Shelby Greany?
Shelby Greany?
Hi Malmo,
I have started doubles and am comfortably around 60-65 miles per week most of the time (used to be around 40-45miles per week most of the time) with 2 track sessions (one relaxed, one hard) and a tempo run maybe once or twice per week. I feel like I could increase the mileage again but I am still imrpoving off my current training and don't know whether it would be better to keep training at the same mileage until I don't improve anymore or whether I should just increase it again when feeling good. What is your view on this?
Just out of interest, what year was your encounter with Quax and Hermens? Somewhere in the mid-70's or so I presume.
Thanks for your help
The 40-45 miles per week was until around 3 months ago. When I say I do 2 track sessions: 1 relaxed and the other hard, the hard one is not all out. I only go all out/near all out not too often in those sessions.
Sorry for repeat posts. My inclination at the moment is to bring the mileage up again. People I talk to keep saying to be gradual, 10 or so miles per year increase on average so that I don't get injured etc. Depending on when someone starts running, if one is too gradual (different for everyone but generally speaking) it will take a long time to ever get to an individuals ideal mileage.
The Drake wrote:
Sorry for repeat posts. My inclination at the moment is to bring the mileage up again. People I talk to keep saying to be gradual, 10 or so miles per year increase on average so that I don't get injured etc. Depending on when someone starts running, if one is too gradual (different for everyone but generally speaking) it will take a long time to ever get to an individuals ideal mileage.
10 miles per year? Who are you listening to, a moron? 10% a week is more like it. This isn't rocket science, like a people have said a million times before, listen to your body.
{quote]
The entire point of this or any other training thread isn't that you're going to make a donkey into a racehorse. The point is that you need to train that donkey to mimic what a racehorse does to maximize his talent. The point of all athletic training is to exploit YOUR talent to the max, oftentimes well beyond what you ever previously thought was possible. To do that frequently involves convincing the brain to think like an elite, even if you'll never become one. That means crushing pre-conceived boundaries and clearing the brain of the junk that has been fed to them for many years.[/quote]
I like that malmo, "think like an elite" when I was a grasshopper runner and continuing to improve until it became less and less ridiculous as I became closer to being "elite"
I thought I was mimicking Jim Ryun and/or Abebe Bikila. When I ran I was emulating them.
One other thought along these ideas (I was always a donkey btw)
You need to acknowledge when your particular training plan is not working. That comes under, "listening to your body". It takes a lot of foresight, humility and patience to acknowledge, "If I keep this up, I am going to blow up in 2 months/weeks/days". Similarly, it takes a lot of patience to hold back, when you know you could do more.
Just because Lasse Keino ran XXX mpw, doesn't mean this is the ONLY way for you to succeed. Each donkey is unique. So you need to create your own secret sauce. Examples of what good runners have done are very useful guidelines. But they are just that - guidelines.
Also, this is not meant to put words into anybody's mouth. My own conclusion based on 4 pages of comments.
Jive Turkey wrote:
One other thought along these ideas (I was always a donkey btw)
You need to acknowledge when your particular training plan is not working. That comes under, "listening to your body". It takes a lot of foresight, humility and patience to acknowledge, "If I keep this up, I am going to blow up in 2 months/weeks/days". Similarly, it takes a lot of patience to hold back, when you know you could do more.
Just because Lasse Keino ran XXX mpw, doesn't mean this is the ONLY way for you to succeed. Each donkey is unique. So you need to create your own secret sauce. Examples of what good runners have done are very useful guidelines. But they are just that - guidelines.
Also, this is not meant to put words into anybody's mouth. My own conclusion based on 4 pages of comments.
From the early days of my running and going forward I devolped a plan the main component of which was consistent twice a day running and the primary gauge or test was the tempo run. (not planned, but just came to me as my fitnessed prgressed)
I had several loops from 4 milers to 12 milers and I ran the same loops day in and out. Also ran alone the majority of the time.
This is how you develop feel. Around the end of the first mile a slight bead of sweat breaks on the forehead, at three miles you hit the hill, naturally this is a challenge and some nights you accept that to a higher degree and double the clutch.
