"The dopers have ruined training theory"

Bernard Lagat

- Trains once per day

- Takes one day off per week

- Takes 5 weeks off at the end of every year

- Mileage in the 50s when training for the 1500

- Mileage in the 70s now training for the 5000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/3078642.stm

Here's what I have from Kellogg on the issue. I seem to recall something more direct about how if you see ridiculous training schedules with tons of intensity, that's a red flag for a doping athlete (faster recovery = more able to handle high intensity work).

The Soviet system as it stood was quite intense; of course, many people suspected rampant drug use by the communist regime, which would better enable athletes to perform high-intensity work more frequently.

Someone posted some Horwill $h!+ and it was followed by a post saying "maybe if I was on EPO."

It is true that the overwhelming majority of athletes and coaches are completely, utterly clueless when it comes to training theory, but the dopers aren't responsible for misleading them—the dopers are misled themselves. The ones most responsible for the destruction of training theory are the teachers (aka coaches) who promote the mentality that whatever elite athletes do is correct, and that we should judge the validity of a training method by its use among elite athletes. This approach is a combination. Of logical fallacies—correlation does not imply causation and appeal to authority. Having read this board on a daily basis for over 10 years, it's clear to me that very few runners, even intelligent ones, know how to think logically about training. Few people even clarify their concepts by defining the words they use. Instead, all you losers in the running community do is copy famous athletes and regurgitate what you heard from other people like religious people who blindly accept whatever clergy tells them. "Oh Renatova Canova said X, therefore, it must be true! Hence you get led around by a bunch of charlatans like him and Alberto whose "success" is solely due to the quality of the stock they have access to. If you want to understand the basics of exercise and physical training, read the work of Arthur Jones, founder of Nautilus. He wrote about weight training, but his basic intellectual framework is universally applicable. You will not find a running coach whose insights compare to Jones'.

Or like having high school runners do some fast reps following an XC race because Alberto has his athletes do it!?

BLAST FROM THE PAST wrote:

Bernard Lagat

- Trains once per day

- Takes one day off per week

- Takes 5 weeks off at the end of every year

- Mileage in the 50s when training for the 1500

- Mileage in the 70s now training for the 5000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/3078642.stm

False positive.

Bernard Lagat's regimen lends itself less to the "doping distorts training philosphies" and more toward the "smart, quality training leads to longevity" philosophy.

Not even gonna touch the wall of garbage above.

^^That is a splendid example of a bad idea that elite athletes with freakish recovery ability can get away with (although it is unlikely that they benefit from it) that will cause outright harm to the average runner.

Cess wrote:

BLAST FROM THE PAST wrote:

Bernard Lagat

- Trains once per day

- Takes one day off per week

- Takes 5 weeks off at the end of every year

- Mileage in the 50s when training for the 1500

- Mileage in the 70s now training for the 5000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/3078642.stm

False positive.

Bernard Lagat's regimen lends itself less to the "doping distorts training philosphies" and more toward the "smart, quality training leads to longevity" philosophy.

Not even gonna touch the wall of garbage above.

Cess wrote:

BLAST FROM THE PAST wrote:

Bernard Lagat

- Trains once per day

- Takes one day off per week

- Takes 5 weeks off at the end of every year

- Mileage in the 50s when training for the 1500

- Mileage in the 70s now training for the 5000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/3078642.stm

False positive.

Bernard Lagat's regimen lends itself less to the "doping distorts training philosphies" and more toward the "smart, quality training leads to longevity" philosophy.

Not even gonna touch the wall of garbage above.

I have to agree here. Smart quality training leads to longevity, especially on the track. As you get up to the marathon it gets tricky, you need a lot of mileage to be a good marathoner. But you can't do absurd intensity cuz it leads to injuries. I think 2 hard sessions a week and a long run is ideal for high mileage marathon training.

Overall, if you want to run 1500-5k, train like Lagat. If you want to train for marathon, run twice a day 5-6 days a week and a long run day and do 100+ mpw with 2 weekly workouts.

Ha, ha. Arthur Jones. He was right up there with WC Fields selling his "cacti juice". Guy doctored up his studies (paid Ellington Darden for those studies) to support his weight training equipment. Please move on.

Speaking of which, here is a post from Renato about Said Aouita's training, who he says El Guerrouj trained similarly to:

What do we know about Aouita now?

El G's slower rabbits were busted for drugs, along with a slew of other moroccan middle distance runners, but I'm sure Hicham was clean.

Exactly. I don't know why people think that Lagat's training (which is pretty standard stuff for a 1500-5k runner with good speed) is outlandish. Training easy is not a big sign of doping -- training hard is. A la Lance's "hours on the bike".

What makes me suspicious is when guys are somehow able to do extremely tough interval work 4-5 days a week and race at top fitness extremely frequently.

to begin with, Kellogg (if he actually said this) is just plain lost.

mega-miles was never the best approach to distance training and doping was in fact rampant when mega-mileage was still in style.

