Aerobic Training

just run baby

go read Hadd's threads in the locked best posts on this site. His thinking and philosophy is exactly like Lydiard, but more scientific and current.

Miles of trials.

youre kind of a confused idiot, confused idiot.

walking, you are ~99.9% aerobic, true. but 99.9% of 0 oxygen demand is still 0.

jogging, you are ~90% aerobic. 90% of 100 oxygen demand is 90.

tempo running, you are ~70% aerobic. 70% of 200 oxygen demand is 140.

walking is purely aerobic, but you would have to walk forever to get the aerobic stimulus of jogging. jogging is a low level aerobic stimulus, but you can do it for a long time. tempoing is a high level aerobic stimulus, but you can't (but probably should?) do it for very long.

obviously i made these numbers up, but the idea is to do a lot of jogging and a substantial yet reasonable amount of high end (tempo type) aerobic running to get the best aerobic benefit.

Confused Idiot - Help wrote:

Anyway, when I was thinking about his base phase, and the "aerobic" training, I became a bit confused. The slower you run, the more aerobic you are, so in theory, walking would be better for aerobic develpoment than running. But Lydiard (and, obviously, a lot of other coaches) suggested running at quite a quick speed, which seems strange, since it would be less aerobic than running slowly. Therefore, It would be logical to assume the faster the better, and Coe's long slow running producing long slow runners, would be correct. (Obviously almost all athletes would be doing more than just slow running, with speedwork, but still).

Without getting too far into accuracy of scientific terms; basically, for whatever you do, you need oxygen to perform. The harder the workload (in this case, the faster the running speed), the more oxygen your body requires to perform that particular task. Walking requires not that much oxygen; running slow, or jogging requires quite a bit more oxygen than simply walking; running faster, say at marathon pace, would require a heck of a lot more oxygen than just jogging; running all-out mile would require a lot, lot more.

Somewhere along the line, somewhere around the marathon pace, your body's ability to take in, transport and utilize oxygen maxes out. We all have certain amount of oxygen we can take into our body, transport to the lungs and oxygenate the blood and then to the working muscles, and then within those working muscles to utilize oxygen to produce energy. This is more popularly called VO2Max. You go beyond that maximum, you go "anaerobic" or create oxygen debt. Within that limit, you're running "aerobic". At the highest speed and you're still within your aerobic limit is, some have termed, maximum steady state. This is the fastest pace you can run without creating oxygen debt. So your body's function is "steady" state; hense the name. You're not huffing and puffing, gasping for air.

There are a lot of things happening in your body when you run and you just can't simply say; "If you run such-and-such pace, then you switch into anaerobic" or things like that. Things are always inter-twined; but to put it simply, you can run aerobically until you start running so fast that you start getting into oxygen debt. The point at which you are running very fast but still aerobic is where you want to spend a lot of time training. Elite runners can run somewhere around 5-minute-mile pace and staill stay aerobic. If we, slower people, try to run at the same pace, we would get into "anaerobic state" and the whole physiological reactions are different. Someone like Coe obviously can run very fast and still stay aerobic.

So it is not simply "the faster the better" or "the slower the better". You'll need to understand at which speed you get into oxygen debt or stay comfortablly aerobic. No one can tell you that, let alone some message board poster who never know what kind of background you have.

Confused Idiot - Help wrote:

The slower you run, the more aerobic you are

I found your problem. This statement is wrong.

"More aerobic" means using more oxygen. You definitely use more oxygen the faster you run, so you are definitely "more aerobic" at faster speeds, NOT slower speeds as you've written above. Think about it logically, don't you start to breathe heavier as you exercise harder & run faster? That's your body calling for more oxygen.

Eventually there is a point where you can't utilize any more oxygen. Once you've reached that point, that's your VO2 max. The V stands for volume - so VO2 max is a measure of the amount of oxygen you are able to consume. It is usually expressed as rate per min or rate per minute per unit of bodyweight.

Whatever speed you're running at that point is your vVO2 max (velocity at VO2 max).

We usually say that running at speeds faster than vVO2 max are anaerobic speeds.

Of course some people on this site (wellnow) will call this all a bunch of pseudo-science, but this is the traditional view of aerobia, anaerobia, VO2 max, etc.

There fast intervals is aerobic mainly as long as dont get into VO2max. Not anaerobics. What contradicts some old famous coach used to say.

5min-mile for long period is what you want to say.

However Sebastion Coe is a poor example of what you want to mean.

It is true that he did less speed than some 800m top best, but his main talent was specific anaerobics for 800m-1500m-mile middle distances and not aerobics.

Since Coe best events were 800m-1500m-mile he did poor performances and poor hability for 5000-10000m long distance events that requires more aerobics than 800m-mile.

In fact the main Coe talent was anaerobic capacity and not aerobics. I mean about specific anaerobic capacity related to middle distance events as are the 800m-1500m and the mile.

Many 800m are able to run faster for long distance or long period than Coe and still be aerobic. However they dont possess Coes 800m specific anaerobic 800m-mile race pace condition.

Runners from the same Coe period. Steve Ovett, Thomas Wassingage, Steve Cram, John Walker, Said Aouita and some other did best aerobic condition and best aerobic power than Coe. Their long distance pbs proves that they did best aerobics than Coe did. Steve Ovett did compete in 5000m in major events with performance that Coe did no aerobic talent. Thomas Wassingage european 1500m and 5000m european champ and 3:31 and 13:22. Steve Cram 3:30, mile, 3000m big pb, 5000m runner. John Walker mile-5000m, good stamina, good aerobic condition. Said Aouita 800m bronze in the olympics but also 1500m-mile-3000m-5000m and 1000m also.