Do you believe Bekele did this workout?

heard it from the horse's mout wrote:

So, last year El G himself visited my college team when he was here for some event related to the Boston marathon. He told us of a workout (through a translator) that completely blew my mind. I can't remember the exact times, but the workout was as follows:

1000 (2:14), 30 sec rest, 200 (25)

800 (1:49), 30s, 200 (25)

600 (~1:20) 30s, 200 (25)

400 (50? 49?), 30s, 200(25)

200 (24), 30s, 200(24)

I think the rest between sets was 2-4 mins.

I don't really remember the details after the 1000, because I was just so awestruck that he would run THAT fast as part of a workout. The workout was done at altitude in Morocco, and I remember that the 600 and 400 times were more along the lines of 800 pace.

Anyways, this really showed me that the top athletes in the world can do absolutely incredible stuff.

You definitely don't remember the times correctly or there was a mis translation. You said he worked out at 2:14 for a 1000 the fastest he ever ran in the 1000 in a meet was 2:16.85 and even the slowest 2:14 ever run a 2:14.99 was the 32nd fastest time in history. I realize you are trying to exemplify how fast he was, and I agree el g is the all time great one at the mile however when you just make up times it throws whole discussion off.

J.O. wrote:

51.0 for Bekele in a 400 race.

Y'all don't understand how this guys runs. His stride length hardly varies at all, and his maximum stride rate is 240

That's 12.5/100m top speed. He has never gone faster than this in any race at sea level.

The thing that most here can't grasp is that he can hold that top speed for almost 300m

At 8000 feet, yes he could do a rolling start 400 in under 50, or under 51 at sea level.

Bekele run a 3:32.6/1500 meters. 3:32+16=3:48 mile, take 1/2 of that you have a 1:54/800 meters. You can come by the 800 meters of a 1500 or mile, 10 secounds of your best 800 meters. Take 10 off of that 1:54 you have a 1:44/800 meters. Bekele 800 time in trainig. Go 52 x 2 = a 1:44 time. You can run a 800 meter, 3 to 4 seconds off your best 400 meters. So Bekele 400 meters is 47 high or 48 seconds

Dr C**

D1 bro wrote:

WOW, you marathoning letsrunners who suscribe to running world are all jealous and dumb. there is a 340/357 1500/miler in my conference who does the 4x400 at the END of the meet (after the 1500 and 800 rounds/finals) and he splits 49 easy....

so, if KB can run a 5k at almost 4 flat mile pace (and has a 330 1500 pr) it is dumb to think he cant easily run a 49x open or even 48x.

When did Bekele run 3:30 for 1500m? His pb is 3:32.35 from 2007.

Dr C** wrote:

Bekele run a 3:32.6/1500 meters. 3:32+16=3:48 mile, take 1/2 of that you have a 1:54/800 meters. You can come by the 800 meters of a 1500 or mile, 10 secounds of your best 800 meters. Take 10 off of that 1:54 you have a 1:44/800 meters. Bekele 800 time in trainig. Go 52 x 2 = a 1:44 time. You can run a 800 meter, 3 to 4 seconds off your best 400 meters. So Bekele 400 meters is 47 high or 48 seconds

Dr C**

Yes, your figures would make some sense if the runner in question was an 800/1500m runner. But they don't apply for someone who is a 5/10k guy.

Bekele was able to run 3:32 because of his incredible endurance, not because of his 800m speed. He is able to run comfortable at a tempo closer to his best for 800m than a 1500m runner could.

So, Bekele can run through 800m in 1:54 in a Mile while only able to run an 800 best of say 1:48. That's a 6 second difference.

Someone like Moorcroft with great but not as good endurance as Bekele goes 1:54 in a 3:49 Mile with an 800 best of 1:46, ......8 seconds difference.

This workout is quite amazing and demonstrates that athletes can run proper workouts at 7500 ft! Ethiopians and probably Kenyans don't use the silly hi-lo training that so many Western athletes utilize. It is not needed and probably a waste of time, money, and gas.

J.O. wrote:

51.0 for Bekele in a 400 race.

Y'all don't understand how this guys runs. His stride length hardly varies at all, and his maximum stride rate is 240

That's 12.5/100m top speed. He has never gone faster than this in any race at sea level.

