The Next question is who's going to figure out how to run 5k pace and faster and still make it a threshold workout with enough volume. I want to see people doing 50x200 @5k->3k pace with 30 seconds rest and 100x100 @ 3k-> 15 pace and finally 200 x 50 @ 15 down to 8 pace. I think once we start hitting the 100x100 and 200x50 we can finally take down 3:26 and 1:40.
Bob Schul and Igloi’s runners did this 60 years ago
I agree that running is moving away from that mentality (as shown with the double threshold days) but its still far from the norm and late to the party.
Perhaps "targeted" cross training is a better phrase. I'm talking getting on the bike with specific workouts targeting stuff like threshold, aerobic, VO2, max output.
As you said, running is weight bearing and therfore limits total volume and quality. Cycling, triathlon, swimming get in 20-30 hrs per week while us runners max out at 11 or 12. By doing something like cycling you can spend a lot more time in each training zone without risk of injury. This improves cardiac output, recovery ability, power, lean muscle mass, etc.
This guy used the bike to build a massive aerobic base that made him unstoppable. If 30+ hrs/week of aerobic training is useful for a 12 minute race imagine what it could do for a marathon?
Its a theory, but it just seems to me a lot is left on the table. It's proven that our bodies can handle significantly more stimulus than pure running can offer.
I did almost all of my training in the pool or bike. I ran 2-3 x week. 2 were track workouts, and maybe one solid steady hour run. The rest was pool running and high cadence on an exercise bike
Today we can conclude that Norwegian training method is working , 4 norwegian guys ran :
3:27.95 - today 3:29.47 - today 3:31.46 3:30.01 under 1 coach, bear in mind that this country with population of 5.5 milion and elevation a bit more than Atlantic ocean
You forget something important. They are all super talented. They had done the same results with single thresholds too.
I just read Gault’s article, great work as always.
It’s interesting to note that the system was refined using lactate measurement, and Marius says that it’s very important to measure lactate. Then Gault interviews the big American coaches using the system and they are judging pace from “respiration” and “feel”. You can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink
I just read Gault’s article, great work as always.
It’s interesting to note that the system was refined using lactate measurement, and Marius says that it’s very important to measure lactate. Then Gault interviews the big American coaches using the system and they are judging pace from “respiration” and “feel”. You can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink
They were interested in lactate monitoring until they saw Spencer doing it in his videos.
I just read Gault’s article, great work as always.
It’s interesting to note that the system was refined using lactate measurement, and Marius says that it’s very important to measure lactate. Then Gault interviews the big American coaches using the system and they are judging pace from “respiration” and “feel”. You can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink
I wonder how swimmers would train using the lactate threshold. They aren't - I presume - allowed to bleed into the water. It seems to me that swimming programs don't use this training as much as running programs do, either.
I just read Gault’s article, great work as always.
It’s interesting to note that the system was refined using lactate measurement, and Marius says that it’s very important to measure lactate. Then Gault interviews the big American coaches using the system and they are judging pace from “respiration” and “feel”. You can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink
I am not aware of a single intervention study which compares training by lactate with training without lactate testing.
I just read Gault’s article, great work as always.
It’s interesting to note that the system was refined using lactate measurement, and Marius says that it’s very important to measure lactate. Then Gault interviews the big American coaches using the system and they are judging pace from “respiration” and “feel”. You can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink
Lactate measuring is not neccessary to find out the runners very best threshold pace in training. My successful training system has proved that . 🧙♂️🇸🇪The Magician
When Grant Fisher was on the LRC podcast, he mentioned that when he first joined Bowerman after workouts he would be so tired he would go back to his apartment and lie on the floor for several hours. Obviously may be an exaggeration but safe to say they were not doing controlled double threshold sessions. And it clearly worked well for him...
Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but I have not had time to read the whole thread…
Does anyone remember when Lance Armstrong made his comeback from cancer, and one of the main reasons for his massive improvements was the many miles that he put in cycling at over 80rpm in lower gears, when most pro cyclists at the time were pushing higher gears at 60 to 70 rpm? This was attributed as being a main factor in his success. Little did we know at the time. In fact everyone in a bike in the ensuing years switched to 80rpm +. Sometimes, as someone else earlier in the thread noted…we need to ignore what could be smoke and mirrors and perhaps look elsewhere for the answers.
What to me was a big surprise is that Letsrun after xxyears thought about the idea that training for what a raceday look like is a new idea. Back in the 80 if you had 2 races on one day you trained accordingly. Or 4 than you mimiced it in training, no rocket science. You're stupid for not doing it.
So what was new oh new dope..... If going faster it is always, food, refueling, gear, track (bouncy) or dope. Dope always gives the most progress......
