no interval work success?

Excuse me too much Coffee

Man,

Habits will get you every time. I didn't realize that I signed my name. Funny. Runna

tinman, remember when running hard was just that, running hard. Now days they call it Tempo. How did all of the greats ever become so great without Tempo runs, makes me laugh! I think a lot of runners would do well off little to no high end, puke in the bucket zone of training. No doubt this type of training takes the right person to handle it & adapt to a higher fitness. Great thread.

The older runners did a lot of tempo work but they didn't call it that. Often you see in their logs that they ran a hard 10 miles or ran the last 5-10 of their long run fast. That is tempo work and it does an awesome job at rasing the velocity at which lactic acid builds up. Look at the log posted by trackhead of Steve Scott. He has 1-2 of those hard distance runs every week.

If you look at John Walker's log, he ran at least one hard 10 miler every week in base training. His basework, 75-100 miles per week, was fast aerobic running. Even his easier days were run only 20-30 second per mile over projected marathon race pace. Here is a quote from an interview with John described in Runner's World, April 1979: " At least once a week I will run a 10-mile run in about 50-51 minutes." That, my friends is a tempo run, designed to build aerobic stength-endurance and improve LT. John would run for 10-12 weeks of hard mileage, then only run about 4 weeks of speed and start racing. He was able run to a 4th place in the World Cross-Country meet off of fast aerobic mileage.

Both Derek Clayton and Ron Clarke were hammered with interval work until they were just fed up with it. Clarke even quit running completely for awhile before hooking up with some buddies who were running just mileage. He liked it much more than hammering intervals every day. He became really fit and by the second year of doing mileage, not fast mileage due to his fitness improvements, he became a national winner in distance running. His mates ran well int he Olympics too, by the way.

Clayton, who was once trained on the track every day, almost, stopped track training altogether and hit the roads for fast aerobic mileage. He ran fast distance every day, starting with 50-60 per week and then building up to 120-130 per week over a few months. He ran twice per day at least 6 days per week, doing a 25-26 mile run on Sundays. "My main run was in the afernoon when it could have been anything freom a flat-out 10 miles to a very solid 17-18 miles." By the way, he ran 2:09:36 and 2:08:33 one week apart. Now how about that double without intervals and without track work? Tinman

Correction...about Ron Clarke, I typed a "t" instead of a "w" in the sentence about fast mileage, meaning he NOW was running fast mileage due to fitness improvements.

Don't get me wrong, Clayton worked his keister off during his distance runs and so did Clarke. The point is this: you can run fast in races without doing intervals if you run a lot of fast distance runs. There is more than one road to Rome. Tinman

Tinman wrote:

Correction...about Ron Clarke, I typed a "t" instead of a "w" in the sentence about fast mileage, meaning he NOW was running fast mileage due to fitness improvements.

Don't get me wrong, Clayton worked his keister off during his distance runs and so did Clarke. The point is this: you can run fast in races without doing intervals if you run a lot of fast distance runs. There is more than one road to Rome. Tinman

Have you ever read about Jack Farrell's methods? He pretty much coached his athletes on pure tempo runs every day. They ran comfortably hard every day about 7 or 8 miles a day. One of his girl HS runners holds the national 2 mile record at 9:48.

I am doing the same thing and it seems to work well for me. Right now I run 8 miles a day at 6:10 pace (flat course) starting at about 7:30 pace a year ago.

If I were to do intervals a year ago, 6:10 pace would have been tough intervals for me. Now they are just a normal every day run. Hopefully I can get my pace down into the 5:30 range 5 or 6 months from now. Who knows where the improvement ends though.

One of the things about Clarke's training that I've always wondered about is how he worked it out with his training partners. Those buddies you mention were Tony Cook (8th in the Tokyo 10,000) and Trevor Vincent (steeplechase gold medallist in the 1962 Commonwealth Games.) Clarke mentions training with them everyday at the Caulfield racecourse (horses, I presume.)

But Cook and Vincent are mentioned in two or three of Arthur Lydiard's books as guys who started using his (Lydiard's) methods, started doing distance work at a 7:00 pace, but who failed to increase their training pace as their fitness improved. Arthur contrasts this to Clarke, who did increase his pace as he got fitter. Yet in "The Unforgiving Minute," Clarke says he trained with them every day. I can't figure how that would have worked.

Anyway, we could add Cook and Vincent to the "no interval success" list, I suppose.

HRE:

I have wondered about that too. I would take Clarke's word for it, not Arthur's. I have read quotes from Ron that stated he ran 5km every morning and did gym training. On most afternoons, he ran on a one mile loop around some sports fields, presumably rugby, doing 10-12 laps at close to 5:00 per mile. He ran a longer but still quick run on the weekends. He ran those runs around the sports fields with his buddies, Cook and Vincent, according to his statements.

Perhaps Ron ran with other people after his return to running. These pepple might have been the slower runners that Arthur mentions. Then, Ron might have found a couple new friends to run with who were faster runners. He then upped his speed on his distance runs because he had fast running friends who were elite runners.

By the way, Clarke raced often and used racing as his speed training. Almost all the rest of his training was solid distance running. Tinman

Rick Sayre was infamous around town (Ashland, OR) for not doing any track/speed stuff. He said his key was just running through the mountains.

**sidenote: every run here in Ashland has a great deal of hills. I don't mean a couple of gradual anthills but long, steep climbs. One of the standard runs here in town is "toothpick"; it's an 11-12 mile run and almost half of it is uphill at a fairly steep grade.

What was Sayre's story? I know he ran about 2:13 for the marathon. What else do you know about him.

