Mr. Renato Canova: Could You Please Answer a Question About Effective Ways to Improve the Lactate Threshold?

Kennedy went the right way as one of the few non-african under 13 min. He improved his specific endurance. Correct direction.

Sorry meant 1/2 hour. Still 3.5 hours of extra work.

Well, the Ethiopians and Morrocans run about 6mi of drills every day in addition to their normal running. Also things like 500 pushups and 2000 situps daily.

Their recovery from training is far better than everyone else.

quote:

Remember Renato writing about MAX LASS? This applies to Bekele. For him, he has a steady state, though not 4 mmol, at 13:00-13:10 5,000m pace. Other athletes do not have this.

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I disagree other elite athletes he races have this it just does not last as long as his does. Even for him his lactate would begine to increase sharply if he kept the pace long enough. Probably wright around 10,000m as he ran 26:20 ...

Also a lot of non-africans have tried to train in the Kenyan camp. Most got injured and you have never heard from many. Kennedy would tell you that he was one of the few.

$hit I need to take a spelling class ...

you can really go into your training comparing yourself to a Kenyan... or even the guy next door. We all have a slightly different make-up, and while there is value in learning from the Kenyans, you can't just imitate them with your American make-up.

YEAH wrote:

Their recovery from training is far better than everyone else.

This is the best thread ever. Please do not erase.

racer1 you seem to have a lot of knowlege and you proably coach sprinters but not sure you have correct distance knowledge.

Racer1 wrote:

If you cannot read them, why do you reply and cite yourself an authority?

That's why I'm an authority, because I am only able to read messages that make sense.

Jr wrote:

Kennedy went the right way as one of the few non-african under 13 min. He improved his specific endurance. Correct direction.

Kennedy did fantastic as a 5k runner.

trackhead wrote:

Well, the Ethiopians and Morrocans run about 6mi of drills every day in addition to their normal running. Also things like 500 pushups and 2000 situps daily.

i heard bekele can press 5000 pounds

BONO wrote:

An extra hour of drills a day? So you think that extra hour would have no affect on the rest of the recovery? Racer1 you need to look at the risk vs. reward on training or oppurtunity cost. I'm not dissagreeing that he couldn't get faster but you can't predict what would happen? Racer1 your guessing that he would proably recover. All the drills is just extra and the problem is that coaches think that they are the main ingredient when really they are just salt. You think you have it all figured out but everyone recovers differently. Arrogance and absolute will get you into trouble.

Bono, I do not mean that an athlete should do a quality session of form exercises every day.

A good, top athlete can use a session, 15-20 minutes, of all the form exercises (skipping for height and distance, quick steps, hill bounding, hill springing, one foot hill hops, jumping jacks, high knees, kickouts) 2-3 times per week during a session of strides.

This is basic exercise. Relaxed drills to train the neuromuscular system to pass through the phases of each stride "in an unemcumbered fashion" is how John Kellogg put it.

I do these myself frequently, and, if done on grass and done correctly, there is very little injury risk. Some of the drills involve strong foot plants but when you do them on grass (and, even better, if you can do them barefoot) for only short distances you will not hurt yourself.

You need a variety of impact stresses applied to your body so you are not always running at the same pace and experiencing the same stresses on your legs (another John Kellogg piece of advice).

A simple concept.

If the best in the world cannot spare 45-60 extra minutes per week for a low risk, potentially high reward activity, they best hang up their spikes and find another sport.

Kennedy himself employed a program of this sort under Same Bell that I read about in Hal Higdon's book, so he was not blind to it. I think maybe he did not emphasize it enough.

PurdueGrad wrote:

quote:

Remember Renato writing about MAX LASS? This applies to Bekele. For him, he has a steady state, though not 4 mmol, at 13:00-13:10 5,000m pace. Other athletes do not have this.

_______________________________________________________

I disagree other elite athletes he races have this it just does not last as long as his does. Even for him his lactate would begine to increase sharply if he kept the pace long enough. Probably wright around 10,000m as he ran 26:20 ...

How many athletes do you know that have a steady state of blood lactate accumulation at such a fast pace that they can 26:20.31 for 10,000 meters?

jsx wrote:

Also a lot of non-africans have tried to train in the Kenyan camp. Most got injured and you have never heard from many. Kennedy would tell you that he was one of the few.

Might I ask you, who else do you know that has given it a genuine try and "failed"?

