speed hard to break 16 without 62 speed hard to break 17 without 66 speed"
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.
And why wouldn’t you be doing another hard workout 2-3 days later?
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most of you because (as they all do) you attach your egos to how fast you run, how many mpw you do, and sticking to outdated research and traditions.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.
Not really as the 90s went all in on much higher intensity.
The question is if JI keep doing his moderate intensity/decent volume workouts and dropped like 40k of easy running would his race times change much? Not sure anyone can answer that.
I have two: private coaches are going to kill high school programs because they too often look for short term results as opposed to long term development and discredit coaches.
And
Rest day or do a short non contact day once a week. Even really successful people take a rest day.
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.
In response to you and Kvothe who also called this out... we discovered 15 years later that everyone's idea of "easy" days was still way too hard, and that's a big part of why it didn't work back then.
So no, you didn't really do it. In hindsight, you didn't realize it but you screwed it up.
A lot of runners would have fewer injury issues and be able to stand more mileage if they trained in flats with a 20-24 mm stack height and 4-6 mm drop. There is something about feeling the footstrike that leads to more natural running. You don't even think about the shoe when you have a shoe like this.
I also think golf course grass is the ideal running surface.
Hard to find a shoe like this these days. What still exists out there?
Topo Athletic, though their drop is 3-5mm. Everyone here still makes a point to ignore them, though.
You are not the first to come up with this idea. It was tried and failed miserably. It was called the 90’s.
In response to you and Kvothe who also called this out... we discovered 15 years later that everyone's idea of "easy" days was still way too hard, and that's a big part of why it didn't work back then.
So no, you didn't really do it. In hindsight, you didn't realize it but you screwed it up.
I think you are right. Too many, myself included, let ego get in the way on easy runs. I always encourage some running without a gps watch to get a feel for what easy feels like. I'm really not sure about "easy days easy, hard days hard" which is the number 1 reason people give for cutting back to 60-80. Seems most who do more mileage than that improve. Of course you could run faster running 3000 miles a year than 6000 if you are optimizing some other part of training or if the 6000 beats you up to the point you can't recover.
If you are running easy enough, you can recover to run more than 60-80. Honestly, 7-8 is probably a reasonable easy pace for most runners after a couple years of running with occasional days either side of that.
Running is great because you can get competitive without putting in countless hours – only because it's so hard on the body.
Swimming and cycling are too easy on the body so you have log endless hours to keep up with the other tryhards.
It's because running is so hard on the body that it's the everyman's sport – not just for people with tons of free time.
This is idiotic. Pounding your joints doesn't make you faster.
Its exactly the opposite - most, if not all runners, would be doing themselves a huge favor by swapping our an hour of easy running with two hours of cycling or swimming. The goal is aerobic development, not grinding your body to dust.
A decently fast 5k is more impressive than a slow ultra.
I am all for running as a mass participation sport but I wish people who have done a grand total of one marathon or some bizarre ultra race would recognize that the effort to become reasonably fast at shorter distances is greater than a one-off completion.
Who is Hadd? What was the advice that he gave? Where can I find more info about his coaching?
Hadd used to post here in LR's early days. The link is a PDF of text from one of his most famous threads, and spot-on sums up his approach to base training, which most people of all levels don't do enough of.
Sometimes I wonder if the brojos nuked the old Hadd threads to subversively scrub his message from existence. Some of the other sites that hosted the below PDF of his famous old thread have also mysteriously gone away.
P.S. While I'm not sure if this thread was started as a troll, "you're slow because you choose to be" is a definite 0/10.
Hadd used to post here in LR's early days. The link is a PDF of text from one of his most famous threads, and spot-on sums up his approach to base training, which most people of all levels don't do enough of.
Sometimes I wonder if the brojos nuked the old Hadd threads to subversively scrub his message from existence. Some of the other sites that hosted the below PDF of his famous old thread have also mysteriously gone away.
P.S. While I'm not sure if this thread was started as a troll, "you're slow because you choose to be" is a definite 0/10.
That is 25 pages of waffle that could be summarised in one page.
Oddly enough it's Aussies, Brits and other western Commonwealthers/Euros who tend to bristle most at Hadd's base training principles, because they tend to be religious about their traditional workout-focused training. Irony to that is that Hadd (who lived in Malta) was native Scottish.
The average suburban 3.7-4.0 GPA high schooler with a 4:20 mile should commit to an elite academic D3 school to run. Capitalize on the application advantage you get and set yourself up for life by obtaining a worthwhile degree instead of wasting away injured and maybe breaking 15:30 at D1 Umass Lowell
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