running at Aerobic capacity (Lydiard stuff)

Think Marathon Pace.

I would disagree.

Slower than marathon pace -- 65-80% of MHR.

Here is some estimates that I've found to be pretty accurate based off of 5k time:

5k AC Zone (Min/mi)

12:30 5:48-5:16

13:00 6:02-5:30

13:30 6:16-5:44

14:00 6:30-5:58

14:30 6:44-6:12

15:00 6:58-6:26

15:30 7:12-6:40

16:00 7:26-6:54

16:30 7:40-7:08

17:00 7:54-7:22

17:30 8:07-7:36

18:00 8:22-7:50

18:30 8:35-8:03

19:00 8:49-8:17

19:30 9:00-8:31

20:00 9:17-8:45

have fun

Depends on how you define "aerobic capacity." To me it means the maximum amount of energy you can provide your running muscles with, aerobically (if we are talking about a runner's aerobic capacity). Terms like VO2max, aerobic power, aerobic capacity tend to refer to the same thing. If you accept this definition then the speed that is associated with your aerobic capacity is one that you could race at for about 11 minutes and 3 seconds. For elite runners this is getting close to 5k race pace; most runners would have it associated with 3k or 4k race pace. Using 5k race pace as an estimte has gotten a lot of attention , and that's probably OK because the slower you are the more conservative an estimate 5k pace is. In any case, running at your aerobic capacity is not easy running. Longer races (even 10k and certainly marathons) are run at some % of your aerobic capacity, which is less than 100%. You are always providing energy both aerobically and anaerobically, so there is no pace that is only aerobic, and therefore you can't refer to a pace that relies only on aerobic metabolism

jtupper,

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the original poster is trying to come to grips with what Lydiard meant when he used that (or similar) term. I, too, am similarly confused, as I'm working my way through a Lydiard book, and he doesn't define his terminology, and yet states that most running should be done at a "hard aerobic" effort (or something like that - I haven't got the book handy at the moment).

Not sure where you got these times but they seem bery slow. I can't run 14.30 for 5k right now but i could run 6.44-6.12 per mile all day. Am I missing something.

Isn't aerobic capacity the pace we should be running tempo runs at ?

Am I getting my (your) terminology messed up?

A 14:30 5k is just under 4:40 mile pace. Possibly your VO2max pace. If you can run "all day" at 6:30 pace then that is probably somewhere near your LT pace. Aerobic capacity is defined many different ways depending on who's defining it. To encompass everybody, you might say that aerobic capacity is all the paces that will improve you aerobically. (i.e. 3k pace to 100k pace!)

I think the best way to explain the confusion is to think in terms of a car's gearbox. For endurance runners interested in multi-tier training, you need to think about training in four different gears.

First gear: aerobic conditioning. This is easy running. jtupper would identify this as about 70% of max HR. Most of your running will be in this gear. (This is what Lydiard means by aerobic development.) volume is volme. The more you run, the more aerobic conditioned you are.

Second gear: anaerobic conditioning. This is comfortably hard running or what jtupper identifies as T-pace (or lactate threshold running.) It corresponds to paces around 86-88% of max HR. The goal of this kind of training is to teach your body to deal with increasing accumulation of lactic acid. 20 minute tempo runs, or 4 repeats of 2 miles, etc.

Third gear: aerobic capacity training. This is hard running. VO2max training. This is the kind of training that jtupper discusses in his entry above. A typical workout which improves aerobic capacity is mile repeats with your HR getting very close to, if not at, max HR by about 2 minutes into the interval. (jtupper calls this I-pace.)

Fourth gear: anaerobic capacity training. Short intervals designed to stress your anaerboic systems. How's that? Well, given that it takes about 2 minutes to get to full aerobic capacity, some of what you first do at very fast speeds is the result of using up ATP and other stuff anaerobically. Repeats of 200s and 400s at mile race pace are good workouts to improve here. (jtupper's R-pace)

The astute reader will not that I've brought together the terminology from the Coe book with jtupper's book. One advantage of the Coe terminology is that they show how training at one intensity entails improvement potential at another intensity.

I'm not very astute, but I did notice the combination of Coe and Daniels terminology. One thing I've always been curious about--why is gear 2/T pace/lactate threshold/anaerobic threshold referred to as anaerobic? Clearly you're still producing energy from aerobic systems, and trying to get your body more efficient at doing that even in the presence of lactic acid, a waste product, right?

In a few of his books, Lydiard says that his runners would do two runs at a fast pace and the other longer runs at a strong pace. The Monday/Friday 10-milers were run around 55 minutes and the Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday long runs were done at about 5:55 pace.

Tony Benson suggested that the 10 milers be done at 85-87% max heart rate...or, if you don't have a heart rate monitor, marathon pace. The remaining days are run between 80-85%, except for Friday, which was a day of jogging (I read that mean recovery pace running). That's why I said Marathon Pace.

