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

Maximus wrote:

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?.

First of all, 5:45 pace is a recovery run for athletes at that level. Second of all, the quote says average pace, not every run is exactly 5:45 pace. Some people that don't have this kind of talent just can't understand how easy 5:45 pace can be for the top athletes.

If that pace way used as a 'typical' pace, it might be reasonable for someone at that level, but it would allow a number of miles at an easier pace of 6:00 - 6:30. It is probably slightly 'careless' wording rather than something that is 'factually' clearly at the edge.

I don't know about the rest of you, but my 'easy' run paces can vary by two to three minutes per mile depending on how beat up I am or whether I've digested my food or whatnot, and they typically change a lot in the course of my runs, so I very often go out at something terrible like 9 minutes for the first mile, or even slower on the awful days just after a heavy meal, and then by the second half of those runs am under 7 minutes per mile. And then there are good days where on my easy runs I'm out under 7 minutes for the first mile and cruise a series of low sixes and finish the last mile in around 5:40. So, I have to wonder about whether these elites do not also vary their 'easy' paces quite dramatically as well. But the point here is that Salazar did not say that they averaged 5:45/M for 17 to 20 miles a day, but rather that Farah was now running his easy mileage at 5:45/M, instead of high sixes or 7, as he did before. But Salazar did say, if I recall correctly, that the two of them would often do 17 to 20 mile runs at 545/M. They double frequently, so they are not going to be going that long most days, and on any workout days, a lot of the mileage is going to be a lot faster than 545. In fact, the implication was that apart from w/u, c/d, and jog rests during interval workouts, they go at least 5:45 pace at all times. The w/u, c/d, and jog rests are probably slower than that pace on most days.

turkey leg wrote:

off the charts wrote:

I wish a made a tally every time the brojos said something incredibly stupid and/or ignorant. It's baffling how two former runners who created a running website can know so little about running.

But one of them ran 28 min 10k after easing back the intensity of their distance runs. Surely, it wasn't because he busted his butt for years training hard and then made a adjustment to bring himself into balance. It must have been that last fine tuning that was the real reason.

Coffee also helped

From my own training logs. Morning runs. 8.5 mile measured magneto loop. I was nowhere near 13:00/27:00.

For those guys 5:30 miles would be like a walk in the park.

45:45 5:23 hard

45:50 5:24 moderate-hard

47:30 5:35 moderate

49:00 5:46 moderate

48:00 5:39 moderate

54:00 6:21 slow

53:00 6:14 slow

52:30 6:11 slow

48:00 5:39 moderate

46:30 5:28 fast

46:00 5:25 fast

48:30 5:42 moderate

46:05 5:25 fast

49:00 5:46 moderate

49:00 5:46 easy

48:30 5:42 easy

49:30 5:49 easy

47:00 5:32 moderate

46:50 5:31 moderate

46:00 5:25 fast

47:00 5:32 moderate

44:07 5:11 very hard

52:30 6:11 slow

47:30 5:35 easy

48:30 5:42 easy

44:30 5:14 fast

48:30 5:42 easy

48:30 5:42 easy

46:00 5:25 moderate

43:28 5:07 very hard

50:00 5:53 easy

51:00 6:00 easy

48:20 5:41 easy

48:30 5:42 easy

46:30 5:28 moderate

47:30 5:35 easy

48:00 5:39 moderate

48:00 5:39 moderate

48:00 5:39 easy

48:00 5:39 easy

47:30 5:35 easy

48:00 5:39 moderate

48:30 5:42 easy

51:00 6:00 easy

49:00 5:46 easy

50:00 5:53 easy

47:10 5:33 moderate

48:00 5:39 moderate

50:00 5:53 easy

runtex1 wrote:

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.

Your semantic argument is adding nothing to the conversation. No one here thinks that they simply go out and run 5:45 pace for 17-20 miles each day. No one is arguing that.

Not to hijack the thread, but just a response to a minor remark:

mathias wrote:

[It's] not that Cornell is a tougher school[,] it's that [they're] 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.

First, it's important to remember that Cornell's women are not coached by Rojo, and never have been. He coaches the male distance/middle-distance runners.