I am reminded of a fantastic saying:

"Injuries heal. Slow times never do."

agree wrote:

you can really go into your training comparing yourself to a Kenyan... or even the guy next door. We all have a slightly different make-up, and while there is value in learning from the Kenyans, you can't just imitate them with your American make-up.

YEAH wrote:

Their recovery from training is far better than everyone else.

I believe he is speaking about elite runners in general.

Indeed, a hallmark of being able to train at a high enough level to break 13:00 for 5,000m is the ABILITY TO RECOVER FROM TRAINING.

After any training session you are weaker. This is basic; you break down muscle fibers and the body compensates to make you stronger. If you require a long time to recover from just one hard workout, or if you break down, you cannot train hard (and well).

An elite, most times, can string together consistent hard workouts intelligently without breaking down.

Some Americans, especially, have been injury prone (Broe, Goucher, Ritzenhein, three of the best). This is a problem on the world level.

We do not have as many very good athletes as Kenya (we have many good POTENTIAL sub-13 5K runners, but not enough developed as in Kenya) so if we lose one it hurts.

In Kenya, yesterday's star can fade away and another will replace him. Not so in America, yet.

Is this thread ever going to end? Good stuff from Senor Canova but >1000 posts?

jsx wrote:

racer1 you seem to have a lot of knowlege and you proably coach sprinters but not sure you have correct distance knowledge.

How so? What about the above is unsound distance running approach?

A distance runner, to a small degree, needs to TRAIN LIKE A SPRINTER. Below is what I remember to be the energy contributions of races from 100m-marathon:

100m- 100% anaerobic/0% aerobic

200m- 95% anaerobic/5% aerobic

400m- 90% anaerobic/10% aerobic

800m- 60-75% anaerobic/25-40% aerobic

1500m/Mile- 50% anaerobic/50% aerobic

3,000m- 60% aerobic/40% anaerobic

5,000m- 80% aerobic/20% anaerobic

10,000m- 96% aerobic/4% anaerobic

Marathon- 99% aerobic/1% anaerobic (Kellogg says elites can mete out a tiny oxygen deficit in the last 4-6 miles)

So, if you are running 800m-5000m, between 20-75% of your race is dependent on anaerobically generated energy. This is different, of course, then speed, but the best athletes are able to, for all intents and purposes, make VERY FAST PACES turn into predominantly AEROBIC efforts.

How is this done? Of course, primarily from the normal training associated with aerobic development; long runs, time spent at critical aerobic speeds (lactate threshold velocity, velocity at VO2 max, tlimVO2 max, every other term Veronique Billat uses for VO2 max, the different speeds and paces Jack Daniels uses, etc.).

But the rest is speed development. Renato said it himself; a faster athlete has a bigger margin to run fast.

If Bekele can run about 11.5 in the 100 (based of 4 straight 12.5 100's for a 50 400), he has a bigger margin than Kennedy who can run 12 for 100 (maybe, based off 4 straight 13's).

For Bekele, running 50 consecutive 15 second 100m is

11.5/15= 76.7% top speed

For Kennedy:

12/15= 80% top speed.

A big, big difference again.

At this level, tiny increments and percentage differences are HUGE.

Bekele at 15 seconds per 100 is MUCH more relaxed and steady that Kennedy. He has developed his aerobic endurance to such an extent that he can hold a pace slowing up only a little from his best 400 for much longer distances.

Using the above times, with Bekele 0.50 seconds faster in a 100m hypothetical race against Kennedy, the difference becomes at 5000m:

50 100m segments * (0.50 seconds/100m segment)=

25 seconds

That is, Kennedy should lose 25 seconds to Bekele over 5,000m.

Of course, he loses only 20.86 (12:58.21 vs. 12:37.35) because of his superior speed.

But had he been only slightly faster, he would have seen enormous gains.

I just watched recently his American Record run in Zurich 1996.

Passing through 3,000 in 7:44, he was dying. 62 second pace was very, very FAST for him even from a biomechanical standpoint. He was gutting it out, and the pace was really a struggle. I say, at least for that race, he wrung everything out of himself with incredible pain tolerance.

Komen, on the other hand, was a style of contrast. HE tossed in a 58 second lap from 3000 to 3400. He was always relaxed and always looked like he could shift gears. He had better basic speed, so he could choose to shift speeds if he wanted. Kennedy could not move his legs much faster.

That is the difference at the top level.