Importance of down/easy/low weeks

HUH? Interesting Alan, you think EP is "noise"? I didn't say anything about it....hmmmm.

I only assumed you thought EP was "noise" since your statement said I was clouded by "noise". EP surely can be "noise" or whatever you wish to call it if not used correctly. Science can be turned and twisted to support all kinds of BS (Adkins diet, fat burning zone, ect). Science doesn't have an answer to everything. Training is not a strict science, it is the art of science. There is an art to training (knowing your body, we are each experiments of one), but there is also a science to training which is the foundation for the art.

Alan

Malmo, with all due respect, I don't think you realize how lucky you are. You are/were able to make huge jumps in mileage with minimal problems. Then you get on here and tell people to stop thinking and just run, etc. Then when people say they can't build like you or run the miles you did, you say something like, "you have the same muscle that I have." The truth is, people DO have different muscle that recovers differently, grows differently, etc. Also, what I think is the number one ultimate cause of injuries is biomechanics. I'm willing to bet you have near perfect biomechanics. Mine are crap. I realized this when I tried to just "jump up the mileage," as you suggest we all do (not by your advice, don't think I'm trying to blame this on you), and got injured. Wasn't even a huge jump either (40 up to 70). People with less than perfect biomechanics HAVE TO build up more carefully than you ever had to and this is why they come to a message board seeking advice. If running 100-120 miles and building up to that mileage is as easy as you say it is, we would all be elites.

I never said my experience is based on the real world experiments on my super-human body. You won't hear gerbil-wheel wisdom coming from me, either. What you are getting is sound advice is based on decades of observation of the training of my peers - high school kids, college, national class and world class. I'll repeat, increase your mileage however you please. Claims that there is an injury troll who jumps out an bites you because of the RATE OF INCREASE of your mileage is pure bullhocky. I've never said it would be easy - it isn't. Just listen to your body.

Most people misspeak when they say "I can't". What they really mean is "I won't". This is not a phenomenon that's confined to the running community. In every field or endeavor there will always be those who say they "can't". Ignore them.

Good luck

BTW i'll bet thousands of dollars that my biomechanics profile is far from perfect. You in? I need to spread off my risk from my Bakken bet!

malmo wrote:

I I'll repeat, increase your mileage however you please.

Exactly. I agree with 95% of your training philosphies just not the large mileage increases, at least not without some background into the athletes previous training. In my original post I used 10% to better describe my training, it was not meant to be seen as a limitour. Malmo, generally do you think there is an upper limit to mileage? 120? 140? Lindgren? At some point mileage must become counterproductive.

You can jump from 0 to 100 miles a week in ONE week and not be negatively affected by it. What hurts you is the continuation of such overload weeks. Overload, recovery, overload, recovery, then the initial overload becomes easy. In order to get better you must overload your body. Staying at 70-80 miles a week for 8 weeks is not overload. The idea is to progessively overload your body and recover from the overload stimulus and then repeat at a higher overload. The amount of overload and recovdery coul be days or weeks depending on your past training. I'm drunk as hell but I think the above is probably my best post on this subject.

Alan

well what do you guys think is best? waiting to feel horrible before taking an easier week or having easy weeks incorporated into your "plan"? on my easy weeks, i usually do some higher quality sessions, race and take a rest day. i just decrease the volume. then i'm generally ready to go back to building for the next 2-3 weeks before repeating the easy week. i guess i'm a believer in having a lower volume week every so often. i know others have been successful without these easier weeks. maybe it's because they're just so damn fit, those huge weeks (in my eyes) feel easy. if it's working, keep doing it. if you stagnate, then you better change some things.

We're saying the same thing, I just disagree that going from 70 to 100 can be defined as a big leap. If you've been running 70 per week you're ready. It's not the mileage that gets you - it's the interval work that does.

Upper limit to mileage? I have no idea, and I've never thought about it. Once you get up to the 130s it's all pretty much the same. You'd be surprised that at one time 20 a day seemed like a lot, then going up to 26-27 at day and it seems easy.