(ask Hermens, Bedford and Salazar)

truth is eventually you have to race somebody with speed and

speed has taken over the distances. you can't win anything

(not even in the marathon) without 50 sec 400m speed at least and something close to 5' capability over 2000m.

the mere fact that some people haven't read any exercise physiology

since 1965 does not excuse the obvious flaw in the reasoning that one mile is as just good as any other and more miles are necessarily better.

believe it or not, a 6' mile is generally worth more than a 7' mile. similarly, a 5' mile is worth much more than a 6' mile.

adaptations are a function intensity and duration and a host of other variables as well. fast people will as a rule tend to train fast.

dsrunner wrote:

(ask Hermens, Bedford and Salazar)

You're accusing Bedford of doping?

dsrunner wrote:

truth is eventually you have to race somebody with speed and

speed has taken over the distances. you can't win anything

(not even in the marathon) without 50 sec 400m speed

Uhh...no.

Top marathoners have no where near 50 second 400m speed.

Most top 10,000m / 5000m runners don't have 50 second 400m speed. 50 low, sure, i.e., 51-52 seconds.

The big difference among one doped athlete and another (of same level) not using any help, is in the recovery.

The Soviet system (or the system of East Germany) was able to allow athletes to train with 3-4 quality sessions per week, and this is not possible without doping.

But this happened because, years ago, there were "myths" about how much you can earn in training, and how much you can lose if you don't do, completely out of the reality.

For example, in Lydiard's period somebody decided that one day without running could cost a decrease of the aerobic capacity. This is absolutely not true. Now we look with great interest in the combination hard work - recovery, in order to use the overcompensation, that is the real key of any improvement, in any event, and in any period.

The fact is the great methodologists had their researches looking essentially at the development of strength, in all its expressions. For that reasons Matveyev and Zachorskiy started to speak about "periodization", and Bondarchuk asked to create the "Winter Championships" for throwers, in order to have frequent modulations between basic trainings and technical training, having the goal of a final technical performance.

But this idea is not correct when we look at endurance. In this type of events, technique has little space, apart at the beginning of the activity for every athlete. The higher percentage of improvement comes from the Aerobic improvement, specifically from the increase of Aerobic Power. This depends on physiological changes training can produce in the body of the athletes, and, for doing a training able to stimulate both extension and intensity, we need FIRST to change the mind of the athletes, making normal (in their mind) level of training before considered out of the personal possibilities.

So, coming back to the original argument, doping allowed athletes to have high intensity training with little recovery, which without doping is not possible to do.

But the real question is : in athletics, to use very frequent training sessions of high intensity is the best and only way for producing top results, or is it possible to reach the same results (may be also better) in different way ? We don't have, such as in cyclism, competitions where recovery is a fundamental factor (Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, Vuelta de Espana). So, are we sure that to train at max intensity with high frequency is the best way for top performances ?

I doubt it is. For example, I alternate periods with more hard training (in any case based on a high volume of aerobic training at middle-high intensity) with periods with more "basic" training, for trying to have right balance during one season between aerobic power (which is the real key of endurance) and higher intensity, going only sometimes in the lactic area, for short periods (may be 2 sessions) before going back to a massive aerobic training in order to recruit nervous and physical energies.

It's of sure possible to have very tough training without any doping, and to reach top results in this way.

Many continue to speak about the fact African use doping.

This is absolutely not true : some of them used, but are ALL weak athletes (especially MENTALLY weak), cheated by some criminal doctor confident in their poor education and their need of finding money for surviving.

But you don't think that, if many of the best sprinters (from US and Jamaica) were positive, a lot of Russian, a lot of Maroccan, some Irish, a lot of Turky, but NEVER some Ethiopian or Kenyan (Kisorio apart), is because they are clean, and in any case able to stay at the top of the world (also beating the EVENTUALLY doped from their same Country) only thanks their talent and their training ?

There are many studies about effect of EPO : one of them was Yesterday on this website.

I want to explain that ALL THESE STUDIES HAVE NOTHING OF SCIENTIFIC when we look at top athletes. Everybody knows EPO can help the transportation of Oxygen. This transportation of Oxygen can help athletes in better training, and training is what can change our engine.

But every study is absolutely generical when the researchers speak about "training".

In the case of Yesterday, there were 4 groups : one without EPO and training, one without EPO with training, one with EPO without training, one with EPO and training.

What does training mean ? Running 30' easy is training for somebody sedentary till the previous day, is like sleeping for a real athlete. Which level of training there is in these researches ? Which level of athletes is under control ? I remember that, some year ago, there was a research about Marathon runners, considering in the Group of High Level athletes running between 2:20 and 2:50.

