We'd bet a large sum of money that Rupp and Farah don't run 17-20 miles every day at 5:45 pace.

agreed

If they are doubling at 10 and 7 and racing every easy run, then running 5:45 seems possible; however you guys have to undestand that when it comes to recovery Salazar is using the best "Science."

Since Rupp is capped at about 110/week for mileage, and Mo behind that, the BroJos are safe on this one.

Don't forget:

40% of total weekly mileage is done on the alter G

31% on an all weather Tartan track (40% of that in vibrams, 30% in trainers, 30% in spikes)

8% on mossy/grassy/very fertile surfaces

7.5% on the underwater treadmill

6.3% on "the crete"--for toughness

4% on a Mondo surface (see above breakdown for track work)

3.2% on cinders

You stick with that, everything else is cream cheese.

I don't think anyone in this thread has brought up the Hydroworx training. Salazar apparently counts that in their weekly mileage and its about 25-33% of the total mileage.

At least that is according to this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DpI2JLFAwU

I don't know how Al Sal measures "pace" on this. But make of it as you will.

huh?

i would take this bet if you mean that the average pace does not better 5:45, no? and the build up stage... later on we go faster....

as a junior i trained with dennis norris (800m champ) and john walker.

walker averaged 5 minutes a mile, norris about 5:45 and we are talking a converted sprinter here. myself around 6.

walker did 70-90 miles not more as he was likely to break down. norris 70-90. quax and dixon 100 plus. dixon and walker would kick each others ass.

trust me, 5:45 pace is an absolute walk in the park for a sub 13:00 5000m guy. hell, any 14:00 guy can and should do half of his mileage that that pace.

best ask salazar the ratio but we should be talking about something like this.

20% easy / recovery runs at whatever pace

60% gross mileage at 5:00 to 5:45 minutes over trails and hills

20% quality at sub 5 min, hills, mile repeats, intervals and such

say the slow and fast stuff cancel out. i stll have sub 5:45

i must agree with bro-jo, a big problem with college or working out with a partner who is out of your league is that build up work is done too fast. you burn out rather than build up.

say we can handle 3 workouts 10 miles at 6 min pace per week comfortably, but instead coach gets us to run 56 = race effort. then rather than run easy in recovery, we push it....

you are looking to be half burned out before the hard anaerobic and aerobic work begins. after a few races you are toast.

so by bro-jo working out well below his threshold he avoided the burn out scenario.

that said, running endless miles at a slow pace is not done by world class athletes, zero. we want to run multi 50 to 64 second laps here, not 90+ seconds.

in the end, no matter what the training regime or stage of training, you need to focus on quality and adequate recovery.

Maximus wrote:

For the level that Rupp and Farah are at, doing the majority of their running at sub 6 minute pace seems very logical, just like it does for Chris Solinsky. The problem is that since these are three of the better runners currently, it ruins the theory of so many that you have to run really easy on your easy days to be successful. No you don't, or at least many successful runners don't. Since it ruins their theory, many people just refuse to believe it is true.

How does it ruin that theory? This is only three runners we're talking about and they obviously didn't start out running at such high level and intensity.

They've all been running for years and have all worked and developed their bodies and talents to be able to train at that type of level.

Thinking that they never had really easy days within the last several years is a broad assumption on your part. Have you seen their training logs for the past few years?

Of course we know that Rupp does not run 120-140 miles a week. I remember Salazar saying he was in the 80's last year.

I never said that they have never had really easy days within the last several years. My point was that the trend in thinking is that even world class runners need to do some running even as slow as 8 minute pace even, such as Wejo did when he ran his low 28 minute 10k. That is simply not the case and many top level runners don't do that slow of running. Also my point is that 5:45 pace IS relatively easy for guys at this level. At my best I was a low 23 minute 8k, 29:19 10k and a 48:37 10 miler, so no where near the ability of these guys. I did all of my running at 6 minute pace or under, including warmups, cooldowns, etc. That pace was very comfortable to me, so 5:45 pace for those types has to feel pretty darn easy. Yes, some world class runners do some of their running over 6 minute pace or even 7 minute pace, but many of them don't, despite what Wejo or many people think. There are many different ways to train that work for many different people.

