Should you make 1 hard day easy and make the long run hard, or keep the lr easy. I think I read somewhere Bekele has only 2 quality sessions, including a hard long run.
Should you make 1 hard day easy and make the long run hard, or keep the lr easy. I think I read somewhere Bekele has only 2 quality sessions, including a hard long run.
I have always run easy on easy days, but wonder if this change would help me develop a massive aerobic engine.
We use both within a season. Early in the year we'll first worry about getting to the distance we want. Then we'll start having some of our long runs at a steady effort. It's not hammering, but for newer athletes to our program they definitely have to stay engaged the entire run.
Eventually meets start and we will use steady long runs more sparingly.
I usually suggest people first work on negative splitting the second half of long runs or using progression runs to learn how to manage energy for a longer time. HS athletes rarely come into college knowing how to work hard for an hour without any kind of break so our first mountain to scale is managing effort and knowing how to feel how much is in the tank, otherwise we'll see kids start strong and blow up with a few miles to go.
I don't know if I've seen incredible differences in race performance directly from faster long runs, but we absolutely notice workouts improve and athletes learn to read their bodies better so we end up being more consistent with whatever we're doing.
For best results, it should be hard and long. Not too long though. If it's too long that can cause issues.
runnerwithoutanaerobicbase wrote:
I have always run easy on easy days, but wonder if this change would help me develop a massive aerobic engine.
You need to run either the same pace for a little longer without straining.
Or
A little faster for the same amount of time.
Repeat x 1000, report back.
These things have to happen as thought processes to get stored in your memory to be repeatable skills, that can be recalled and improved over many years.
First increase length and then increase intensity. Not both at the same time.
Also depends on what you’re training for, your physiology, and what part of training cycle you are in.
I generally only have 2 phases, one where I am doing mostly lactate threshold for quality and one where I am doing a bit more vo2 max work. I am now in base phase.
I am also aerobically weak, even though I have been running 50 miles per week for many months.