High Volume Mileage vs. Long Run

Somehow I don't think you understand the physiology behind training all that well. Your statement: "The purpose of tempo runs is to gradually extend the amount of running you do at a given pace. It doesnt matter whether it is marathon pace, half marathon pace 1Ok or 5k pace." doesn't hold water.

It absolutely matters what the pace is. Tempo runs are designed to improve the pace at which the body can run before it builds up significant levels of lactic acid which will cause the termination of the run (lactate threshold). If you do a tempo run at a pace faster than your lactate threshold you aren't improving this threshold. Same thing goes for doing your tempo runs too much slower than lactate threshold pace. Generally in order to be beneficial for imrpoving your lactate threshold your tempo runs have to be between lactate threshold and marathon race pace. What the Hanson's, Malmo and many others describe in this thread works well. And this is one reason why tempo runs can't be raced or pushed to hard at the end, if you do you cross the line and begin producing significant quantities of lactic acid and are no longer benefiting the desired work of improving yur lactate threshold.

By your statement above, you are trying to broaden the purpose of tempo runs beyond what it physically does. A simple but common mistake.

wellnow wrote:

He ran 100 when he got time off work. 80 or so when working full time. What I would like to know is how physical his job was?

I asked him myself. He ran 100 mpw. End of story.

That is not entirly correct. Teaching the body to process lactate will also improve the threshold. This is best achived by running long repeats at around 10k race pace.

He told other people he ran 120, because he says that's what they wanted to hear.

malmo, there is no end of story, there is no how to train, there is an ongoing debate of those who want to learn.

As for my epiphany, it came many years ago. I agree with you about the fact that most runners train stupidly, however, when you tell me not to train too hard, you are preaching to the converted.

I raced last night, felt great, ran very well, got one over on one of my great rivals that make the sport so worthwhile. He listens to my advice when I say; don't take these mid week road races too seriously, and don't go 100 per cent. So we both did just that......... until the last 200 metres.

wellnow wrote:

He told other people he ran 120, because he says that's what they wanted to hear.

Name them?

My freind Eric Williams trained with Jonesy back in the day. I am meeting him tomorrow I will ask him.

I'd be curious to know how Steve Jones felt going through the halfway point in Chicago in 1:01:43. (Or was it 1:01:48?)

Also, could you ask Jones what his 10k split time was in that race? I recall that it was around 29:40 or something. But it might have been closer to 29 flat. It was a windy day, and the rabbit, Simeon Kigen, couldn't even keep up.

And to think that he missed the world best by just one second. Amazing performance in that 1985 race.

wellnow wrote:

As for my epiphany, it came many years ago. I agree with you about the fact that most runners train stupidly, however, when you tell me not to train too hard, you are preaching to the converted.

I raced last night, felt great, ran very well, got one over on one of my great rivals that make the sport so worthwhile. He listens to my advice when I say; don't take these mid week road races too seriously, and don't go 100 per cent. So we both did just that......... until the last 200 metres.

Is Jonny Orange back in effect?

wellnow wrote:

There is no fixed lactate threshold. It varies according to glycogen availability and arousal levels. All this talk about the magical lactate threshold is bull.

There is a lactate threshold during each given run. Yes its can be influenced by the things you mention but it doesn't vary much. To just totally ignore it, especially during tempo runs, will lead to ineffective training at least part of the time.

Every training run should have a purpose and not understanding the physiology behind what you are doing will lead you to miss your mark more often than you should.

Call it magical if you want but its sound science.

wellnow wrote:

My friend Eric Williams trained with Jonesy back in the day. I am meeting him tomorrow I will ask him.

Jones lurks here. Perhaps he will speak. When I became skeptical about the 80mpw urban legend I asked Jones himself to clarify. He said his marathon training was 100mpw. He said he's done up to 115 a few times, but as a rule: 100. I told him I was going to repeat what he said and he gave me his permission to do so.

This didn't come from a yahoo, who heard it from a rube, who heard it from a guy who fell off of a turnip truck while reading a Mike Sandrock account of Jones' marathon taper. It came straight from the man himself.

malmo wrote:

wellnow wrote:

My friend Eric Williams trained with Jonesy back in the day. I am meeting him tomorrow I will ask him.

Jones lurks here. Perhaps he will speak. When I became skeptical about the 80mpw urban legend I asked Jones himself to clarify. He said his marathon training was 100mpw. He said he's done up to 115 a few times, but as a rule: 100. I told him I was going to repeat what he said and he gave me his permission to do so.

This didn't come from a yahoo, who heard it from a rube, who heard it from a guy who fell off of a turnip truck while reading a Mike Sandrock account of Jones' marathon taper. It came straight from the man himself.

Thanks for the information. Now about that 6x800 in 2.02 with 2 minutes recovery... that's some session. Anyone and his dog can run 100mpw, but that was very hard even for him.

Living in the Past wrote:

... the rabbit, Simeon Kigen, couldn't even keep up.

I thought Carl Thackery was the rabbit.

Billy Beer wrote:

I thought Carl Thackery was the rabbit.

You are correct. Thackery was the rabbit.

Perhaps malmo could ask Steve Jones who the rabbits were in that race. I remember that Simeon Kigen was a rabbit. Why else would Kigen have been in a marathon?

