Is aerobic base training dead???

Bob i'm very interested in engaging you with some questions. I have your book here which i purchased online from billrodgers.com; possibly your disciple was involved in the transaction.

Before i go into the book though i have to say Igloi is my favourite pure intervalist, whereas Cerutty is my favourite long run/intervalist. I notice you get your marathoners to do those long runs you mentioned - up to 18 miles. Did you come across Cerutty and Lydiard and what do you think they have to offer?

I also noticed you maintain a high HR through your own interval sessions which is similar to what Cerutty and Lydiard aimed for. It also seems after you finished with Igloi you cut the recovery times down from his actual plans. Why did you go this way?

cheers

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Mr. Ray wrote:

I guess everyone has different viewpoints, but my recovery runs are short and slow, and my long runs are a little faster and long.

For me, the main purpose of recovery is recovery, and the main purpose of long runs is to develop endurance.

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Mr. Ray wrote:

But recovery shouldn't be that long, should it?

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wellnow wrote:

It can be. Why not? You can practice technique at slow paces also.

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Bob Schul wrote:

Only the mind becomes tired as far as I am concerned and you can continue to push the body but not hard enough to injury it...

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HRE,

Since I want my athletes to be able to run any race, they all do intervals. That does not mean that milers will run with athletes who have high slow twitch muscles as they would be straining to keep up. However that does not mean they could never train together since at some speeds they could stay together.

John Baker a miler from New Mexico trained with Eamonn at times but at other times I would give them separate workouts. The distances they ran were similar but the speed and the number in a set were different. Eamonn might do 14 x 200 at a certain effort and John might do 9 X 200 and his effort might be the same but because he had better speed he would do them faster. In those days 800 meters was as far as I went but today I have had my athletes do repeat miles. By the way the 200's would only be one set.

Of course I have changed over the years as I try new things and listen to the physiologists and their studies.

Igloi had a few marathoners and Norm Higgins was training with Igloi when I was there. Laszlo had a very good woman.

Flow,

I never met Cerutty, but Ron Clarke told me he trained with him once and didn't like the workout and continued to train himself. He told me Cerutty told everyone he had trained Clarke.

When I was around Lydiard runners they were always doing interval work. Obviously since they were in their competitive season.

Both men had results which probably proves the most important aspect of training is to spend the time which gives you distance and work the body so it will grow. I assume that can be done in many ways since it has been.

As far as heart-rate is concerned I tried to keep my heart rate up when I was in a set. In between sets, as my body recovered, I didn't care where my heart rate was. However there were rest days when I did intervals but they were not hard and my heart rate would not get as high. I did not continually check my heart rate but would check it from time to time.

There was a time when I was doing some fast 200's that my rate was 230 BPM.

As far as the rest interval between whatever I was running the interval became shorter since my body had progressed to the point, it did not need as much rest. In other words if I was doing 10 x 200 I wanted to finish the set without struggling. There were three ways I could increase the pressure on my body. 1. increase the number in the set. 2. Increase the speed of the set. 3. decrease the rest interval between each distance in the set. I have done all of them and combinations of the three and of course all three at the same time.

As I became familiar with my body, I could set a number of a distance and a speed and an interval which would get me through the set. Was I ever wrong? Of course, but I was right most of the time.

That was the reason I never set a workout before the fact. I would do a set and then decide where my body was at the time and make up another set. I continued the workout until I felt my body had enough. I wanted to leave the practice field with something left as being too tired brings on injury and my body had enough injury although 90% came in a race situation.

Thanks Bob. I'd forgotten about Norm Higgins. Jacqueline Hansen I think was the woman Tabori coached. Maybe Miki Gorman as well?

A 3-4 hour run, even very slow, concentrating on technique, is not a recovery run, no matter how tired I am.

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wellnow wrote:

It depends how tired you are.

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Long slow runs can definately be recovery. FT fibers aren't even recruited at slower speeds unless your ST fibers gets fatigued. Might be 45 min for some and 90 min for others.

Actually that's a myth, FT fibers don't get recruited at the end of long runs unless you speed up.

