Suppose I'm in my peak training week for the marathon. 110 miles, 20 @ 6:XX and 6 @ 5:XX. One day for a 10 mile easy run my muscles are so sore I can only manage 10:00 min/mile pace until mile 10 when my legs loosen up enough to run 8:00 min/mile pace.
Did I get any aerobic or training benefits from the 9 miles at 10:00 min/mile pace or would I have been better off not running at all?
In my second run of the day it went better, 4 miles @ 8:15 min/mile pace.
Anything slower than 6 min pace is useless.
See most sub 20? Japanese marathoners training. Read training of Henry Rono. Lots of 8-9 minute miles run
shoeless in seattle wrote:
See most sub 20? Japanese marathoners training. Read training of Henry Rono. Lots of 8-9 minute miles run
If you can barely run a marathon in under 20 hours Im not interested in reading your hobbyjogger training
Yes, you got training benefits.
Eventually, you'll run enough 110 mile weeks you won't need to slow down to 10 min/mile on easy days. There's a reason for that. Because your body will eventually adapt to the 110 miles, and you will be able to go faster on the easy days. How? By your body making your muscles, energy storage, fat burning, mitochondria, endurance and fatigue resistance, stronger. The only way to do that, is to do the 110 miles.
Be sure to cycle through some easier weeks to allow that adaptation, though. That should be easy, since your taper should be coming next if this is your peak training week.
Congrats on the very strong training cycle.
It is all in the intention and effect of the combined training. Obviously you explain a need of recovery. Recovery is accelerated when doing an activity. Either you can do a non-running alternative activity of course where the legs are active. That will recover faster than doing a running recovery. A running recovery will not be purely recovery, but also have a specific running effect, depending on the distance. The aerobic effect will be depending on the pace/intensity (the faster the more) and the recovery effect will too (inversely, the faster the less recovery).
It is crap saying the effect will be zero over a pace and so on. Any activity above some minimum HR have some effect.
I think the ability to listen to the legs and run easy days acc to the feel is important since you basically then adapt to the recovery need. Sometimes the feel is good and you can run faster (not fast, but still easy, but..), sometimes feel is bad and you can just jog on. For Marathon, distance and/or running time is specific training so I think even very slow runs have their mission. For a 5k-runner I would not think like this since other training/faster pace is key/specific and then maybe NOT running when so sore would be the best option.
I think your experience that day proves it. You recovered and got some more miles in the bank.
Am I living in the twilight zone? The Boston Marathon weather was terrible!
Des Linden: "The entire sport" has changed since she first started running Boston.
Matt Choi was drinking beer halfway through the Boston Marathon
Ryan Eiler, 3rd American man at Boston, almost out of nowhere
2024 College Track & Field Open Coaching Positions Discussion