The thing that most here can't grasp is that he can hold that top speed for almost 300m

At 8000 feet, yes he could do a rolling start 400 in under 50, or under 51 at sea level.

I agree with this.

I'm surprised that Bekele did an 8x(400/200) session with so much rest like this and so fast. It doesn't seem to fit into running 60-63 as he does for 5000 and 10000m. I'd never heard of him doing a session like this before today, not to day that he doesn't but it is surprising to me. I do wonder how he can fit that kind of session in with maintaining his speed over distance, as it would seem to have the opposite effect.

J.R. wrote:

I agree with this.

I'm surprised that Bekele did an 8x(400/200) session with so much rest like this and so fast. It doesn't seem to fit into running 60-63 as he does for 5000 and 10000m. I'd never heard of him doing a session like this before today, not to day that he doesn't but it is surprising to me. I do wonder how he can fit that kind of session in with maintaining his speed over distance, as it would seem to have the opposite effect.

Huh? How do you think he is able to drop a 52-53 at the end of a 10000 or run the last 1000 of an already fast championship race at sub 4 min pace? It doesn't happen from running 60 or slower all the time.

I am sure this African can do this workout. He is on something like EPO or maybe blood transfusion. Dr. Rosa and his athletes are doing well. These African are like lab rats for Dr. Rosa.

You are all wrong !

The workout on the graph it´s not 16X(400m+200m)with 90s-120secs rest and not 8X(400m+200m) as well.

WHAT THE GRAPH SHOWS IS 1X200m+(8X400m+200m) or put in another way but that is the same the graph shows is

8X200m+400m)+200m.

THE WORKOUT STARTS WITH 200m AND NOT 400m. STARTS with 200m AND FINISHES WITH ANOTHER 200m. ABSOLUTELY ! The first set is 200m and the last set is another 200m again.

About the recovery length, what the graph shows is that the first recovery periods are about 90-96secs duration AND the recovery duration goes longer and longer, and the last 2 recovery periods are about 2:30min duration.

This changes quite completely the initial technical interpretation, the one done by the author of the article, that bases his conclusion in wrong and inaccurate data.

On a methodological analysis, and just by the HR graph analysis of this workout, I can say it wasn´t been as hard as some might think, because several reasons.

Despite the pace could be fast eventually, the runner that did it could resist to run it with low HR, and the long recovery length duration periods – that are longer recovery for every next set – results in a lower HR decrease, and on every new set, his heart and cardio-vascular systems are quite recovered. We can say this is not a straight interval training, the kind of interval training that the recovery is so short that the runner haven´t opportunity and he can´t get his HR down, the way each new set his heart goes higher and higher in crescendum, and the heart after each recovery period doesn´t go down from 140-145 HR, it´s what happens on a experienced runner like would be Bekele.

Another aspect is the number of posts with people that are impressionate by what Bekele supposedly did. Fantastic, very good, astonish workout, etc.

I taught that one day we will have a Olympic competition for the world´s best workout, or we try to put this kind of workouts in the Guinness book of records. As this is more decisive that the runner that Bekele is, a guy that is 5000m and 10000m WR, Olympics and world champ, that can win the world cross country short version ion the evening of one day and on the morning of the next day he wins the long version, How many times ?

In my opinion what would be fantastic is Carlos Lopes for example, that he by the way did win 3 world champ cross country , marathon Olympics and marathon WR and he did fantastic workouts, Why ? Because never did one single 400m faster than 60 secs in training. This is what is fantastic one slower talent that did 27:17 and 2h07:12, not a 26:16 runner if he is able to run 52-54s for the quarter.

Finally I ask myself what is the knowledge of the author of the article, I don´t want to personalize this question, but is this the rich modern science from the author ? He is so analphabet that he can´t see by the look to the graph that the workout is not what he says. I see. This is modern science. Inaccurate date, poor interpretation, added with presumption, misunderstand of the issue.

Ps – by the way, the first 4 peaks of the graph, when we see the HR goes up to 90-100 HRB is just short strides that he did as warm-up before to move up and start the workout. 4X100m strides probably.

cabral,

by your reasoning the 200m intervals spike his heart rate less than the 400m, which i suppose is entirely plausible, but i don't get at all what you are saying after that about types of workouts.