If this can be statistical valid in a Marathon like NY (if you want to consider "athletes" all the participants, also who finishes in 7 hours), because this involves the top 300 athletes in a total number of 45,000 (so is the 0,66% of runners), under a physiological point of view is a complete BS, when in athletics we consider two different levels of athletes a difference of 2:00 (for example, 2:05 with 2:07).

The reality is that there are many studies on the effect of doping for normal people and/or athletes of medium level, but no studies about the effect on top athletes. And, what is worse, there are NO STUDIES ABOUT THE EFFECT OF TRAINING.

Nobody can speak about the effects of doping, without knowing the REAL effects of a top training plan on the best athletes. It's time to study what we go to change with modern training for endurance in the physiology of the athletes. But, of course, this level of training (both as volume and quality, especially THE VOLUME OF QUALITY) can be applied to top athletes only, athletes of top quality, but also with organization of their life looking essentially at the best athletics results.

At the end, we can synthesize the key of training without doping (for endurance events) in this simple rule :

MORE EXTENSION IN QUALITY

MORE RECOVERY

NEVER TO LOSE WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE

Renato Canova wrote:

I alternate periods with more hard training (in any case based on a high volume of aerobic training at middle-high intensity) with periods with more "basic" training,

I get it, sort of, like that Lydiard periodization stuff.

Funny. I noticed that too and a couple of other instances in there.

Also, there is the statement about aerobic development being most important.

Ok.

Renato, where's the limit? You said (if I recall correctly) that we aren't so far from 2:02, but 2:00 is out of the question - for the next years at least-.

So, how THE TRAINING could allow and athlete to do those 2 hours flat? More mileage without injuries? More quality in 150 miles weeks? Better basic 10k speed?

It's possible for athletes with 58:xx PB in the half marathon?

How I said before, the key of improvement is to raise the VOLUME OF INTENSITY, and this goes together with the need to open the recovery.

I think we are very far from the metabolic limits. I see athletes running, after 3 years of continuous and intense specific training, without too much fatigue, in training, 30 km in altitude in 1:33, and 40 in 2:08 or less. Only one year before, they fatigued very much more for running in 1:36 or 2:13.

This because, with the metabolic changes in their body, THEIR INTERNAL LOAD REMAINS THE SAME running faster, and this the real effect of training.

The final goal of every training is to give stimuli for the body. For the specialisms of endurance, we can create stimuli in two direction : EXTENSION and INTENSITY.

This means that, for an athlete never running longer than 1 hr in his training, the first time he goes running 1:30 (also slowly) this is something new, therefore is a STIMULUS. But, after some time, there is no more stimulus, and he has to run 2 hr, and then 2:15', and then 2:30' at the same speed. But, of course, that speed is not the speed of the competition, that is the SPECIFIC part of training.

We have limits in extension, the continue attempt to increase extension is not effective, after some distance.

For example, for Marathon runners we have two different kinds of long run : DURATION and DISTANCE.

Duration (as the word explains) is connected with the duration of the run, and has the task to build the ability of the body to stay in action long time (muscles, tendons, jointures and... mind), but is useless under the point of view of metabolic sources of energy (and this is the big difference between old and new methods).

Distance is connected with the speed of the race. We start, for example, with 20 km at Marathon Pace (MP), and after we move to 25, 28, 30, till 35. A full Marathon 3'-4' slower than the final goal, run 4-5 weeks before the main Marathon, can be considered the final DISTANCE TRAINING, and there is nothing strange in this. This practice was usual 30-40 years ago, then with the specialization there was the idea that every Marathon needed a very long recovery because was a "killer event".

This is not true : Marathon needs long recovery under the nervous point of view, because the best athletes have total mental concentration for a long period of time, and after the main competition, which they prepared, mentally and physically, for 4-5 months, they are nervously empty.

But, if there is some motivation for running few weeks later, they can recover very well. Moses Mosop destroyed the WR on track of 30 km (this is one of the most underrated WR, but technically is something of very high level) exactly 44 days after running 2:03:06 in Boston, and didn't have any problem about recovery, because the record attempt was already in his plan BEFORE Boston.

So, where are the limits ? Are in the structure of the body, and in the mind.

The volume of kms makes knees more fragile, tendons painful, creates problems in the athletes' feet and reduces the muscle reactivity. About the mind, it's difficult for eerybody to maintain the same level of mental concentration for years, when you are no more as hungry as at the beginning, having already achieved money and glory.

If we could be able to find some superman able to maintain the max concentration and focus in training for 10 years, with the talent that already some of the best African have, and with a total advanced control about the recovery for the body structures (such as seems can work in the Group of Alberto in Portland), also 2 hours are not impossible.

With the right methodology, we can run a Marathon, in perfect conditions, at 96% of the speed of HM. This means we need to have an athlete able running 57'30" for HM, with all what I said above, for running under 2 hours. Frankly, I don't see at the moment any athlete with this type of possibility.

Thanks renato.

Your training ideas are extremely interesting and helpful.