As I said on a different thread yesterday, you have all of this mileage-obsessed "genius" coaching from JK and Co. I see excuses about the results because of how tough of a school Cornell is (as if Stanford or Duke are easier). I And what international results do we see from this program? Nothing. Now you have Morgan Uceny going to the same school and apparently running 25 miles a week. She goes with Terrence Mahon and now apparently up to 50 miles a week but very likely harder training and she's the DL points leader. That's basically all you need to know.

Its not that Cornell is a tougher school it's that its not allowed to give scholarships to their athletes. Stanford gets a slew of girls coming in who run 4:40 miles, sub 2:08 800s, and sub 10:20 2 miles (basically several of the top recruits in the nation). Cornell barely gets anyone who starts under 5 minutes for the mile. Stanford and Duke give scholarships for track and hence can recruit great athletes. Cornell cannot do that. None of the ivies can.

BOOM! wrote:

Of course we know that Rupp does not run 120-140 miles a week. I remember Salazar saying he was in the 80's last year.

al-sal was working for a few years on rupps closing speed and compromised his volume a bit. no doubt he's gotten the results he wanted, a 1:49 800m, fast closing the 1306 - 5000m.

it is looking that he's got the volume - speed quotient just right this year, as he's in mo farah's ballpark, which is to say he's within spitting distance of a metal at the world champs and world top 10 ranking, provided continued good health and a bit of luck (not get spiked, fall)

of course so are about a dozen africans.

rupp really is one of the toughest guys out there to boot.

nail him from behind wrote:

I'd make the bet no problem. That's 130+ miles a week with no recovery pace runs. What about workouts and warm ups and cool downs? They're not just going out for a 18 miler at 545 pace every f@ing day. That would be idiotic. What about workouts?

I think Salazar's brain probably got a little fried back in the day and now he just spouts off training info that may or may not be based in reality.

And I wish people would stop making the training pace - PRs correlations. You guys should know that that is not how it works. I'm sure you've met people a lot slower than you and a lot faster than you who train at the same pace. Personally, I train at a slower pace now that I'm faster because before I trained way too fast.

Is it so hard to believe that 5:45-6 minute pace isn't a recovery pace for these guys? I would bet serious money that there are groups of Kenyan's and Ethiopians going out every day at significantly faster "average" paces than this and more mileage and at altitude.

I am amazed by you not being able to read the thread title. It does not say the word "average."

"We'd bet a large sum of money that Rupp and Farah don't run 17-20 miles every day at 5:45 pace. Some of the mileage has to be slower or they aren't running that much every day."

Weldon is right. Some of the mileage is slower and they don't run 17-20 miles everyday.

Weldon's statement does not contain the word "average." You applied it yourself. I even quoted what Weldon said in my previous post. Read it.

Could it be that the BroJos are misinterpreting the quote? It could be that they average 5:45 pace by having enough runs or parts of runs at sub 5:00 to balance out some runs and parts of runs well over 6:00, not because they run 5:45 pace day in day out right out the door of every run?

For a decade now rupp has followed races with workouts. For that same decade he has likely driven down his daily run pace. It didn't happen over night and I'm sure when he's feeling good 5:30 feels simply brisk and 6:10 feels agonizingly slow.

He didn't get there overnight and he's not jumping into it, he trained into it. How else do you think he pulled off the NCAA indoor triple and outdoor double? He has trained to recover off what is quite hard for most, but not all.

Its all relative. In college, everyone ran faster than 6.40 a mile and that included the mediocre JV walk-on's, who struggled to break 34 mins for 10K cross country. And to be honest with you, everyone only ran this slow on our Sunday morning 14 mile run. A 34 min 10K is 5.29 pace. So, for the slow guys on the team, their slowest training pace was 23% slower than their racing pace. Even for the 31 high 10k guys, 6.40 pace was 30% slower than their race pace.

With Solinsky and Rupp If one does the math, 5.45 mile pace is 31% slower than 27.10 10K pace, and 32% slower than 27.00 10k pace. So these 27 flat 10K guys are really not working that hard at 5,45 a mile.

I always remember watching some Morocan runners doing a early season track workout on an indoor track. They did 5x1000m at 2.48 with 1 min rest between. I was like wow. They turned to me after the workout and said that if they added up the 5 repeats they would still only end up at 14.00 flat for 5000m, and they were all faster than 13.30 for 5000 the previous summer, so they were not even going race pace. I am citing this example to show how the math should always be done when trying to figure what a workout is really worth.