Lets say a pretty good high-school/college runner runs 6 minute pace for all his runs; long runs, tempos, "easy" days, and other runs of that sort. What would happen? Would he improve? Burn out? Anyone have personal experience? Discuss. Does 6 minute pace work?
6minutepaceflat wrote:
Lets say a pretty good high-school/college runner runs 6 minute pace for all his runs; long runs, tempos, "easy" days, and other runs of that sort. What would happen? Would he improve? Burn out? Anyone have personal experience? Discuss. Does 6 minute pace work?
You'd need to get down to that pace first
Let's assume the runner is capable of 6 minute pace on all runs
I think we've all known this guy at one point. Heck, could have even been one ourselves.
They can be decent (16:30 5k) but never the fastest guy on the squad.
6minutepaceflat wrote:
Let's assume the runner is capable of 6 minute pace on all runs
Technically any runner that can achieve a 6 min/mile pace can do this, now it's just a discussion of how many 6 min miles you can manage.
6minutepaceflat wrote:
Let's assume the runner is capable of 6 minute pace on all runs
Yes Jeremy Fisico did that the summer before he ran 8:30 for High School ( Grade 13 Canada )
" Owns a personal record of 8:30.70 in the 3k, which he ran during the 2005 indoor season ... According to Dyestat High School Rankings, marking the best time by a high school athlete in Canada and the United States "
fred wrote:
6minutepaceflat wrote:Let's assume the runner is capable of 6 minute pace on all runs
Yes Jeremy Fisico did that the summer before he ran 8:30 for High School ( Grade 13 Canada )
" Owns a personal record of 8:30.70 in the 3k, which he ran during the 2005 indoor season ... According to Dyestat High School Rankings, marking the best time by a high school athlete in Canada and the United States "
When he went to Wake Forest the training did not replicate what he previous did, and he didn't progress.
for most runners it would be not that many. It's simply a bad idea to make this a goal. There is no point to it. At least as far as good training plans go.
I basically did this for a year when I was a freshman in HS. I had dropped from about 21:00+ to 18:45 during XC that fall and kind of caught the bug, then spent the winter running the exact same 2mi loop by my HS pretty much every single day after school (after doing about 1 hr of mostly upper body lifting with my buddies on the football team). Just would hammer it, as fast as I could, five days a week, with no other training. Most days probably ran 6 min pace or a bit faster. That spring, I ran 4:40 in the 1600 and was the only freshman to make the varsity team. 16:06 the next fall during XC. For obvious reasons, I highly recommend this training philosophy.
I have had quite a few runners that have one pace. It's enough to drive a coach nuts however they were extremely good runners to a point. to answer your question yes you could become a good runner but unless you can pick up the pace during races you will not be great.
I will just leave this right here:
Masters legend Norm Green trained this way:
4:40 is not very good but that 16:06 puts how it worked into perspective. Good intake
This is how I trained my freshman year in college. I mean I did the prescribed workouts but pretty much all other miles were at about six minute pace. I could handle 50, someone's 60 miles of this but no more. I basically did this for 9 months setting PRs of 4:05 for 1500m, 15:50 for 5k and 26:30 for 8k cross all at age 19 (800m PR of 2:00 didn't improve from HS. I also ran 4:35 for 1600m in HS). Then the wheels came off and a string of overuse injuries dogged me for the rest of college. I never reached any of these times again. Take my advise: don't train this way.
If you can run 50 to 70 miles a week at 6:00 pace, you should be able to run 5 minute pace for 5k. If you race every week for a 2 month season and do 6 minute runs the rest of the week, you will run pretty much the same times as doing a bunch of different workouts. The key is that you do have to run fast periodically.
When Rod Dehaven was training for the Olympic marathon, he did 2 workouts a week and the other 11 runs were at 6 minute pace.
Very smart intake. I like it. The lowest for any pace run 6:00 then drop it down sometimes for key workouts once or twice a week
I had a buddy that did 10 @ 5:30 to 5:55 ever day.
Steve Jones did 95 a week at 5?
Marc Nenow ran steady state to the U.S. 10k road record.
Etc.
Runner's World
Marc Nenow:
"MN: Training-wise, I ran 140 miles a week all the time — sometimes more. Back then it was kind of a prerequisite if you wanted to be good you had to run a lot of miles. And it’s not just how many miles you run, it’s how you run them, and I ran a lot of them hard. I probably wasn’t sharpening very well. I wasn’t good at adding in the track work and the sharpening work. That was probably my shortcoming. I really believed in the high-mileage and hard mileage. But after our era, you started hearing coaches and athletes talking about running 80 miles a week. And my thought about that was that just wasn’t maximizing the machine. I think at some point, maybe people were trying to finesse things away from high mileage, but now you’re hearing more people talk about being on high-mileage programs again."
I tried this going into my sophomore year of high school. I went from being a 17:38 freshman to 17:58 and ended the season in the high 18's 0/10 would not recommend.
Outtamind outtasight wrote:
I think we've all known this guy at one point. Heck, could have even been one ourselves.
They can be decent (16:30 5k) but never the fastest guy on the squad.
I would take 16:30 any day.
I run 30-40 mpw with most of it at 8 minute miles. If I'm not struggling with injury I include one run of 4-5 miles at 6:30 and one workout. I can do 18:15 if I'm lucky, whilst others will do that or faster off 15 mpw of 6:30-7 pace runs.
I'm tired of sucking and thinking of doing a lot more 6 minute mile runs.