MariusBakken wrote:
I'll throw in a few thoughts here :
I did quite a bit of post-race workouts myself. Not as hard as what is described for Rupp, but hard/fast enough, especially when I was in sub 13:10 5 k shape.
In my opinion it all comes down to muscular stress. In medical school I did my masters thesis on muscle tone and got to study it further. The limiting factor in terms of recovery, especially in running, seems to be muscular. If you look at for example cross country skiing / cycling, they can be much longer, much more intense sessions because the muscular component is stressed less (no impact from gravity) So the cardiovascular/metabolic stress does not seems to be a real a limiting factor. However, the way muscles work - and especially how muscle tone varies with type work/impact and time is a HUGE factor in all of this.
What I found out was the clustering hard work within hours made it possible to train much harder, without eating too much into recovery. So I would often double up very hard training sessions with only a few hours in between - or add workouts right after races, similar to what Rupp does. As long as three DAYS a weeks were just easy running, I could do very hard doubles the hard days. And it worked better with fewer hours in between, than early morning + late afternoon.
I also suspect that the use of altitude 365 days a year (tents/houses + natural) that the Salazar group does, makes it possible for them to sustain their aerobic abilities better through all of this hard anaerobic type work - in a way other runners would probably get into more problems.
all the best,
Marius Bakken
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My hobby site these days :
http://www.marathontrainingschedule.com
Thanks for the input Marius, from someone who's actually "been there."