In the late 1990s Bill Dellinger served as the interim head distance coach for 6months at Wake Forest while they were recruiting a new coach. I got to see his “Oregon System” which I presume had been in place for decades. It consisted of 2 workouts a day every Tuesday and Thursday and a race or single hard session on Saturday. The workouts were shorter but more intense than the double threshold stuff but still the same principal. Here’s the breakdown:
Tuesday am - Oregon drill - 3 x 1000m done easy (3:30), medium (3:00) and hard (2:40) - these times are rough estimates for what the avg runner was hitting (mostly 14:20 ish runners). Rest between intervals consisted of 10x 100m strides done easy, medium hard with 10s between strides.
Tuesday pm - 4000m continuous running alternating 400m at 5 k race pace with 200m at tempo (a variant of the old pre workout)
Thursday am: Oregon drill
Thursday pm: 2400m continuous running alternating 300m at just below mile pace with 100m at just below tempo pace (ended up running ~5k pace for the 2400m)
Saturday: race or more traditional intervals.
The wake guys improved massively with this training. They ended up with three guys running under or close to 4min and finished 7th in XC the next year.
I’m pretty sure this training was what Dellinger used in the glory days of Salazar, Prefontain etc at Oregon. Maybe this was the dawn of the two workouts a day philosophy.
Can these workouts be adapted at slower speeds for slower 5k-10k runners? (Like 16:xx men and 19:xx women?), or, proportionally, 34-35 10k males and 38-39 10k females?
Yes but you'll have to do some legwork. The book "The Competitive Runners Training Book" talks about the training more in depth and hints at how you might do this but isn't super specific. It also details the Oregon system and it does seem like Dellinger likes his pseudo-double threshold workouts.
Sometimes, as someone else earlier in the thread noted…we need to ignore what could be smoke and mirrors and perhaps look elsewhere for the answers.
Isn't it strange that a country with only 5 million inhabitants can have the best ever in the 400m hurdles, soon to be the best ever (Ingebrigtsen), one of the best in golf (Hovland) and tennis (Ruud), the most sought-after football player (Haaland) and one of the best football players in the world (Ødegaard). All of them are active in summer sports, from a frozen country and at the very pinnacle of the world's elite. Could it be possible that the Norwegians are just doing a lot of things right and has been doing so for quite a while?
This post was edited 11 minutes after it was posted.
Does anyone have any insight into what Mike Smith means by respiration? See this quote "
"Many groups still do this, but not all. Levins goes by feel — marathon effort for morning sessions, half-marathon or 10k effort in the afternoon. NAU doesn’t measure lactate either — Smith goes off respiration."
Is he just referring to effort in some sort of pseudoscientific way or is this a specific measurement?
Does anyone have any insight into what Mike Smith means by respiration? See this quote "
"Many groups still do this, but not all. Levins goes by feel — marathon effort for morning sessions, half-marathon or 10k effort in the afternoon. NAU doesn’t measure lactate either — Smith goes off respiration."
Is he just referring to effort in some sort of pseudoscientific way or is this a specific measurement?
Pseudoscience. He watches and listens to how the runners are breathing.
Does anyone have any insight into what Mike Smith means by respiration? See this quote "
"Many groups still do this, but not all. Levins goes by feel — marathon effort for morning sessions, half-marathon or 10k effort in the afternoon. NAU doesn’t measure lactate either — Smith goes off respiration."
Is he just referring to effort in some sort of pseudoscientific way or is this a specific measurement?
Pseudoscience. He watches and listens to how the runners are breathing.
There are talk tests that work okay for finding the first ventilatory threshold (VT1), which correlates with the first lactate threshold (LT1). It's not pseudoscience, just field testing, but it would be hard to use something like that for the entire NAU team and really believe in your accuracy.
Also, double thresh as a system is founded on training at what's called the maximal lactate steady state (MLSS), which is slightly beyond VT1 and LT1, so respiration field tests can't currently help much in finding it as far as I'm aware.
It should be noted, though, that training at VT1 does improve the athlete's ability to use lactate while operating under the classic 4.0 mmol/L. It likely just requires higher volumes of training (probably seen in Smith's "sub-T" workouts).
The aims of this study were (1) to establish the best fit between ventilatory and lactate exercise performance parameters in running and (2) to explore novel alternatives to estimate the maximal aerobic speed (MAS) in well-tr...
I just read Gault’s article, great work as always.
It’s interesting to note that the system was refined using lactate measurement, and Marius says that it’s very important to measure lactate. Then Gault interviews the big American coaches using the system and they are judging pace from “respiration” and “feel”. You can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink
I wonder how swimmers would train using the lactate threshold. They aren't - I presume - allowed to bleed into the water. It seems to me that swimming programs don't use this training as much as running programs do, either.
You couldn't be more wrong. Lactate testing is a lot more popular in swimming than running.
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