This myth arose from the fact that FT fibers use up their glycogen reserves during long runs. Some not very smart physiologists (nothing new there) assumed that this must be due to fast twitch fiber recruitment, when actually the glycogen in the FT fibers is being sent to the ST fibers.

Think about it logically, ST fibers can keep going for hour after hour after hour.

Maybe not for you Mr. Ray, but some of us like to get more out of our running.

Maybe you just don't have the NAD+'s?

wellnow,

You don't need any NAD+'s for recovery runs. To get more out of your running, make your hard days harder, and easy days easier.

You can find a good description of "my" idea of recovery runs here: http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/training4.htm
For example:
"the goal is simply to get the muscles warmed up and blood flowing ..."
"There is no other goal of a recovery jog."
"...these runs last only 15 to 45 minutes - the shorter the better."

Run 3-4 hour technique trainings all you want, but if there is any other goal than warming up the muscles, then it's no longer a recovery run.

For someone who doesn't like vague or misleading terms, why blur the definition of recovery to include 4 hour runs concentrating on technique?

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wellnow wrote:

Maybe not for you Mr. Ray, but some of us like to get more out of our running.

Maybe you just don't have the NAD+'s?

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I have done some weeks where I was just posessed by a drive to get more and more out of my training. This was always followed by better race results.

I don't suggest schedules because I don't believe in them. Truly outstanding performance comes from inspiration.

If we are fatiguing ST fibers, or "recruiting" FT fibers, we are not talking about recovery anymore.

If we increase the requirement for recovery, then we've failed the main purpose of recovery.

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van dyk wrote:

Long slow runs can definately be recovery. FT fibers aren't even recruited at slower speeds unless your ST fibers gets fatigued. Might be 45 min for some and 90 min for others.

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I'm talking to a wall...

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wellnow wrote:

I have done some weeks where I was just posessed by a drive to get more and more out of my training. This was always followed by better race results.

I don't suggest schedules because I don't believe in them. Truly outstanding performance comes from inspiration.

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wellnow wrote:I don't suggest schedules because I don't believe in them. Truly outstanding performance comes from inspiration.

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Maybe it's your superior tone which turns people against you. Saying "Some not very smart physiologists (nothing new there) assumed ..." is both unfounded and unnecessary. Making wrong assumptions doesn't make you "not smart". Look at Isaac Newton, assuming time was constant for everyone.

Maybe it's your over-inflation of the importance of minor details. Arguing about the difference between FT recruitment, or FT releasing its glycogen stores, doesn't change the conclusions that resulted from the FT recruitment assumption: high mileage at low intensity can still trigger FT adaptations.

Maybe it's your use of black and white terms, for a subject that is still evolving, and decidedly gray-scale. The "actual facts" that we think we know today, we will laugh at in 30 years, and some new fuzzy-ologists will look back and wonder how we ever succeeded at all.

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wellnow wrote:

Actually that's a myth, FT fibers don't get recruited at the end of long runs unless you speed up.

This myth arose from the fact that FT fibers use up their glycogen reserves during long runs. Some not very smart physiologists (nothing new there) assumed that this must be due to fast twitch fiber recruitment, when actually the glycogen in the FT fibers is being sent to the ST fibers.

Think about it logically, ST fibers can keep going for hour after hour after hour.

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Hi, I just discovered this thread and find it very interesting. I'm male, 56, ran my marathon 2:37 PR at age 32. I've studied exercise phys (was in a PhD program but bailed...) and tried a lot of different types of training on myself. A few points:

1. Great to have Bob Schul's input here.

2. I agree with the comment that there is so much we don't know yet about the physiology of running.

3. I believe it was Peter Snell when he became an exercise physiologist that found that FT fibers were recruited at the end of long runs. I'm not up to date on current thinking in this area.

4. I believe it is hard to separate the training effects of workouts. One might say that Paula Radcliffe's 140 mpw are for maximal aerobic development but there are other possible benefits. Dr. David Martin told me years ago that he thought that level of mileage improved glycogen storage. (Costill's research showed max VO2 gains at 90 mpw). Also while this thread is about aerobic base, there is significant muscular strength improvement that comes from running a high mileage base. I think this is a strength-endurance effect and doesn't get discussed much because folks often focus on aerobics, anaerobics, lactate threshold etc. (Read Tim Noakes on muscle strength).