Antonio,

Surely there exists some useful marker or indicator workouts that an athlete uses to get an idea his fitness with respect to the target event, as otherwise we are training somewhat blind until the big race?

For Carlos Lopes, I understand that workouts indicating fitness for 10k/marathon do not include sub 60sec pace and agree that this workout in question does not show the characteristics needed for Bekele to run 26:16 at all and as I said earlier the author's analysis is not of much worth.

Beyond disagreement with the article, can you suggest how you guage fitness with respect to target events during the training process?

Do we just leave it to lead up races to indicate fitness?

I am not obsessed by the perfect workout but I do like to have an idea of where my athletes are in relation to target events...I am interested in your response as it relates to all events middle and long distances...

Antonio, the graph is pure fiction. Steve Magness just made it up and included heart rates.

And he started this thread too. That's what he does, starts hypothetical threads and argues about it.

Let´s see if i detail my point the way you can understand.

If we think about intervals, we have 2 genuine different types. One kind of interval workout is typical/classic interval training. Other kind of interval workout is interval repetitions.

What discriminates in between classic interval training and interval repetitions is the kind of interval length.

On classic intervals the recovery length shall be so short that used an interval recovery of time that allowed ONLY INCOMPLETE RECOVERY. An accurate and incomplete recovery interval stresses the runner more and more with each additional running period. Each running effort becomes more and more difficult as the workout continues.

This is not the kind of the workout that is showed in the graph. With such a long interval recovery that the graph shows with a RUN/RECOVERY ratio of some 1:2 to 1:3 or 1:4, so long recovery allows quite complete recovery (1:30min to 2:30min for 200m in 24-25secs and 52-54secs for 400m sets). It´s why in the graph we can see the HR of the runner is lower than 120HR, sometimes 90-100-120HR right before the re-start.

Normally if the workout would be the classic interval training kind – that is not really - 3 things would happen.

One is that the heart with such short recovery wouldn´t get down to 90, but just would get down lower than 130-140-150 HR probably, right before to re-start each new set.

Second is that every new set the heart rate will tend to stay higher after each new interval set, despite one new/next recovery period.

Third, with this classic interval recovery with the kind of recovery like 1:1 to 1:half, the workout would be harder to run and of course the runner couldn´t go so fast.

I wouldn´t want to say that what he did is wrong or inadequate. I want to say that with that long recovery it´s easy to go faster.

You might understand that If the graph is from Bekele, 2 minutes and more as recovery it´s an “eternity”. This is showed by that the HR is so stable and lower despite he goes so fast.

This is what I would expect from a “specialist” like the author of the article, not poor comments, it´s what he did. He simply couldn’t write the workout correctly, how should he produce rich comments.

I never see that graph ever. But as I can read the graph in the first glance I see that the first interval and the last one is 200m, and I also see that the 2 last intreval recoveries the lenght is longer than 2:00min. It´s so obvious.

Antonio Cabral wrote:

WHAT THE GRAPH SHOWS IS 1X200m+(8X400m+200m) or put in another way but that is the same the graph shows is

8X200m+400m)+200m.

WHAT THE GRAPH SHOWS IS 1X200m+(8X400m+200m) or put in another way but that is the same the graph shows is

8X200m+400m)+1X200m.

Excuse me. Now it´s correct.

Antonio, the graph is pure fiction, don't feed the troll.

Chris Solinsky ran 50.5 while in high school.

idiot2 wrote:

No one could do that workout.

My boy says he can eat 50 eggs, he can eat 50 eggs.

J.O. wrote:

Antonio, the graph is pure fiction. Steve Magness just made it up and included heart rates.

And he started this thread too. That's what he does, starts hypothetical threads and argues about it.

Might be what you say it´s true, i don´t know really.

Then the authour is so incompetent that he can´t build one trustfull science fictionand build up one workout that might fit in graph.

Otherwise if what you say it´s not true, then the authour of the article wants to write science methodology, or the art of coaching ?

One way or another if i was Donald Trump i would say "Your article is trash, you lost this one, Mr. SM you are fired !"

Do you actually believe that the graph is from bekele?