When I was a young runner I never claimed to have the answers. I studied what the best runners did and tried it out for myself. One Summer in July I was in Nijmegen, hometown of Jos Hermans. I found myself running with Hermans and Quax - two of the best runners in the world at the time. It was the Summer Holiday lull in the European track season and here these two were cranking out 20 mile days. They were getting in touch with their base, the aerobic work that they had done months ago that got them to where they were. "You have to be doing speedwork now", the Letsrun crowd would be shouting. Did I try to tell them about how to train? Nope. I took notes and applied their methods to my own program.

Take notes, try it out for yourself before you dispense advice. I don't give advise based on the experience of the anomalies.

malmo wrote:

Question for SoupNazi: How does your piece of paper know in advance which week to take it easy?

How does your thermos know when to keep your coffee warm in the winter and your gatorade cold in the summer? It just do!

the genius behind the down week is so you don`t overtrain. People like malmo are conditioned through years of running, and probably from a young age. Just because George Malley can do it doesn`t mean you can. So err on the side of being a little conservative. Then be like me and step over the red line. Yep I just recovered from overtraining, my body needed mandatory rest of three weeks. I started running again and lost like 3 months worth of fitness. Fuckkk. I think the best is consistency than a big jump and a equally spectacular crash. Note that my bump was from 120 and I tried to do 180. The human body is an amazing machine, but it`s just that a biological machine. It can and will break if you do something stupid. Be smart.

While not attempting to speak for you, Mr Hornet Power, I'd be willing to bet you didn't listen to your body during that 180 week, am I right? And jumping from 120 to 180 IS a big jump. You could have asked me for advice beforehand and I'd have given it - FOR FREE!

The problem I read from many of you is that you let a piece of paper or a notion guide you. You say to yourself "I'm going to run (insert number) miles this week, and as you get to the end of your week you're counting them up to make sure you've made that mark. At that point you've already lost the purpose of training. You've become married to the miles. You've focused on the small picture and let go of the big picture. Training is a "big picture" endeavor. Don't ever forget that.

I couldn't count the number of times (dozens on dozens) my weekly mileage was 98 or 99. Which of you out there would find an extra one or two miles on the last day of the week to make that goddamn hundred out? All of you.

Great read!

malmo, could you elaborate what you mean when you say "listen to your body"? Does this mean watching for excessive fatigue, specific injuries, heart rate, or what? Would you respond to negative "feedback" by slowing your pace or cutting your mileage? I've tried the sudden mileage jumps twice now and ended up with stress fractures in both cases, so obviously I'm doing something wrong.

Malmo,A little bit off the beaten path, but I got to ask: What Bakken bet?Do tell...

malmo wrote:

BTW i'll bet thousands of dollars that my biomechanics profile is far from perfect. You in? I need to spread off my risk from my Bakken bet!

Holy bumpizzle this thread is OLD!

adam locked wrote:

Holy bumpizzle this thread is OLD!

NOW this thread is OLD!

Well AcTUally wrote:

NOW this thread is OLD!

But still pure GOLD! I'm curious about that Bakken bet. Bakken the amusement park?

casualty wrote:

malmo, could you elaborate what you mean when you say "listen to your body"? Does this mean watching for excessive fatigue, specific injuries, heart rate, or what? Would you respond to negative "feedback" by slowing your pace or cutting your mileage? I've tried the sudden mileage jumps twice now and ended up with stress fractures in both cases, so obviously I'm doing something wrong.

Malmo has said many times on these boards over the years what he means by "listen to your body". You should be able to figure it out from his brief Summer of Malmo directions.

It's nothing fancy. Just stop freaking out and relax. If you feel exhausted during your easy double, see how you feel later in the day. If you're still exhausted after a couple miles, bring it home. If you feel much better than in the morning, let yourself speed up naturally. If you've got some real bounce in your stride and you didn't do a workout yesterday, maybe do one today.

I went from never doing more than 50mpw consistently to running roughly 100 mpw for months on end with huge drops in time. The "transition period" from 20mpw to 100+ took maybe 6 weeks. I barely even counted my mileage, could have been off by 10%. Wouldn't have mattered.

I could never tell you how I'd feel the day after a long run, or two days later. Sometimes I'd feel good enough that my body sprung into tempo pace, other days I'd barely be able to do a recovery jog. Forcing an arbitrary workout because it was on paper would have destroyed me. It'd also have stopped me from doing things like running back to back days of 20+ miles followed by intervals/tempos which I felt gave me a lot of strength.