By the way, what is like around Ashland? My wife is considering applying for a job down there. Is it really hot like it is in Medford? Thanks. Tinman

Mud:

I read about Jack Farell's training plan last year. It is intersting. I think the plan is basically a version of Derek Clayton's training: fast continous runs often at marathon pace to just a tad slower, not much variation. I think that doing it would be tough for a lot of people because their is no such thing as a recovery day. I do see great value in it if one can tolerate it. Threshold development would be enormous over time and one would certainly produce very little lactic acid, even at faster paces. Take a look at Dr. David Costill's published research on Derek Clayton, for example, and you find that Derek produced hardly and lactic acid above normal values even at just under 4:50 pace per mile. His lactic acid clearance rate was incredible and no doubt a huge factor in why he was such a good marathoner. Derek only had a max VO2 of 69, so his success had to come from something other than aerobic power. It had to come from fractional utilization.

Fast distance runs and broken runs at fast distance run pace, i.e. tempo paces, do make one use a higher percentage of max VO2. After a couple years of working the max VO2, you stalemate, typically, and have to switch to some other type of training to improve performance. It has to come from either improving lactic acid clearance or improving economy if you are a distance runner. If you are a mid-distance runner and you have faster muscle fibers, then making those babies have more endurance is going to be your ticket to running faster race times. If you don't have a lot of fast fibers, fast interval work won't help you progress much farther up the food chain. You gotta train what you have; simple as that. Tinman

Tinman,you are the man.I think most people are trying to get a quick fix and then do just as you say and stalemate after a couple of years.I sure did and know now that it requires working all the variables and moving up a little bit each year to reach the top.Glad that you still post on this board with wisdom.

He just ran a ton of miles in the hills and, like I said, there is no shortage of hills here. He ran pretty hard too. He ran 2:12:59 to win LA one year. He won a bunch of marathons for awhile there in the mid to late 80s.

Pretty good group of guys with whom to run here in town. My team for one (I coach the college cross team), and there are a few of us who ran in college who still run around a bit too.

Ashland is great. 60-65% less rain than the Portland area and a really cold day in the winter is 45-50 degrees. Tons of trails, lots of outdoor activities. Shakespeare festival in the summer and fall so there's a lot going on in the downtown area. We're not quite as warm as Medford even though it's only 12 miles away. We're up at around 2000 ft. (they're under 1000) so we get about 10 degrees cooler.

I honestly can't believe there aren't more elites that live here. You could live high train low. In about a 15 min. drive, you're at 5000ft. Would be an ideal place to train.

email me if you want to know more:

gatling@sou.edu

I just read this whole thread while searching the archives and thought that it deserved a bump.

Sorry if others don't think so.

If you are one of those people, read the whole thing and THEN say it.

Any other personal stories?

Just found this interesting!

Well I don't know the training of all the other guys, but I do know that John Walker said that when racing he kept his milage very high.

I have gotten faster slowing things down, and staying away from the track. I don't think there is anything bad with trackwork. It is just that it tend to fry you out, just like runn hills till you feel like your going to puke. I have also found that most coaches make workouts harder then they need to be. Why do 25 of something when 10 will get you 99% of effect while saving the mind from extra pain.

For what it is worth what I have found that works nice and keeps me from getting hurt is to do a run of

Am-180 min run, after two hr a 5k a little faster then 10k

the

Pm-60 min with 45 a little slower then 10k pace along with hill spinging and sprints.

Requires that you rest three days,

For me works like this

Mon

Am-180 min run, after two hr a 5k a little faster then 10k

the

Pm-60 min with 45 a little slower then 10k pace along with hill spinging and sprints.

Tues

AM- 2:15 easy 145%MHR

PM-45 easy 145%MHR

Wens

AM- 2:15 easy 145%MHR

PM-45 easy 145%MHR

Thurs

AM- 2:15 easy 145%MHR

PM-45 easy 145%MHR

Fri

Am-180 min run, after two hr a 5k a little faster then 10k

the

Pm-60 min with 45 a little slower then 10k pace along with hill spinging and sprints.

Goal is to stress the LT system to it's limmit, then allow time for total recovery and consolodation.

I guess Ed Whitlock would be another example of a guy who's very successful without doing intervals. I think he does the occasional tempo or fartlek run and he races often, but mostly it sounds like he just runs 2-3 hours per day at a comfortable pace.

Yes, it seems that Whitlock is doing lots of distance and using weekend races as he speedwork, per se. Makes sense to me.

The Count Dracula Thread. It doesn't die.

Three other old guys come to mind now. One is another Canadian, Herb Phillips, who ran 2:47 or something while in his late 60s. He trains much like Ed Whitlock. And then there were two old Kiwis, Derek Turnbull and Ron Robertson. Neither of them did interval work. Turnbull did a 2:38 marathon at the age of 60 and won truckloads of gold medals at various WAVA Games and Robertson, who never did too many marathons, was also a multiple WAVA Gold medallist for many years.

If we are going to crank this one up we may as well throw Jack Foster into the "No interval" class.

I know he said he ran the occasional 4 X 1 mile but that was not overly common and it was never done on a Track. Usually on local Horse Race Track.The rest was over Farmland and Forest tracks.

BTW : In NZ and Australia tHorse race courses are Grass. Unlike those in USA.

Another Kiwi (Not as well known as the others, but beat Ron Robertson every now and then) who ran very little Interval work was Reg House. We got him down to 50 mins (10 miles) and 29:30 10k (Age 40+) with "Effort Runs" (Tempos) and steady mileage.

We had one "Interval" workout. The infamous 300m cut downs ,

But we did these on a Golf Course not on a track.

I have some thoughts on the Ron Clarke situation mentioned.

Will post later.