Mr. Renato Canova: Could You Please Answer a Question About Effective Ways to Improve the Lactate Threshold?

Question:

Okay then how many world class sprinters can run a 27:20 for 10000 meters.

Answer: None

can smell a fish when i see it wrote:

Question:

Okay then how many world class sprinters can run a 27:20 for 10000 meters.

Answer: None

Your example retains ZERO validity.

Sprinters cannot run 27 minute 10,000s because their percentage of muscle fiber composition and distribution of aerobic enzymes are insufficient to allow a high quality performance in a predominantly aerobic event. The 10K is said to comprise about 96% aerobic energy production sources.

Flojo tried running a 5K road race once and could not do it (I believe the time was about 21 minutes, nowhere close to equivalent with her 10.49 100 and 21.34 200).

But distance runners CAN sprint fast, though not world class level, even WITH predominantly SLOW twitch fiber composition.

I saw an example, I believe from Owen Anderson, of Kenyan 2:07:02 marathoner Sammy Lelei who had a biospy done revealing upwards of 90% SLOW TWITCH composition, but he still managed to record a sub-50 second 400 (I believe it was 48). That is likely faster than what Geb or Bekele could run.

So speed is VERY important for distance runners.

More examples to follow.

We can use two examples, the American record holder in the 3,000 and 5,000, Bob Kennedy, and the world record holder in the 5,000 and 10,000, Kenenisa Bekele.

You will see that the only limiting factor keeping Kennedy from running near-world record times in the longer distances is BASIC SPEED.

Marius Bakken reported that Kennedy had 52 second speed at his very fastest. Using Frank Horwill's rule for endurance in longer distance events (though these standards can be tightened for elite runners that are stronger), Kennedy would normally have the following longer distance abilities:

400- 52

800- 1:52 (52+ 4 secs/lap)

1500- 3:45 (56+ 4 secs/lap)

3000- 8:00 (60+ 4 secs/lap)

5000- 14:10 (64+ 4 secs/lap)

10,000- 30:00 (68+ 4 secs/lap)

Even supposing for an athlete stronger than Horwill's rule allows, Kennedy would otherwise still be WAY slower than his actual PR's.

Look at his actual PR's and retention rates:

400- 52

800- N.T. (ran 1:55 in a workout with Komen that went 1600/1200/800/400 in 3:57/2:56/1:55/55)

1500- 3:38 (58.1 per 400; 89.5% retention)

3,000- 7:30.84 AR (60.1 per 400; 86.5% retention (already he is 30 seconds FASTER than Horwill's rule))

5,000- 12:58.21 AR (62.26 per 400; 83.5% retention)

10,000- 27:37.45 (66.3 per 400; 78.4% retention)

In short Kennedy was unbelievably AEROBICALLY strong. Of course, this is the most important element to distance running success. Kennedy was at one time the only non-African under 13:00 in the 5,000 with, at least on an elite level, limited basic speed.

HOWEVER, all of his career Kennedy was limited by one thing: LACK OF BASIC SPEED. You can only run so fast with 52 second 400 speed. Holding your 90% of top 400 speed for a mile, as he did, is unreal.

But he never won a medal or a big Golden League Meet, nor did he ever set a world record.

Flash to Kenenisa Bekele. Assume a 400 PR of 50 (indicated by Renato's guess about Bekele, Gebrselassie, and Shaheen).

Here is Bekele's list:

400- 50

800- N.T.

1500- N.T.

3,000- 7:30.67 (60.1 per lap; 83.2% retention)

5,000 12:37.35 (60.59 per 400; 82.5% retention)

10,000 26:20.31 (63.2 per 400; 79.1% retention)

Both are 5,000m specialists. Bekele can obviously go faster than 7:30 for 3K, and Kennedy admitted to "cautiously" going for the A standard and still popped a 27:37 PB.

So comparing their 5,000's is best.

Kennedy's numbers:

5,000- 12:58.21 (83.5%, 52 400 speed)

Bekele's numbers:

5,000- 12:37.35 (82.5%, 50 400 speed)

So, aerobically speaking, Kennedy is STRONGER than Kenenisa Bekele!

