Estrada wkout from ESPN-Endurance article

Brenda Martinez, another Vigil athlete, has also made claims about some pretty ridiculous workouts. Check out her twitter, but she'll run some 5k/tempo stuff that is absolutely absurd, to the point where she is either wasting her best efforts in training (compared to her race results) or being mislead with her workout times.

I think you guys are forgetting just how good Estrada is... this guy will quickly become our best half-er

Hayduke wrote:

I could come back two days after that and run an 8-10 mile tempo run going under 4:40 pace comfortably. .)

Where's David Torrance to tell Diego he's doing his runs too fast???

Just a thought, no accusation. Bear with me.

Out of competition tests are significantly more rare than in-compeition. Dopers who have been caught report that it is easy to time your doses so that you are well clean by competition-test time. Dope in training, race clean.

Even more, Diego Estrada was not tested in 2014 by the USADA. He is not listed in the statistics:

http://www.usada.org/testing/results/athlete-test-history/

[that itself is a surprise, given is successes at the 20k, 12k and 5k champs]

Given his (and Martinez's) incredible training sessions, his "under-performance" may be due to cleaning up by race time; that he doped in training, significatnly enough for those incredible session, and then stopped as competition time approached. I don't know the biochemistry of EPO well enough to know how long a benefit tapers off without maintenance, (and I'm not going to let anyone hear tell me without some cited research) but it is worth considering...

Ron Clarke routinely did 10-12 mile training runs at 5:00 pace or better yet "only" ran a low 47:00 for the distance in competition. He never ran faster than 5:20 pace for the marathon. In a very watered down but similar way, I always found that whatever pace I was going to manage for long races needed to be one that I could do, and did do, in training most every day, e.g., when I could run 6:00 miles for a marathon most of my training was around 6:00 pace once I was warmed up. You can find examples of others from the old days who did that sort of thing.

If I had been capable of running 4:38 miles for a half marathon I probably would have had many 8-10 mile runs around 4:40 pace. I can understand why people are skeptical but I don't think it's unbelievable.

HRE wrote:

Ron Clarke routinely did 10-12 mile training runs at 5:00 pace or better yet "only" ran a low 47:00 for the distance in competition. He never ran faster than 5:20 pace for the marathon. In a very watered down but similar way, I always found that whatever pace I was going to manage for long races needed to be one that I could do, and did do, in training most every day, e.g., when I could run 6:00 miles for a marathon most of my training was around 6:00 pace once I was warmed up. You can find examples of others from the old days who did that sort of thing.

If I had been capable of running 4:38 miles for a half marathon I probably would have had many 8-10 mile runs around 4:40 pace. I can understand why people are skeptical but I don't think it's unbelievable.

The one workout isn't the discussion, it is the number of hard days, and their huge intensity, that is the discussion. 7xMile, 12x1K, 8-10M tempo.

"Oh c'mon" discusses this workout on the first page.

What many people aren't considering is how close these workouts are to his bulk mileage pace. If he does all of his mileage in the 5s, then repeats in the mid 4s are realistic. Basically he's doing 7xmile at 10k pace. That's tough, but clearly doable.

Uh, so he's running less mileage than Brenda Martinez (80 miles/week letsrun cover story), another Vigil athlete who is at least right now middle distance? This is strange.

A wise old man once told me "when you read about a runner doing incredible workouts with very little or no recovery between them, that's a red flag..."

Diepo Estrada wrote:

The one workout isn't the discussion, it is the number of hard days, and their huge intensity, that is the discussion. 7xMile, 12x1K, 8-10M tempo.

Sorry but I don't find these workouts to be extraordinary. Nor the way they are spaced out with two days rest between or what ever his microcycle and macrocycles are.

I don't what you guys are doing now but this was pretty typical stuff in the 70s - 80s.

It is interesting how many of you will buy in to Igloi's training but question this.

Vigil would never allow doping ever.