At 6 miles you are more than halfway feeling good and passing the downtown area, so you pick it up and try and look like the best runner you can, just to show off a bit.
Come past the fire station I stop for a drink and say hello to the fireman.
Almost home, I am already thinking about the next morning run and the week to follow and upcoming competitions.
Repeat, in my case for about ten solid years until I reached my own little apex.
Archimedes wrote:
I hate to sound ignorant, but stress fractures and overuse injuries are fairly common among runners who ramp up their mileage too much, aren't they?
and this has what do with the some '10 percent rule'?
malmo wrote:
The entire point of this or any other training thread isn't that you're going to make a donkey into a racehorse. The point is that you need to train that donkey to mimic what a racehorse does to maximize his talent. The point of all athletic training is to exploit YOUR talent to the max, oftentimes well beyond what you ever previously thought was possible. To do that frequently involves convincing the brain to think like an elite, even if you'll never become one. That means crushing pre-conceived boundaries and clearing the brain of the junk that has been fed to them for many years.
great post and it had to be said by someone. on here you get the impression that there's more distinction in running relatively fast on light training than maxing out on your talent.
Off the Grid wrote:
Malmo - what to do if you find yourself saying, "I've run to hard"? >90% of the time the athlete will think, "Wow that was great!" esp early in the prep cycle. Other than looking for feeling flat etc and not bulling through it, what did you do if you got, "caught up in the moment" and ran too hard?
thanx!
I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to communicate here? for one, don't think that becasue I advised the 'Shelby' to add some shorter repeats at slower than 5k pace to his winter plan that I'm saying that training can't or won't be "hard". Training can be very hard - so hard, in fact, tht you might sometimes find yourself recovering in bed in fetal position for a few hours afterwards. My advice was to his specific situation -- that he had spent the winter doing "all distance" with the exception of a single hard 3 mile run every week and was concerned that he wasn't seeing those immediate results. My point was to throw in some faster work, and that it needn't be very hard stuff to make improvement.
Shelby wrote:
Mon: 12miles
Tue: AM: 4miles easy PM: 9miles
Wed: AM: 4miles easy PM: 10miles
Thu: 12miles
Fri: AM: 4miles easy PM: 3.3miles all out as fast as possible, 4miles total warm up/cool down
Sat: AM: 4miles easy PM: 10miles
Sun: 12miles
You don´t have really hard and really easy days, or enough variation of pace. For the base phase I´d drop the all out run, include workouts at 800-1500m speed, half marathon-marathon pace and at or near full sprinting speed. All of these staying at low lactate levels. You should be tired and sleepy after these sessions except after the sprints.
Take it easy on easy days, that means the mileage as well as intensity.
You normally won´t and SHOULDN´T be at your best shape right after base phase, but you build the aerobic power really quickly either by hard VO2Max workouts or some build-up races.
malmo wrote:Which is why I tell people to listen to the feedback your body is giving them. I believe, wrongly, that all runners listen to their body, and if they are feeling beat up naturally they'd back off. That dosn't seem to be the case.
If it's merely fatigue that's getting them from a bump in mileage, that is expected, it usualy goes away after about 3 weeks. If there's no bump in mileage and fatigue is evident, that's usually a sign to back off.
If running is making you feel 'beat up,' that's the same as your body yelling at you with a megaphone. Listen, dammit.
I wasted the bulk of my competitive days ignoring this piece of information. I was convinced that feeling beat up meant that I was training hard, and everybody knows you have to train hard to be good, right?
My freshmen year in college I was under the tutelage of a coach who actively encouraged racing workouts. So I did. Made great progress, too . . . for a while. Then I crashed. It took turning in my scholarship, taking the rest of the year off to run recreationally on my own and then transferring to resurrect me. And then the resurrection was due to having great guys around me, including a 2:11 marathoner who was in our post-collegiate training group.
There is no better advice I could give anyone that what malmo has said here.
Hey Malmo,
I realize "listening to your body" can work for a lot of runners, but it is subjective. For example, one runner might not run his 12th quarter if he is puking and too dizzy to stand, while another runner may stop their tempo run short because their legs are a bit heavy and they are breathing hard. I know these 2 examples might be extremes of a "tough" runner and a wuss, but people have different ideas of what it means to listen to their body.