A simple answer is that it refers to what's going on at the level of the cells in your body. Once the demand for energy crosses a certain threshold, the amount of lactate begins to build up at a rate faster than it is cleared. Lactate is the byproduct of glycolosis that has occured without enough oxygen present. Even in first gear, your body will dump some lactate but at a rate small enough that it is easily cleared. So anaerobic conditioning is just a way of saying that you are beginning to work at a pace where lactate begins to accumulate in the body faster than it is cleared. The training effect comes from finding a pace that is just around the threshold between clearance and accumulation. In a thread a while back, the consensus was that it's not yet clear which side of the threshold it's better to be on. There are results suggesting that being just short of the threshold or just over the threshold have benefits. The key is to find which works best for each athlete.

That wasn't really Coe's termonology but rather Dave Martin's. He wrote the majority of that book and coined a lot of the language. The reference might lie in the fact that it is just the LT point and simply suggests there's a physiological limit to focus on.

Marathon pace is a physiological anomoly. It really doesn't refer to any of the gears I mentioned above. It's in a no-man's land between 1st and 2nd gear. If you do a lot of training at marathon pace (projected I suppose) you will probably enhance your performance in a marathon as you will be teaching your body to adject to that pace and level of exertion. However, it will be of dubious benefit if you are training for anything else. The goal is to get the maximum benefit for each workout you do. MP falls into what jtupper would call junk training, to no discernable purpose.

I didn't re-look to see why you were asking about this. Did you say? If you are planning on running a marathon, then 3-4 workouts over the course of a training cycle in which you run say 7, 9, 11, 13 miles in a row at MP, may be of some help.

If you question was more about whether MP is aerobic capacity pace, then I think the answer is that it is not. It may be approaching the threshold which approximates anaerobic capacity training (2nd gear) but will probably be on the low side. You will see some benefit but not as much as if you pushed a little harder and did 20 minute intervals.

10 miles at about 85-87% max HR for an elite runner is probably a run of shorter than an hour. jtupper claims that you can run at your LT for about an hour maximum which is why the world half-marathon record is probably run at exactly LT. So the workout you describe sounds like a nice, and very HARD, LT workout. The question is whether they would get the same benefit (or more) of breaking up the 10 miles into 3 x 20 minutes at the same pace, but with 5 minutes jogging in between each 20 minutes.

Running at 80% sounds more like MP to me. Do you mean to say that did all of their easy workouts at this pace? The benefits of this would be unclear.

If you notice I put 55:00 for 10 miles...although I don't think Lydiard would have had his guys run that hard (85-87%). Lydiard probably wouldn't have had his guys use HRM's, but rather go by feel. At any rate, he said that 5:55 was a good, solid pace for his runners once they mastered the 100 miles a week routine.

I don't think that Lydiard had his guys hitting 85-87% on all their runs. Mainly just the 10-milers on Monday and Friday of the 100-mile going to the track phase. Everything else was 80-85%. So, yes, it was closer to MP in the traditional sense. Their morning runs were an hour slow. He called it "jogging". There are no specifics on what this is, but, I've heard some people who trained with him say it meant slow running. So, take that for whatever it's worth. Afternoon workouts were pretty hard...though not severe. It has been said that you would want to run hard enough to only be able to run another half mile or so before being forced to quit. That sort of intensity doesn't sound like 80% to me.

Lots of good posts here. It's good to see people using thoughtful responses. Most clear thing is how confusing types of training are, and the reason that I try to be careful in how I define different intensities of training. One of my goals is to be able to refer to "types" of training, based on relative intensities of effort. How any particular coach uses those various intensities of training may well vary a good deal, but at least it would be nice to know what each other is trying to say when they use a particular term. I have spent much of the past year coming up with some new tables and one will relate %VDOT and % HR to different types of training stress. Regardless of what any particular coach feels a particular intensity is best designed to do at least it can be logged and referred to over time.

On a slightly different note:

I've heard a solid 5k test workout is 4 x 1 mile w/ 1:30 recovery...average the splits to find out what sort of pace you could maintain for 5k.

Do you know of a similar workout for 10k?

I can't resist -- the best 10k test I know of is to run 25 laps as fast as you can and take the total time. No, I don't have personal knowledge of a similar 10k test. For a mile, running the best average you can handle for 10X400 starting one every 2 minutes gives you a good idea. If slower than about 4:40 miler then take 1-min rests and if somewhat slower than that just do 8X400 with 1-min rests

Gracias. You've got quite the sense of humor this morning.

Anything that is at current 5k race pace or slower is considered your aerobic capacity. The 8 basic training zones are....Aerobic:Aerobic Recovery: slow ass runningAerobic Conditioning: current marathon paceLactate Threshold 1: current half-marathon paceLactate Threshold 2: current 10k paceAerobic Power: current 5k-10k paceMaximal Oxygen Uptake: current 3k-5k paceAnaerobic:Anaerobic Power: current 800-3k paceLactic Acid Tolerence: current 400-800 pacePower Development: maximal speedBe careful at running 3k pace. It depends on how you do a 3k pace workout (in terms of distance covered, if there is recovery times, etc). It can either be aerobic or anaerobic. When Lydiard was talking about a hard aerobic pace he was refering to Aerobic Power to Lactate 2 pace.

(a word of advice: stay away from too much anaerobic training)