Frank Shorter almost never ran tempos...

Yeah he probably raced a ton and not all of those races were all out. Tempo running in disguise.

If you touch marathon pace while not in marathon shape/peaked, you're going tempo pace. For example, if my marathon pace is 5:00/mi and I'm in shape to go 5:15/mi pace, I'm tempoing that whole 5:30/mi to 5:00/mi range. That's exactly what he would do the last half of his 20 milers. Just because it's not LT/Daniels' tempo pace, doesn't.mean it isn't a tempo. You will not run a fast marathon without some form of stamina work.

If you just run by feel, you'll end up running tempo pace for some of your mileage when you're feeling good. Person A plans a 30 minute tempo run for Tuesday morning and 10 miles easy on Tuesday Afternoon. Person B plans a 5 mile run on Tuesday morning and a 10 miler on Tuesday afternoon, then ends up feeling good during the 10 miler and ends up turning it into a progression run with the second half at or around tempo effort. You'd look at their training plans and say that Person A runs tempo runs while Person B doesn't, but functionally they're both running mileage at tempo effort.

Why would you run fast because you feel fine if it's not a scheduled workout? The idea of easy running is among other, building up to coming workouts which you'll want fresh legs for. Aren't you aware of these training principles?

Run6556 wrote:

Why would you run fast because you feel fine if it's not a scheduled workout? The idea of easy running is among other, building up to coming workouts which you'll want fresh legs for. Aren't you aware of these training principles?

uy like Jack Foster

You can run fast and feel easy and you can at times run fast and recover. Not everyone schedules all that many workouts. You had a guy like Jack Foster who usually did one track session a week and ran over the fields near his house the rest of the time at whatever pace felt right but usually pretty fast. Ron Clarke really never did workouts but pretty much ran fast each day.

hoarse wrote:

Been listening to a few podcasts with Frank Shorter. It sounds like he pretty religiously ran 2 track workouts (3xmile @ 5k, and 400s at 60-62), often raced, and 20 miles “easy”, but might touch the slow end of marathon pace, just for a bit. He also ran tons of mileage.

It sounds like he ran a tempo maybe once per month. And no, it doesn’t sound like he just did this and called it something else, it sounds like he almost never touched 4:40-4:45 pace year round, unless racing.

Anyone else have success leaving out tempos, or have thoughts on if this is viable?

The idea of tempo runs really did not exist when Shorter was at his peak. You won't find diary entries from those years with many entries describing a tempo run. But you might have a ten mile run where you ran the first half in 34 and the second in 27 that would turn up in your diary just shows up as a 61 minute ten mile run with nothing indicating any kind of tempo.

What Frank's been saying recently about how slowly he did his distance runs is different from what we were hearing and reading from when he was in his prime. Those reports had him running faster, rarely slower than about 6:00, than he's now saying he did. So I wouldn't be surprised if there were some 35-25 ten mile runs. But maybe there weren't. But there were a lot of people in those days who didn't do tempos. Ron Hill did a lot of easy running with two days of timed reps, e.g 10 x 70 seconds or so, a 20, and a weekly race. It didn't go too badly.

The term "tempo run" didn't exist back in Shorter's day and didn't become a training term until much much later. Used different terminology to achieve the same affect though.

Run6556 wrote:

Why would you run fast because you feel fine if it's not a scheduled workout? The idea of easy running is among other, building up to coming workouts which you'll want fresh legs for. Aren't you aware of these training principles?

There’s a difference between doing a run midweek to build fitness and a recovery run from a workout. If I worked out lightly on Monday and have intervals on Thursday, it’s okay to on Tuesday go out for a 70 minute run and allow myself to push the pace if I’m feeling good.

I knew I would get the “they didn’t call them tempo runs” responses. The thing is, it doesn’t look like he did anything even close to what we WOULD call a tempo, like he almost never ran HM pace or close to it. It sounds like he’d occasionally dip into marathon pace, and then all the other hard stuff was at 5k or faster.

The response about Marathon pace being close to HM pace while out of shape is the closest thing to it I guess. But yeah, really seems like he did almost no LT work, especially compared to how hyped everyone is about it right now.

Different era wrote:

The term "tempo run" didn't exist back in Shorter's day and didn't become a training term until much much later. Used different terminology to achieve the same affect though.