What I'm getting at is, how often did you workout so hard that you found yourself recovering in bed in the fetal position? Weekly? Monthly?
I could be wrong, but I have a feeling most people will take the idea of listening to their bodies as an excuse never to train up to this point.
Once a Bum wrote:
Hey Malmo,
I realize "listening to your body" can work for a lot of runners, but it is subjective. For example, one runner might not run his 12th quarter if he is puking and too dizzy to stand, while another runner may stop their tempo run short because their legs are a bit heavy and they are breathing hard. I know these 2 examples might be extremes of a "tough" runner and a wuss, but people have different ideas of what it means to listen to their body.
What I'm getting at is, how often did you workout so hard that you found yourself recovering in bed in the fetal position? Weekly? Monthly?
I could be wrong, but I have a feeling most people will take the idea of listening to their bodies as an excuse never to train up to this point.
Once a bum. You're not getting it. What feedback you get in the 12th rep of an anaerobic workout isn't what we're talking about here. You're going to feel dizzy and on fire after that. What I'm talking about is the feedback that you get the next day after that workout or the day after that.
Fetal position frequency? After every race, and perhaps once every 10-15 days or so after a hard training session.
A few years ago I had this discussion with a friend who had just run a race and was partying like a rock star. He brought up the old talent vs hard word canard, and I responded what he is doing only vaguely resembles the effort of world-class athletes. His retort was that he trained 'hard' too. I conceded that may be so, but "look at you right now. You don't look like you just ran a 5 mile XC race to me." He said, "what do you mean?" i said "look, when I was in college, after every single cross country race i ran I was so sick that I had to go back to my room and curl up in bed to recover with a 3 hour nap." Then I asked him, "have you EVER felt that way after a race?" His response was a very quiet "no."
Once a Bum wrote:
I could be wrong, but I have a feeling most people will take the idea of listening to their bodies as an excuse never to train up to this point.
I'd tend to agree on this point.
Malmo;
This brings you and I back to a fun argument we had a couple of years back. We had a back and forth on the whole talent vs. hard work thing. And you won me over as I now believe that a large majority of runners underachieve not because of lack of talent (a lame excuse for most) but rather a lack of committment to the amount of work necessary to achieve success. But as a coach I understand that not every kid I get will have that "mind is a steel trap" kind of toughness. Whey does someone have that quality? Who knows ... upbringing, some hard wired quality ... we can let some PhD in psych decide that. But understand that you had the ability to become fetal, and not everyone has that level of toughness no matter much they try. Everyone has that pain line they won't cross, their own pussy barrier so to speak.
aaaa is correct...
there needs to be more clearly defined easy and hard days..
our weekly schedule in the winter in Fort Collins, Co. looked like this:
m,w,f:
6 mi easy am
6 mi easy pm
full stretch afterwards
8x100 progressive
jog back
indoors in racing flats or spikes
t:
6 mi easy am
8 mi pm very hilly fartlek on dirt
SWIM 20 minutes
r:
6 mi easy am
10 mi on road starting at 6:30 pace working down to
5:20 pace
SWIM 20 minutes
Sat:
6 mi easy am
5mi easy out pm slightly uphill
5mi @ 5:20 coming back slightly downhill
Sun
18-20 mi easy
20 minute swim
This is about 105 per week, but the overall scedule can be scaled back to your current mlg.........
THE SWIMMING IS CRUCIAL FOR INJURY PREVENTION
just use a kickboard and alternate laps of kicking on your back and kicking on your stomach
Out of this training group surfaced many runners that made the T&FN top 50 US list at least once in their event between 1978 and 19992
Hope this helps..................
I agree, we need to be careful who we listen too! Listening to our bodies is better than listeniing to someone who doesn't know our bodies.
At the end of the day, the motivation to really give an all out effort has to come from the athlete. A coach can help but they have to want to go through it themselves.
"[Scientific] testing can't determine how the mind will tolerate pain in a race. Sometimes, I say, "Today I can die." - Gelindo Bordin