If Bekele could hold 89.5% of 400 speed for the 1500 his time would be:

50/.895= 3:29.5

His 3,000, with Kennedy's strength, would be:

50/.865= 7:13

So, if Kennedy had been able to improve his 400 time just 2 seconds, he would have shattered Komen's INCREDIBLE 7:20.67 by SEVEN seconds!

So, as the above clearly shows, speed can have HUGE returns in distance running at the top level.

Kennedy would be a world record holder, and almost CERTAINLY an Olympic champion (with 50 second speed and his retention, 50/.835= 12:28.5 5,000 (!!) SHATTERING Bekele's WR and approaching 4 minute mile pace for 3.1 miles).

Bottom line: basic, pure sprint speed counts BIG when you are at a high level.

I bet you five bucks that Kennedy could run around 50"-51" for 400m, and that his 1500m is a lot weaker then you think.

Kennedy was likely a 51" and 3'35"5 runner if he trained for it during his peak.

Changing it to 50"-51" would have put him at 83.5%-81.9%

Bekele is more likely a 48"-49" runner as well.

Basically, you numbers don't mean shit.

The thing is that being a distance runner means most your training has to be aimed toward the Aerobic Engine. That does not mean you can't do explosive work but you have to pick wisely what your going to do and what you will be able to recover from so you aim your training towards the specificity of running. Explosive work does need to be in the mix all the time but you have to be able to recover from running and balance that with the explosive neural muscular work you do and it seems that some people think you can do everything but when your not recovering from your endurance work or your tired from to much ballistic work that is the problem. If you line up the best 10k runners of course Bekele will be among the fastest but the thing that you want is to be fast and fatigue resistant in relative to your event. Strength is speed specific and you don't necessarrily need to be super fast you need the capacity in a lower numer of fibers at race speed which is why you try to recruit many at max. intensity on a hill sprint. If you just hand your distance athletes to a sprint coach and they give them what a sprinter would do there is a chance for injury and overtraining because it is very hard for endurance athletes to balance glycogen and hydration and the perform ballistic exercises.Distance runners are not going to be freash like a sprinter.

This has to be the greatest thread ever and one of the reasons that Letsrun is great.

I think you guys are getting hung up over the hill sprint thing. Yes it is a great workout and all three of my athletes have gained a great amout of strength, power and speed from doing them for many months. Look at the example programs we have been give again. The hills are a big part but almost every day had 90 to 2:00 of running. Some 80 min days and days off but 90 to 2:00 for a world class runner is 15 to 20 miles running easy all to time (and its not always ez). While there is no doubt a power component to the training your still doing 100+ mile per week even with a day off with no problem. Thus this argument about sprinters running 27:00 10Ks is not very good. They do almost no volume compaired to 100mi / week and everything is power. Maybe the occational 4 to 5 mile run for some 400m runners but that is not in all cases.

Renato Canova presents a very ballanced plan. It is obvious that aerobic development is a huge part. Look at the "ez" days to not just the workouts. Every week has power(lactic power), high end aerobic level 2, maybe some lactic endurance or lactic speed work, Aerobic power level 1 work (think MP run or progressive run), recovery, a long run and rest. The results don't come from sprint work alone but from working on a range of running speeds all the time in different amounts.

Also he has said that every 18 months or so he does a 6 month heavy aerobic period. Americans think of lydiard and do this every year in our minds. For some reason this has been forgoten in this hang up about how long / steep and hard with how much rest these magic hills should be. Just find a steep hill and sprint up it for 10 seconds. FULLY recover and do it again. Don't neglect the other stuff and get Renato Canova to coach you its that simple :)

Purdue Grad

Don't neglect the other stuff and get Renato Canova to coach you its that simple :)

You need to be kenyan in order to get trained by him

Pudue grad. I don't think people are hung up on the Muscular work. There seems to be a couple schools of thought about training and all people are trying to say is really you need it all. Smart Hard work that attacks the aerobic engine and also work that goes after the muscles and nervous system. Just by running a lot will get people close but for distance athletes to maximise the aerobic system you must not forget some of the other systems. Pay attention to what Renato and Antonio Cabral say. There is some fantastic knowledge and American coaches seem to come out some sort of school. Really lets hope we open the class to all coaches of the world. There are so many ways to get to good results. Don't look at absolute look at No false training just training that pushes athletes in the direction they need. It is obvious that the african athletes are starting with more power and a much bigger aerobic engine.

