Why do I run PR's off just mileage and tempo workouts

To the OP:

1) How old are you?

2) are any of those 10 milers in doubles?

3) What exactly is your "light tempo"?

No wonder.Harder intervals are the icing on the cake. You have done the base work, which by far is the most important. It is very easy to overdo intervals.

Had the same thing happen to me. In college xc/track, we'd do repeat after repeat, and I was doing about 65mpw. I raced alright. After college, I decided I wanted to try something different, so I trained for and ran a marathon, and I am now training for my second one. Since being sick of speedwork, I pretty much abandoned it all, did the occasional tempo, but just ran mileage--some runs faster than others, but generally not faster than marathon race pace. I decided for the heck of it to enter a 5-mile race. I had no idea what to expect, thinking that much of my speed is probably gone due to not doing any type of speedwork or intervals in 10 months, and I was thinking I'd be a couple minutes slower. Well, I had the biggest surprise when the pace in the 5-miler felt easy, I felt stronger than I had in college races (even though the pace was challenging because it was an all-out race, I felt I had more endurance to hold that pace), and ran a time faster than what even 5Ks and 10Ks from college would've predicted I'd run for 5 miles. Still going to stick with marathons for awhile though and try to max out my potential there.

Don't exactly have an explanation for this phenomenon, but I'm still on the boat that different bodies respond to different ways of training. And no, I'm not elite.

Well, it sounds like you need to find ways to dial down the intensity.

As a general rule, I would not run "6 x 1000m w/ 2min rest" faster than 6K pace. Ever. I would suggest 8K-10K pace.

I would also not do more than 800m of the 1500m pace workout (e.g. 8x100, 4x200, or 2x400 with full recovery). I might even replace them with strides, or just not do them.

Since your off-season training seems to work better, you might actually be better off sticking closer to that, maybe turning one day with strides, into a structured speed session.

The perhaps biggest difference between world class runners and the rest of us is that they can tolerate much more of everything in terms of training. I have checked Mustafa Mohamed´s (8,04 steepler) training log and he is doing 170 km weeks with tempo runs, long runs, hill reps, cruise intervals and sessions like 25x400 in 63 sec year around.

When we mortals emphasize something in our training something else is likely to suffer. If we do too much mileage we can´t do enough quality. If we run too much mile reps we can´t do enough endurance training etc.

defender of the bashed wrote:

World class runners do mile repeats. Doesn't matter if they are more fast twitch or slow twitch. You're not going to find someone who reached a high level in this sport doing only mileage and tempos.

Other than Ron Clarke, Dick Taylor (the British one,) Bill Adcocks, Tony Simmons. You might point out that today's world leaders are much faster than these guys. But most of us would be sort of happy to run anything close to the times these guys ran.

Interval work has always slowed me. It may be, as some would say, that I've never done it properly but that sort of reinforces the point. What good is a great system if someone can't implement it?

What worked best for me was very much like what worked best for Avocado's Number; distance work at a respectable though not killing pace and reasonably frequent races. I've known many others who've had similar experiences.

Here is an interesting answer to a question I posed to Amby Burfoot in a recent interview at

www.garycohenrunning.com

regarding his training during his senior year at Wesleyan in 1968 when he ran 8:44 for two miles indoor and won the Boston marathon.

GCRunning: Your training at Wesleyan (Conn.) University your final two years was a bit unconventional as it wasn’t focused as much on track speed as it was on 120 miles or more per week which is more consistent with marathon training. How did this still get you ready for an 8:44 indoor 2-mile and, in hindsight, was this combination the perfect formula for success at the Boston Marathon?

Amby Burfoot: I have no idea. My training didn't make any sense; it was just what I did. At the time, we talked a lot about LSD (long slow distance), and we all tried to outdo each other with our weekly training mileage. It worked if you didn't get injured and over trained, both of which I avoided most of the time. But of course it didn't work for everyone. Nothing does. I always tell people that we, as a running and research community, know almost nothing about training for running success. There's basically no valid research on training systems - just a lot of anecdote and hype. In the end, you have to train hard some of the time but not too much of the time. It's smarter to be slightly undertrained than slightly over trained, but you never feel that you're reaching your potential unless you're pushing the training in some way. It's a Catch 22 situation, a damned if you do, and damned if you don't. And I don't think there's any way out of it.

I agree with HRE.

The poster who pointed out that no one reaches a world class level without doing mile repeats has it backwards.

Not everyone has the genetic makeup to profit from mile repeats. And if you don't have that makeup, you will not be world class. You may have to train differently to reach whatever potential you have.

BTW, it's Dick Tayler.

I have found that so many different things work for me. Mileage with only frequent strideouts and some short hill repeats works as I've gotten older. But I still have the mental toughness of a racer. When getting ready for a marathon a 17 miler with the final 7 miles a tad faster than race pace seems much better to help race performance than an easy 20-miler. I always seem to be able to race 10k at the pace I can do 5 x mile with a 2 minute rest. I can race a mile at the pace I can do 8 x 400m with a one minute rest. Racing at a variety of distances helps as the races play off of each other. Recently I have discovered the magic of days off which I had trouble actually doing in the past. I do agree with Amby Burfoot that there is no science that comes up with the perfect training schedule, but it's fun trying to piece it together!