Second, I don't think Stanford (or anyone else) gets a "slew" of female recruits who've run 4:40 or better for 1600/mile. I don't think there are very many in the country who've done that in the last few years.

This year, a check of DyeStat suggests that Cornell's getting two or three female recruits who've gone 5:00 or better for the mile/1600 (or its metric equivalent), and another four or five who've been close to 5:00 in high school.

And this pales when compared to the recruiting classes that Princeton and (in recent years, especially this year) Columbia, among others, have brought in. (Check the Heps XC thread for details.)

The Ivies are increasingly recruiting truly "great" high school athletes because the League's schools give outstanding need-based financial aid. Families are starting to realize that, in many cases, their kids can go to an Ivy more cheaply than they can go to their State U. on a half ride.

Mavin wrote:

5:45 pace for a 12:5x/5k guy is about ~72% of race pace. Be like a 16:00/5k guy running his easy mileage at 7 mins/mile... Easy running in both cases.

When I was a sub 15:00 min 5k guy, I did few non-workout runs as fast as 7:00 pace average for the whole run. I used to train with two guys with 5k Pr's under 14:20 who didn't either.

are you a woman?

Shakely wrote:

When I was a sub 15:00 min 5k guy, I did few non-workout runs as fast as 7:00 pace average for the whole run. I used to train with two guys with 5k Pr's under 14:20 who didn't either.

Man, think of the time you would have saved.

If I had to run slower than 6:30 pace it was a day I should have taken off.

Malmo,I think everyone can be right here. It's a matter of people not reading exactly what was written/said.I will stand by my statement of: "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."I wrote that as people were thinking they should start there easy runs really fast. Even someone as good as Rupp and Farah are probably starting a mile or so at the start of a run over 6 minutes a mile.There is no way they are doing every mile at 5:45 pace and running that much. Maybe 90 miles at that pace but no way 17-20 a day at that pace.Now if you look at what Salazar actually said. He said they average that pace. My quote didn't reflect the word average because it seemed to me that people were interpreting salazar's quote as not being average either here: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4130662

Al Sal said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/8627789/London-2012-Olympics-Mo-Farah-told-he-will-be-even-stronger-and-faster-by-next-years-Games.html

"He used to run all his mileage very slowly. His average pace was probably 6min 45sec per mile. Now the average pace that he and Galen run is about 5-45, and that's 17 to 20 miles a day. They sometimes do 20 miles and go 5-30 pace, and that isn't a particularly hard day."

That is actually possible. Those guys can recover at sub 6 and their workout days are probably well under 5:30 average so there weekly average could be 5:45. But they aren't running it all that fast. Therefore your average runner shouldn't read what Rupp and Farah are doing and start hammering their easy days.

Truce,

Rojo

How do so many of your runs have overall times that are so pretty and round? (As in, XX:00)? I have a few hypotheses but am wondering the real answer. Thanks

I'm pretty sure Malmo's mentioned before he just rounded up to the nearest round number (47:07 ----> 47:10, etc).

The original Brojo comment, however, was written in reaction to an idea Salazar didn't express. Salazar didn't say "they run every single mile at 5:45 or better." Salazar said they average 5:45. The article then said "we bet that they don't run every single mile at 5:45 or better or they don't run 17-20 miles a day." Of course that's the case. As other posters have mentioned, averaging 5:45 by definition means some miles are faster and some are slower. If the Brojos felt the need to include their comment in their article, either they misunderstood what Salazar said, or they assumed the letsrun readership didn't know what the word "average" means in that context.

Knowing this board and the Brojos' writing, I'd say it's a tossup.

I think a lot of these wall posts are started simply because people are ignorant and inexperienced about training. They look forward to sneeking onto letsrun.com while at work to stir up drama in the running community. Here's an idea: Get off the computer, get out the door and learn about the parameters of the human body and exercise physiology by training yourself, not criticizing and fantasizing about other athlete's training.

mplatt wrote:

Shakely wrote:

When I was a sub 15:00 min 5k guy, I did few non-workout runs as fast as 7:00 pace average for the whole run. I used to train with two guys with 5k Pr's under 14:20 who didn't either.