No flase training?

what if someone thought it was a good idea to get in as much mileage as possible and then only do 200s on the track. You think they'd run a good 800? Some do.

Personally I think you would run a horrible 800 of that. Your ability to buffer and even create high concentrations of lactate would not exist. You may have trouble getting in the 12 mmol range when for the 800m you need to be close to 20 mmol. In other words your endurance at race pace would be horrible and after 400 to 500m you would slow down a lot and have no ability kick it in.

Not to say high miles is bad but if all you do is run ez high milage with only hard 200m your 800m performace would be poor I believe.

If anyone has experience with that kind of training and wants to write about it it would interesting.

Hey Stupid wrote:

I bet you five bucks that Kennedy could run around 50"-51" for 400m, and that his 1500m is a lot weaker then you think.

Kennedy was likely a 51" and 3'35"5 runner if he trained for it during his peak.

Changing it to 50"-51" would have put him at 83.5%-81.9%

Bekele is more likely a 48"-49" runner as well.

Basically, you numbers don't mean shit.

I wonder why it is you need to speak so foolishly?

Perhaps you haven't learned so yet, but it is quite possible to disagree civilly. I therefore suggest you take note of your own moniker and repeat it slowly to yourself many times.

Apparently, you also envision yourself to be a better authority on Kennedy's 400 ability than Kennedy himself. The 52 time was straight from his own mouth. All out, at his fastest, a 52 second 400. He ran plenty of 1500's and miles and came up with 3:38 and 3:56. That is his fastest, at his peak.

As for Bekele, again you miss the point. If Bekele could run 48 then he should be significantly faster than 12:37 and 26:20. His endurance would, relative to the most aerobically fit on the circuit, be POOR if he could run one lap in 48 and 12.5 laps in 60.5 per lap. He should not slow down than much. A 50 is far more likely.

So, to not coin your own phrase, your numbers also do not mean anything (I'll spare the bad language. It is a sign of weak vocabulary and a small brain).

PurdueGrad, we are talking about athletes that ALREADY have a phenomenal aerobic ability.

Many, many distance runners record very high mileage and spend a good deal of time at the proper aerobic speeds.

Hill sprinting and other explosive work for basic speed is meant to take an athlete to the next level.

Look again at the above example with Kennedy. With 50 second 400 speed he could, having maintained his same endurance, run 7:13 for 3K.

That's crazy. But with better speed, it would be possible. But he and perhaps others sacrificed medals by doing too many miles, and, as Renato described it, "defusing the nervous system" without enough explosive work.

It is not so simple as "find a hill and run it." You need to know how to do these workouts properly. Take a page from the two best distance runners ever: Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele. Their stride patterns and purported workouts reveal that they spend time working on and improving NATURAL SPEED.

Bono,

Right on.

Racer1,

Yes Kennedy lacked endurance. He ran sub 13 for 5k and couldn't even break 27 for 10k! Something is fishy.

Even slowpoke Carlos Lopes ran 27:17 with only a 56 second 400.

And where do you get that Bekele runs 48 seconds?

Kennedy's 10k/5k = 2.13

Bekele's 10k/5k (with 10k unpushed) = 2.084

I ALWAYS thought Kennedy was lacking endurance, and did the minumum to "get by" with his speed.

This is shown very well by his slow down over distance.