5. I believe there are strength benefits too from Lydiard's hill springing workouts. Sure they benefit anaerobics but probably also on stride length - improved quad strength, longer contraction of the Achilles and calf muscles perhaps.

6. For myself, I got my best results from running 10-milers at an effort where I never got into heavy breathing (2-3x per week) - so you could say they were primarily aerobic with little lactate accumulation. I also would run my recovery days (maybe still 10 miles) but at as easy a pace as possible. The test in them being easy enough was being able to repeat the fast aerobic run the following day.

7. That being said, I also benefited (half-marathon PR 74:02) by running 10x400 (ave. 68 secs - fast for me!) with a very easy 3 minute jog recovery rather than 12x400 @ 72 sec with a short (100-200m) recovery.

8. So it's all intriguing. I do believe I could have run faster at the marathon if I have done 2-a-days to get 100mpw rather than 80mpw in one per day. I also think I could have run better at 5k and 10k with more fast intervals with long recovery - as Lydiard said, lower the pH and let it recover.

9. We are all different and different people have success with different training methods. But maybe the effects of some seemingly different methods are similar. E.g. Zatopek's huge number of intervals that weren't really that fast with short recoveries might resemble a steady 10-mile aerobic run.

10. Some things seem evident - there don't seem to be many (any?) world class distance runners not running a lot of miles and many of them fast aerobically.

Rick

Rick,

I find all the physiologists comments interesting which brings up the question, how and why did my body respond to a full year of interval training, without any long runs. I never did any runs over a warm-up of a mile.

As I have read the revelations over the years I sometimes wonder how much better I would have been if I had used "long runs" in my training.

To answer my own question, I don't think it would have mattered for as you say in one of your statements, if the interval of rest is short then it has the effect on the body of being on a long run. The heart rate does not have time to decrease and the body is still asking for oxygen. As I tell my runners, only the mind knows you have taken a short walk between what you are doing in the set. the body only reacts to what stresses you have placed on it and grows in many ways so the stress in alleviated. In my workouts, when that happens I move to an new plateau and place more stress on the body which must deal with this added stress by growing in areas it can to relieve the stress. Obviously this can't go on forever.

Racing is a different matter for the mind comes into play. A competitor must use what his body has become through training and then use his mind to get everything out of his body. This is where I believe there are differences in athletes for my observations over forty years of training athletes showed me there were some who would push through discomfort and others who were on a scale downward.

It would be wonderful to see Mr.Schul on a speaking tour, as Lydiard used to do.

Perhaps sponsored by LRC?

Or???

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your comments. I think the challenge in these training discussions is that it is impossible to do a definitive scientific study because there are so many variables - could one achieve success on a purely interval-type program vs. an aerobic base moving into a speed phase a la Lydiard?

Obviously you had great success with intervals and there have been other great champions who swear by a Lydiard approach.

I do think some polarization in discussions comes from "loose" use of the word "interval". First of all, unlike what many of us do, I believe you used the term correctly as referring to the recovery phase, not the fast bits. Secondly, we can vary the length and number of the fast sections and the length of the recoveries. Obviously we get very different physiological effects depending on the combination chosen.

As you mentioned, a high number of intervals with short recover can closely resemble a longish fast aerobic run. I wonder if a marathoner would benefit from 80 x 400 at close to marathon race pace with a short recovery instead of a steady-state 20 mile run at a necessarily slower pace. I know for me that would be much harder to handle mentally - I sure wouldn't want to do it on the track!!

It does seem that one can never reach one's potential without careful use of interval training that, as Lydiard said, "lowers the pH and let's it recover", and I believe that requires some work at fast paces with longish recovery intervals. Can you remind us what you did in this area?

Also I know some physiologists believe in jogging the recovery intervals to enhance the body's ability to process lactic acid, something they believe doesn't happen as well with walking the recoveries. Your thoughts on that?

Thanks,

Rick