Correct. We used to call it race pace or "near" race pace. Some did lots of fartleks and never did "official" speed workouts, like Dick Beardsley.

HRE wrote:

The idea of tempo runs really did not exist when Shorter was at his peak. You won't find diary entries from those years with many entries describing a tempo run. But you might have a ten mile run where you ran the first half in 34 and the second in 27 that would turn up in your diary just shows up as a 61 minute ten mile run with nothing indicating any kind of tempo.

That's likely it, 'tempo' is just a term bandied about these days for anything where your breathing a bit heaver. Back in the day people ran 'tempos' just by feel without calling it that, to them its just a run, with a bit of effort.

These days we are way too over analytical of things, and need to categorize and label everything (Blame the internet and Jack Daniels). 70s etc runners apart from track days, likely just ran, and ran a lot.

And yet both the first and hundredth fastest American high school, collegiate, and professional athletes at all distances except mayyybe the marathon are far faster now than they were in the 70s.

Structured, periodized, polarized training works. And it works far better than just running a lot.

hoarse wrote:

It sounds like he’d occasionally dip into marathon pace, and then all the other hard stuff was at 5k or faster.

But yeah, really seems like he did almost no LT work, especially compared to how hyped everyone is about it right now.

Depending on how the 5k&faster intervals were structured they very well could have been LT work.

I was training for my first marathon earlier this year, attempting sub 3. Ran 70 miles at an easy pace and did tempos, with the hardest being 10 miles at 6:40 to 6:50. Ran 37 low off this in a 10k before the marathon. Months later dropped down to 40 miles per week at an easy pace and introduced intervals for the first time. Just ran 35 for the 10k. Conclusion - tempo runs have to be specific and for 5/10k that means running them hard, which just isnt realistic for most people to do every week without getting burnt out or injured.

There is a lot of conflicting information regarding tempo runs. I went with the advice that tempo pace should be 5k pace + 30 seconds per mile (or "1 hour pace"). That worked out well for half and the full marathon but it simply isn't fast enough for 5 and 10k and I improved much better by training at race pace with intervals.

hoarse wrote:

Been listening to a few podcasts with Frank Shorter. It sounds like he pretty religiously ran 2 track workouts (3xmile @ 5k, and 400s at 60-62), often raced, and 20 miles “easy”, but might touch the slow end of marathon pace, just for a bit. He also ran tons of mileage.

It sounds like he ran a tempo maybe once per month. And no, it doesn’t sound like he just did this and called it something else, it sounds like he almost never touched 4:40-4:45 pace year round, unless racing.

Anyone else have success leaving out tempos, or have thoughts on if this is viable?

It seems the top runners raced more often- a 10K road race can be like a tempo run for someone like that.

0812 wrote:

I was training for my first marathon earlier this year, attempting sub 3. Ran 70 miles at an easy pace and did tempos, with the hardest being 10 miles at 6:40 to 6:50. Ran 37 low off this in a 10k before the marathon. Months later dropped down to 40 miles per week at an easy pace and introduced intervals for the first time. Just ran 35 for the 10k. Conclusion - tempo runs have to be specific and for 5/10k that means running them hard, which just isnt realistic for most people to do every week without getting burnt out or injured.

Sounds like your periodized approach to 5k/10k training worked perfectly. The tempo runs and good mileage got you fit, then the race-pace intervals and lower mileage got you sharp.

0812 wrote:

There is a lot of conflicting information regarding tempo runs. I went with the advice that tempo pace should be 5k pace + 30 seconds per mile (or "1 hour pace"). That worked out well for half and the full marathon but it simply isn't fast enough for 5 and 10k and I improved much better by training at race pace with intervals.

Also, that is a conservative tempo run. Closer to MP than LT. Nothing wrong with that (tempos should be on the conservative side in general, MP is a useful training stimulus), but some runners can do tempos or threshold intervals within 15-20 seconds of their 5k race pace.

My high school years (1982-1986) were the only time I ever had a coach. The coach of my high school team was a teacher that had been a varsity level runner for a top college program with a legendary coach and was still a pretty good local runner that ran 10ks in the 32:00 range . In other words, he was someone who knew training. The word tempo was never used but we sometimes did "hard" five mile runs which would probably be called a tempo run today.

My understanding is that Jack Daniels popularized the term "tempo" in the 1990s and it was originally a 20 minute run at a pace you could race for an hour.