This phrase always seems to me like an overused cop-out, particularly for the stubborn holding an untenable position.Your position then, the one that we must agree to disagree, is that:1) the high school girl should be able to do, on a regular basis:4x2000, 2 min rest @ 5k pace6x1000, 2 min rest @ 3k paceand2) El Guerrouj workouts can be equally applied to national caliber athletes and high school junior girls, as if these are all apples to apples comparisons.I think the vast majority can agree that a disagreement exists. But these are not questions of religion, with non-falsifiable claims. To show that these are "do-able" for El Guerrouj, and therefore should be generally "do-able", it would be sufficient to provide more real world examples, to discoun that El Guerrouj should not be considered an exception, but rather an example that can be generalised.Can anyone give examples of high school girls doing "El Guerrouj" workouts, scaled for them?To see how they are different, we could consider the pace differences involved. For elite/seasoned male athletes, the absolute differences between 3K/5K/10K paces is much more narrow than for a HS-junior girl 5:18 miler.For example, in the case of Rupp, we might estimate:1600m at 5K pace is 4:091600m at 10K pace is 4:18or a difference of 9 seconds (2.25 secs/lap)While for our 5:18 miler HS-junior girl:1600m at 5K pace is 6:001600m at 10K pace is 6:18or a difference of 18 seconds (4.5 secs/lap) -- twice the difference of RuppScaling Rupp's 5K pace to the equivalent pace for our high school girl might arguably be 6:09 reps (her 8K pace), rather than 6:00.Note also that our girl runs 4K cross-country races at 6:10-6:20 pace, when she is feeling good. If her endurance were comparable to a Rupp or an El Guerrouj, this should be more like 5:54 for 1600m pace, yet it's 16-26 seconds slower, per 1600m, for a 4K race. Here is another strong indication that her endurance cannot be compared to El Guerrouj.Rather than targeting theoretical or actual 5K pace, I think the best metric to determine this girl's appropriate "not faster than" pace is her ability to maintain the requested pace for the 5th rep. Find that pace first, then work on getting it faster.
fan of US distance running wrote:
well, agree to disagree then