Man, think of the time you would have saved.

If I had to run slower than 6:30 pace it was a day I should have taken off.

So if you did 8 x 800m with a 200m jog in 2:18 each on a Tuesday evening, you'd just head out the door Wednesday morning at 6:30 pace from the get go? Did you ever run in wind, humidity, at 4am, hungover, on rugged mountain trails, etc? I think if one doesn't run the first mile of a run considerably slower than one averages, one is forcing the pace.

I argue that for most people, if they have to sacrifice workout quality for the sake of diminishing marginal utility speed on easy days, it is a losing proposition. Perhaps we are confusing cause and effect - that the people who are best suited for running are those people who can do that and us mortals who probably should have found another sport have to make concessions to be the best we can be. If using the same quanta of energy/recovery one can either milk an extra second out of their intervals or run merely 90 seconds slower than 5k race pace rather than 2 min slower, the former provides more race-specific returns. Now of course if one doesn't add to their fatigue load by running medium so much, by all means do so. I know if I had run 6:30 pace every day, I would have had to slow my workouts down alot to accommodate that (or drop my mileage). I am not going to sandbag a workout just so I can be ready to run some arbitrarily defined honest pace the next day.

mplatt wrote:

Shakely wrote:

When I was a sub 15:00 min 5k guy, I did few non-workout runs as fast as 7:00 pace average for the whole run. I used to train with two guys with 5k Pr's under 14:20 who didn't either.

Man, think of the time you would have saved.

If I had to run slower than 6:30 pace it was a day I should have taken off.

WOuldn't have saved any time because I do all my runs on minutes at a given effort (which is what our bodies understand) not miles. The distance from some pub to Buckingham palace or however the limeys decided on the length of a mile need not dictate our training anymore than Julius Caesar dividing a week into 7 day periods should.

I run loops, when I am done, I am done.

14:20 guys have no business doing all of their runs as you described above, slower than 7 minute pace.

and the most precious time you would have saved would have been in a race.

When in Portland do these guys only train on the Nike campus? Hard to imagine they're doing 20 miles around the soccer fields.

I've seen Schumacher guys in Forest Park but never a Salazar-coached runner.

mplatt wrote:

I run loops, when I am done, I am done.

14:20 guys have no business doing all of their runs as you described above, slower than 7 minute pace.

and the most precious time you would have saved would have been in a race.

If I ever feel good enough to run 6:30 pace comfortably, I'll do the run 1min+ faster than that then go back to 7:00+ the next day.

Some of the workouts these two 14:20 guys were doing:

27 x 400m with 100m recovery in :70-72

4 x 1600m in 4:30

8 x 1000m in 2:48

10 mile tempos every week in 5:15 pace.

And one of these two guys, when he ran his 14:14 PR, NEVER DID A NON-WORKOUT RUN ON THE ROADS - all on mountain trails in pre Garmin days.

-----------------------

So you could do an interval workout of 4 miles of volume at your 2 mile race pace with short recovery on a Tuesday night, then head out for your Wednesday AM run from the door at 6:30 pace. Mplatt, I respect the hell out of you (and Malmo too, of course), but most people I have encountered who swear they never ran below a certain easy run pace turned out to be lying when they are forced to not sandbag a workout and actually measure a course.

I tried both. In college, all our easy runs were medium at the expense of workouts and I didn't run near as well as when I increased my mileage, slowed my easy runs down, and put more into my workouts. I got faster when I stopped worrying about running a given pace on easy days but worried a great deal about every tenth on workout days.

Everyone is different in how they recover and what feels comfortable on a distance run. My pr's were decent, but not world or even national class and I pretty much did 100% of my running at 6 minute pace or under. That is what felt comfortable. I would do 4 x mile repeats in the 4:20's on a Tuesday evening and head out the door the next morning at sub 6 pace and it was what was comfortable to me. Warmups, the day before races, etc. were all sub 6 pace. I have no idea if this was the most efficient, but it is what worked for me and what felt comfortable. I didn't consciously run sub 6 pace, I just went out and ran. Personally I have a hard time believing that 14 minute 5k guys are able to run over 7 minute pace. That just seems painful.