Racer1 what you don't understand is that everthing you do can also take away from recovery. Working on natural speed? What do you think sprinting up a hill does.1. teaches the brain to fire the nervous system in safe manner. 2. recruits fibers 3. strengthens the body at max. intensity. 4. people like to think hills are anti-neural but when they studied what the muscles were doing at max. intensity uphill they found that the nervous system was in overload. 5. speed is related to strength especially specific that provides better biomechanical support 6. the other thing the final sprint in a endurance race is more about recruiting fibers when they are full of lactate and less about overall speed.

Bono great stuff but who the heck are you?

No, I understand it perfectly. Look at what Dathan Ritzenhein recently said. He noted that his hillwork allowed his body the strength to better benefit and absorb the mileage he is doing. You do the hills to strengthen the appropriate systems so that your normal training now becomes a little bit easier and you can handle a different, harder load with the same effect on the body.

And the SHORT sprints uphill do not tax the body too greatly. Towards the nervous system they are stressful, but you cannot injure the nervous system like you can a muscle.

Ever pulled a nerve from running? You can overwork yourself and become stale, of course, but short hills introduced gradually will not do this.

You have no disagreement from me, here. I am not sure why you think I would disagree with the above considering I have said similar.

Not entirely true. Looking again at a "super elite" Bekele, a tactical 5,000m Golden League race does not affect him as it does a Kenyan athlete who is slower.

In 2003 Bekele raced a 5,000m in Lausanne, Switzerland, with a final time of 13:06 and a last 400 of 52-point. For him, 13:06 is well below his maximal capacity for the distance. He is not producing the same level of lactate as he would be in an all-out, steady paced effort.

Mark Carroll's coach had an article up recently observing that the pattern of the races in Europe tends to be a very fast first 2,000m, a fast 3rd kilometer, and then a very slow 4th kilometer before a fast finish.

In Bekele's case, 13:06 is SLOWER than both his final 5,000 in his WR 10K and in the second half of his WC 10K win in Paris. So he can run very close to top speed for 400 WITHOUT MUCH LACTATE.

But Sammy Kipketer was with him as well. At the time, both Bekele and Kipketer had PB's of 12:52. So, for all intents and purposes, aerobic capacity was equal. But who won the race? Bekele, likely because he has better basic speed.

Look again at Athens. El Guerrouj sat on Bekele and outkicked him. He has more basic leg speed. At 13:14 final time, Bekele is 37 seconds outside his WR pace. He is even outside his 10K pace! But he lost the Olympic title because he did not have basic speed enough to compete with a WR mile runner. He even said after the race: "I could not have run any faster, but I could have held the same speed (52 400 pace) for longer."

So I agree that at maximum speed recruiting fast twitch IIb fibers is the key when the muscles are saturated with lactate.

But Bekele, Shaheen, El Guerrouj, and Kipchoge many times do NOT need to run PR pace to win big. They have better basic speed than others and can win in the end as though it were a fresh 400 race, because that is how aerobically strong they are.

can smell a fish when i see it wrote:

Racer1,

Yes Kennedy lacked endurance. He ran sub 13 for 5k and couldn't even break 27 for 10k! Something is fishy.

Wrong. Look at the outline of Kennedy's career. From 1992-1999, his focus was 5,000m. He dabbled only sparingly in the 10K, running 27:38 in his debut in 1999. That is one race, likely without specific preparation.

A quote from Renato might explain why Kennedy, a 5K specialist, was not so able to post fast times in a 10K:

"Dear Jzs, the ratio that you say is fruit of a statistical study, and, how all the statistics, is connected with what happened till now. The reality is that the frequency with whom 5000m and 10000m are run is very much different. In any season there are more than 10 opportunities to run 5000m at toplevel, only 1 or 2 for running 10000m. This means that the most part of athletes of 10000m ARE NOT SPECIALISTS OF THIS EVENT, but of 5000m, running 10000m only in Hengelo or in Bruxelles.