In 1975 or '76 I sat next to Amby on the bus ride to the starting line of the AAU 30km championships in Schenectady.

I can't recall which year but he was back in form after having a few down years after graduation. I asked him about his return to form and he told me he thought it was because once a week he'd started doing a session of 440s. He said it was nothing spectacular, something like eight of them in 70-72 comes to mind but it's been a lot of years.

I asked him about his earlier advocacy of slow training and he said that when he said and wrote all of that he meant it. He never did any fast training but he'd overlooked the fact that he was in college and was racing at least weekly and often more frequently throughout the school year. It only occurred to him after graduation that all of those races served as "speedwork" and when he wasn't doing that many races his performaces dropped. Once he'd worked that out he added the sessions of 440s.

In my first post I didn't say intervals don't really work. Obviously they do for many if not most runners. But there do seem to be some of us for whom that's not the case. I think that before you can decide where you fit into this picture you need to look at the big picture of your training.

High school kids generally do loads of racing and I think they're in a situation similar to what Amby was in when he was in college. They don't need much if any faster work and may actually perform worse if they do that sort of thing. This has been the case with my son throughout his high school career but he races 30-40 times a year. An out of school runner who races much less may need to do some more faster work as Amby seemed to find out. And there may be people like Avocado and me who are better just staying away from repeat work altogether, whether because of how we're made or because we just can't get it right.

A combination of fast and continuous running has that advantage, which training with intervals does not, i.e. it is continuous. There are many breaks when training with intervals, but races don't have any breaks.

Doesn't it make sense, not that some people don't respond as well to training with intervals, but that continuous running is simply better. It could be that because significant parts of the continous running were neglected, perhaps the fastest and most important parts, this is why the racing results suffered.

Thus the worsening results were not because intervals were included, but that they were included in place of and took away from something else more important.

Another point is that Americans already do more repetitions and intervals than the Africans.

The difference in results is not due to lack of intervals, but that top Africans do far more FAST CONTINUOUS RUNNING than do Americans.

Americans are short repetition crazy, but weak at holding a fast pace over distance.

Not one person is impressed.

Stop the bullshit.

You are the only thing worse then a grammar Nazi.

"Why do I run PR's off just mileage and tempo workouts?"

ponytayne wrote:

Because every athlete is different and reacts to training differently from every other athlete.

Ponytayne, I wish every athlete and (especially) every coach had to write your response down once a day.

runner39 wrote:

all my PR's (3000m to 1/2 marathon) have been run during just mileage and tempo/threshold type workouts, I ran a 3000m PR last winter and never even came close to training at that pace for 4 months before

when I start doing intervals(1500m-5k pace) workouts my race times suffer, I realize when you are doing interval workouts you generally don't race well but even after I stop the interval workouts for the next couple of months I can not come close to my PR's when I was doing just mileage and tempo's

why does this happen? confused!!!

Thats all you need

Living in the Past wrote:

I agree with HRE.

The poster who pointed out that no one reaches a world class level without doing mile repeats has it backwards.

Not everyone has the genetic makeup to profit from mile repeats. And if you don't have that makeup, you will not be world class. You may have to train differently to reach whatever potential you have.

BTW, it's Dick Tayler.

Fred Wilt has him as "Taylor." The one Lydiard coached spelled his name "Tayler."

Here's a quote from the Cabral/Hadd FT/ST thread that I think offers a reasonable explanation.

"Just as an aside, every so often threads show up here on LRC about runners who do really well with just distance and tempo work, all claiming that their performances suffer as soon as they add in tons of intervals. Those who post on those threads seem unaware that this is because they are ST runners and that overdoing intervals instead of mileage and tempos does not suit ST runners at all (here look at Lopes as the classic example with his killing-LT/LTP runs and intervals used sparingly with longer recoveries than [say] Mamede). HRE comes to mind as someone who posts on such threads, relating how he runs well on steady work but that race performances “go south” with the addition of intervals.

Of course this all makes sense; physiologist Gary Dudley posted in 1982 the effects of different work intensities on mitochondrial growth in different muscle fibres. "

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=2375989&page=2

I'm no doctorate in physiology (though I took some classes as part of my undergrad), but I would venture a guess that more runners than not would have better success with a system of higher mileage at progressive, near-threshold pace than the perceived fine tuning of intervals "required" to round into shape. One Mark Nenow ran volume and fast all the time, without the preoccupation of mesocycles and intervals, and he's still the fastest, native-born 10,000 runner the US has ever produced (at least for now). I can remember warning people who were seemingly amazed that Josh McDougal could run 3:57 and 13:20 without any "sharpening" that he was at or near his peak and wouldn't get any faster that particular year.

Continuous, fast running seems to prepare the body to utilize energy and run close to threshold over a period of time more efficiently than any other form of training. Probably helps with efficiency in terms of clearing lactate as well. Seems to me that excessive racing and intervals are what make the body more prone to staleness and injury. Lydiard sure downplayed them as well.

Dan Moriarity wrote:

look at Lopes as the classic example with his killing-LT/LTP runs and intervals used sparingly with longer recoveries than [say] Mamede

Carlos Lopes ran intervals twice a week, every week, every month, every year.

Lopes and Mamede had the same coach and used the same type of intervals. Lopes ran the distance runs faster and Mamede ran the repetitions faster. For example Lopes ran 400's at his 5-10000m pace.