The marathon organizers may have had their own rabbit. I don't remember. I do remember Thackery, a 27:59 runner, being the pacesetter Jones was counting on. But Jones was on a cloud, and Thackery was visibly laboring with the pace about 5 miles in. He fell off for good before 10 miles IIRC.

OK. I stand corrected. Thackery was the rabbit. Kigen was in the race, but as a competitor. I was wrong. You guys are right. I was also wrong in thinking that Kigen was only a 10k runner. He had a marathon PR of 2:10.

Here's Don Kardong's account of the 1985 Chicago Marathon from The Runner, January, 1985:

Before the start, few would have argued with Rob de Castella's prediction about how the men's race would develop. "You'll see a big group,' said Deek, "eight to ten runners, in front for 15-20 miles. In the last three or four miles, the pack will fragment. Then we will see who's on form"

Steve Jones, though, wasted no time in destroying that scenario. Running 4:46 and 4:42 for the first two miles, Jones seemed impatient with the pace of Carl Thackery of Sheffield, England, who had been hired to lead the men through a 1:03:30 half-marathon. By two miles, Jones began moving to the lead, then passed three miles in 14:16, with only Simeon Kigen of Kenya as company. It's not uncommon to see someone open a marathon at breakneck speed, only to collapse shortly after. Top runners, used to that, are generally unperturbed.

But Steve Jones? Did the former world record holder know something that no one else did, or was he simply plunging into the kind of drastic and soon-to-be-regretted experiment that Geoff Smith had suffered last Spring at Boston? Faced with Jones' challenge, what should a 2:08 or 2:09 marathoner do?

While the rest of the men mulled that over, Jones accelerated to 4:39 for the fourth mile, slowed to 4:59 on the hilly fifth mile, then turned in miles of 4:34, 4:39, 4:37, 4:39 and 4:38 through ten, which he passed in 47:01, nearly two minutes faster than he had in 1984. No one had run five straight sub-4:40 miles in a marathon before. His split converted to a 2:03:16 marathon!

By that point though, nearly everyone in the next pace--de Castella, Djama, Curp--must have felt they knew what was up. Jones' splits were suicidal. Just stick to one's own pace, right?

"I was pretty surprised he was able to keep going," de CAstella said later. "In the clinic yesterday Steve was telling everybody how he hadn't been doing as much mileage this year, hadn't been doing his long runs, and I thought, 'Oh, good, he'll really struggle over those last few miles.' "

And how was the wild one himself reacting to his superhuman splits?

"I wasn't really taking too much notice of them," Jones would comment. "I felt comfortable. I knew it would hit me at some stage in the race, and it was just a matter of carrying on until it did."

Having cast the die, Jones held on, passing the first of the two marathon halves in 1:01:42 (in his world record, Lopes' split was 1:03:24) and thinking to himself as he said after the race, "Let's try and run another one."

...

"Nor had Steve Jones the luxury of late-race respite. By 14 miles, his eyes had begin to reflect, ever so slightly, that despair that marathon runners know when the body begins to balk at the pace. Jones finally began to "slow down," running just above 4:50 per mile from 14 through 20. At that mark, passed in 1:35:22, he was looking at a projected, and still scary, 2:05:01.

Finally though, the lender came to collect on the overdue debt. Jones ran his 21st mile in 5:02, the next in 5:07, then 5:06. It wasn't exactly a wall; maybe a few bricks.

"About 21 miles," Jones admitted, "I really started to feel quite tired and my legs tightened. I had to concentrate really hard to maintain form and pace."

The question now was whether the accumulation of fatigue and overall slowdown would end up devouring the time cushion that Jones had created for himself. AT 25 miles he was still under 2:07 pace, but his pace continued to slip.

...

Jones, meanwhile, had many things to think about, including his early pace and to what extent it deterred a record. Given his remarkable talent, what time did he have in him?

"A minute, maybe a minute and a half faster," Jones mused. "It's hard to say until you actually run it."

In other words, 2:05, 2:06. In '84, after he'd run a low 2:08 his first marathon, he said you could hardly call him a marathon runner. And now, after a low 2:07? "I'm just a runner, " he said.

With the 20-20 vision of hindsight, both Hudson and Ritzenhein have things they would change about the race and the training.

In terms of modifications to the training, both felt that they played it conservatively this time. "Overall, it was too easy; I didn’t train him hard enough," Hudson says. "I never felt worn out. It was always kind of moderate," says Ritzenhein.

While that is an appropriate strategy for a debut, next time they’ll probably run more miles, up to 130–140 miles per week, and at least one long run of 26–27 miles.

http://runningtimes.com/rt/articles/print.asp?id=10509

DaveBedfordwannabe wrote:

Perhaps malmo could ask Steve Jones who the rabbits were in that race. I remember that Simeon Kigen was a rabbit. Why else would Kigen have been in a marathon?

No need for that. I own DVD video of the entire race. I've watched it a dozen times, twice in the past 2 months. Trust me. Thackery was the rabbit.

In fact, in my copy of The Runner magazine that I saved from back then, they have a photo of him in the race with the caption:

"Carl Thackery: The world's least successful rabbit"

The long run is key because it imporves your efficency. As you get above 22 miles you go beyond you stored energy, this is clutch for a marathon and you can't replicate it by doing high volume. I wouldn't do with out.

High volume w/o a long run = many junk miles.