Ryan Hall eliminated JUNK MILEAGE

Typically you have an approach like

1. base

2. speed

3. strength

4. taper

But what I noticed is that you can get away without a big base and big mileage if (and only if) you have a lot of lifetime (or past 5 years) mileage.

I once ran a HM under 1:20 with basically less than 20mpw, consisting of 2-3 hard workouts per week. Tempo, intervals, long run. No junk miles at all.

I was sore for 10 days afterwards, but it worked.

Mileage isn't everything.

Has there been any good research on "return to form?"

I get the sense anecdotally that there is certainly a residual effect from lifetime miles, but have never seen any research on how long that lasts or by what mechanism it is effected.

I wonder whether the effect is either (1) a residual base that the faster work with less miles capitalizes on, or (2) a residual ability to reconstitute an aerobic base quickly, with less miles than it took to get you their in the first place.

Hall's career was finished the day he left Canova. Maybe he'll run 2:05 but he will never win a major and never win a world or olympic medal.

I basically audited my training and eliminated a lot of junk mileage that wasn’t really helping me and leading to injuries.

Ryan doesn't mention God telling him to do this.

Does this mean Ryan isn't listening to God's coaching advice?

Or perhaps, that Ryan is self-coaching, thus making himself God?

Ryan Hall is God.

QED.

Fast Runner Dude wrote:

Keep in mind, this is what Lagat has been doing throughout much of his career.

I thought Lagat did recovery runs and warmup mileage but didn't log it.

NJ Possible wrote:

I thought Lagat did recovery runs and warmup mileage but didn't log it.

Lagat does about 40mpw. I call that very low mileage.

I think you've nailed it. Hall has years and years of big miles behind him and I don't think he'd have been as fast as he has without those miles. But after a while you don't need as much mileage as you once did and may be better off on less.

After about six years at 100-150 weeks I had almost two years with no PRs and dropped to 75-90. I got one last stretch of PRs from that. If you followed Ron Hill's career, you saw that he did 120-130 mile weeks when he was prepping for marathons from the mid 60s to mid 70s. Then he dropped his average to around 65 per week with high stretches of 90 or so and ran some of his better times, though he never got under 2:12 then.

Ralphy wrote:

NJ Possible wrote:

I thought Lagat did recovery runs and warmup mileage but didn't log it.

Lagat does about 40mpw. I call that very low mileage.

No

When he was training for the 1500 in the early 2000s he was in the 50s.

Now he is in the 70s as a 5k guy.

He also tested positive for epo.

This is an application of Canova's approach. As the runner moves through the general and special phases, the quality of the primary workouts increase and the recovery period becomes longer in between these quality workouts. Canova recognizes that aerobic system maxes out its adaptations after about 10 years of consistent aerobic development, therefore a decrease in the volume of the aerobic development miles is permissible (only as much aerobic work as needed to to restore and maintain aerobic fitness is needed). This seems to differ from Farah in the NOP. It seems as if Salazar is trying to extend Mo's aerobic development in conjunction with his recovery days by increasing the quality of those miles. Either a) AlSal thinks Mo needs more aerobic development...possibly a first step in making the jump to marathon or b) disagrees with Canova on this point. As far as a taper is concerned, both Lagat and Canova deviate from the traditional Lydiard taper for slightly different reasons (at least publicly stated reasons). An older Flotrack video interview from Lagat pointed out that he believes that if one is getting adequate recovery during the training season, no substantial decrease in volume or intensity is needed before a major race. Canova is a big believer in the "what is not trained (progressively) is not available to use." In other words, if an adequate stimulus to trigger the super compensation response is not applied right up until the goal race, then one will compete with a lower level of fitness. Both of these approaches seem to reject the notion of accumulated fatigue.

I think this is a wise move by Hall in entering a new phase of a career, a phase Meb seems to have negotiated well.

Now let the trashing of my post commence.

Only a person that believes in God is capable of believing in Junk Miles.

Neither exist.

We'll see how well that works for him. I will be surprised if he runs sub 2:06.

Speed then Strength?

What? That should not be common.

Fast Runner Dude wrote:

Keep in mind, this is what Lagat has been doing throughout much of his career.

Keep in mind, Lagat would run a CRAP marathon on his training.

POST OF THREAD

Dennis Reynolds 2.0 wrote:

HM Runnr wrote:

Mileage isn't everything.

No sh*t sherlock. But I wouldn't be using a pathetic 1:19 half to justify not running high mileage.

Great. Now he just needs to eliminate junk science (a.k.a. religion).

a little curious wrote:

Only a person that believes in God is capable of believing in Junk Miles.

Neither exist.

So I go out and run a hard interval session on Tuesday...

Then to get more mileage I run 20 on Wednesday...

Then I attempt an interval session on Thursday that is prescribed at 5:00 pace. Yet I fail to hit the goal pace because I'm too fatigued.

Wednesday was junk. Thursday was junk. "Junk' is mileage that hurts performance. I can run 200 miles a week, but will that make me faster? No.

llort wrote:

I can run 200 miles a week, but will that make me faster? No.

What kind of idiotic statement is that? If you can recover from 200mpw then it WILL make you faster.

NJ Possible wrote:

Fast Runner Dude wrote:

Keep in mind, this is what Lagat has been doing throughout much of his career.

I thought Lagat did recovery runs and warmup mileage but didn't log it.

This is what everyone says about successful low mileage runners, generally without any proof. It's almost like discussing religion. Lagat has explicitly talked about his training, which used to be lower mileage and now goes up to 70-80 mpw (keep in mind this is mostly singles, with 1 day off per week). If you can find any instance of him saying he didn't log some mileage, please share.

he never counted warmup/cooldown. add 30mpw.

the epo test was flawed because it wasn't developed properly at the time. Today he would have tested negative.

Innocent in other words.