In my athletes, for example, that are specialists of 10km better than 5km, we can see these results (like PB) :

JOHN KORIR : 13:09 / 26:52 (34.0 differential)

NICHOLAS KEMBOI : 13:01 / 26:30 (28.0)

HASSAN ABDULLAH : 12:56 / 26:38 (46.0)

ROBERT KIPCHUMBA : 13:19 / 27:25 (47.0)

At the same time, the runners specialists of 5km :

MARK BETT : 12:55 / 27:02 (1:12)

MOSES MOSOP : 13:09 / 27:13 (55.0)

And, about women, the Italian record holder (that is a Marathon runner),

MAURA VICECONTE : 15:18.8 / 31:05.5 (27.9)

So, you understand that speaking about a ratio is almost ridiculous, because the difference depend on the opportunities that the athletes have for competing at top level in 10000m when fully prepared. I want to continue looking at the results of Bruxelles :

CHARLES KAMATHI : 13:03 / 26:51 (45.0)

BONIFACE KIPROP : 13:07 / 27:04 (50.0)

MOSES MASAI : 13:28 / 27:07 (11.0)

During the world record women, the Chinese WANG JUNG-XIA ran 29:31 with the second half in 14:26.

Try to compare the PB of the best athletes of last year in 5km and 10km, then tell me the ratio.

Another thing : many times an athlete is able to improve of a lot of seconds his PB in 10000m, never in 5000m. Why ? Because when you REALLY decide not only to run,but also to prepare 10000m, you can modify very much your parameters of specific endurance, going very far from the statistical ratio. So, no little bag of tricks, but only specific training for an event that is not well prepared for a lot of reasons (the main is the lack of competitions).

The rest among every test is only the time that you need for taking blood from the ear (normally from 45.0 to 1 min), the same after the last 2000m before 1200m. We need continuity in this type of test, because we have to investigate what can happen running long time at an even pace well precised before, so the ideal test could be running without stopping the action, but in this case is not possible to take blood.

I think that the problem of "ratio" is a false problem. Athletics is something conventional, and training is normally a compromise between the natural attitudes of the athlete and the official event. Are you sure that, if distances like 600m, or 1500m steeple, or 300m HS, were official, the record holder had to be the same of 400 or 800, of 3000 steeple or of 400 HS ? Are you sure that, if also for men the weight of shot (4 kg), discus (1 kg) and javelin (600 gr) was the same of women, the record holder could be the same ?

So,you must remember that, regarding EACH RUNNING EVENT, two different typologies of runners exist : "The fast" and "The resistant". Under this point of view, to speak about a "ratio" is an exercise of phylosophy, very much appreciated by many readers and writers of the post, but that has nothing to do with the real solution of an individual training. If, for example, El Guerrouj in the future will move to 10000m too, I think that his ratio will be about 2.09, because there is no doubt that, for 10000m, he is a "fast" type of runner. But, when you want to exhamin the reality, you cannot forget that the density of hard competitions in 10000m is very much little than in 5000m. Look at the all-time lists, and can see like the most part of the performances are in Bruxelles and Hengelo, the only sites where 10000m are frequently run at top level. Also analyzing the development of the races where the athletes beated WR, we see that Gebre and Bekele were alone for the last 6.5 km, while, for example, Tergat was back Paul Koech till 8800m. Regarding Nicholas Kemboi, Ißm sure that, last year, he could run 5km not in 12:42 but in 12:50. The difference is that he was in a wonderful race of 10000m (how many athletes were able to improve their PB last year ?), never in a fast race of 5000m when was in shape. This is a demonstration of the importance of the pace of the race, and of course, if in 5000m there are more opportunities, the PB in 5000m are closer to the potential of the athletes than the PB in 10000m.

Regarding the fact that I prefer to prepare runners of 10000m for this distance (also if they can run it only 2 times a year) instead for 5km, my answer is clear : I PREPARE FOR 10000m ATHLETES THAT HAVE MORE CHANCES ON THIS EVENT, not who has less chance. For example, I don`t prepare Mark Bett (12:55) or James Kwalia (12:54) for 10km, but John Korir and Hassan Abdullah, that also run HM.

And in any case remember that, if you prepare well 10000m, you can run well also 5000m, while the contrary is not true.

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