Why dont we build speed before establish a base??

+1 what would happen? Can someone please chime in thanks

How many young soccer players ((sprint, jog, walk) repeatedly per week) breakout as good distance runners? Plenty.

Why just get slow (LSD)? Endurance & speed are not mutually exclusive. Increase endurance (duration, volume) while maintaining speed. Cramming speed work into the end of a season invites injury & over-training.

georgiakerrrrr wrote:

Let's say if I need to break 32 in the 10k, I need to be able to run at least 2minutes flat in the 800m.

Probably 2:15 would be fast enough, and 2:10 would be plenty fast enough.

But focusing on 800m to get ready for 10k would be a mistake, as the training is entirely different.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Why do you need a ‘base’? blah blah

Because no good distance runner wants to be 5'5 inches tall and weigh 200 pounds.

This is a really dumb thread.

Earth to OP: the 10k is not 90% aerobic, For all except elites it is more like 95% aerobic. Many people like doing speed work/weights and that's OK, but make no mistake they will make ZERO difference to your 10k time verses steady miles. Repeat after me...ZERO. They will not improve your 'sprint' finish (like that matters to a 32 min guy) or give you the 'strength' to handle a long finishing burst.

The ONLY value of speed work/ weights is to break the monotony of miles, and, as pointed out, they greatly increase your chances for injury. For 10 and up, Miles are the only thing that matter. More = better. It's not hard to understand.

I spent most of a whole year just getting in as any miles as I could. That does make you slower. The following year I targeted getting my speed back for one mile to 5k races. That took me about 10 weeks. As the summer progressed, I used that speed and my aerobic fitness from the previous year to gradually increase the distance I was racing to 10k and half marathon.

I ran the same 5k both years on Labor Day. The second year I ran 80 seconds faster!!

Base first.

Speed second.

Speed endurance third.

What is base though? How would you measure it?

Magness(and probably others before him) writes about a multifaceted base. It consists of both a focus on aerobic development and pure speed development, as well as heavy lifting. Long runs and threshold training as well as hill sprints and flat sprints. I find it works well with my athletes.

People in this thread need to understand that theory isn't the main basis for a good training method. The body is to complicated for that. We know some training methods are good when they work in practise. Theoretising can explain why they are good, but not if they are good.

To op: There are several explanations to why more speedwork at the end of the cycle works better. One is that a better base will improve your ability to recover both between training sesions and betwen repetitions, allowing better speed training. An other is that speed takes shorter time to improve, so it is not necessary to train far away from competition. But todays elites ussualy keep in touch with their speed year round, and make sure they never lose to much.

If you can run sub12 and sub50 before being able to run sub32 then the 10k is most likely to way to long for you (or your training is not correct for long or even middle distance). I ran sub 32 when i was barely able to run sub60, and def not sub2 ( but only a few seconds slower).

I've broken 32 but never 2. Have a feeling I could break 2 in an open 800, but why bother. You absolutely don't need to break 2 to break 32. OP your problem is you are not specializing enough. I don't go 15, oh I prob could have run under 31 if this was a 10k instead. I go 15, alright I'm 7 seconds off my pr. What workouts can I do between now and my next race.

I keep track off prs from 3000-marathon. Thats it. I'll write down workout times to compare to previous seasons or weeks, but they are all on effort. I don't need to shoot for some special time because somebody decided denominations of 60 had a special meaning.

Now with this understood, you absolutely should do speed during base, its not one or the other. The speed you do during base should absolutely be enduranced based though.

Video : Bobby Kersee Training Philosophy

Bobby Kersee is now one of the premier sprints and hurdles coaches in the world. At the 2012 London Olympics, he coached Allyson Felix to three gold medals (200m, 4×100, 4×400) as she became the first U.S. women’s track & field athlete to win three golds since Florence Griffith-Joyner at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Kersee also coached Dawn Harper to a silver medal in London and a gold medal in Beijing (2008) in the 100m hurdles. In addition, he has coached Olympic gold medalists Jackie Joyner-Kersee (his wife), Gail Devers, Florence Griffith-Joyner, Shawn Crawford, Joanna Hayes, Kerron Clement, Michelle Perry, among others.

https://www.runnerprogram.com/product/video-bobby-kersee-training-philosophy/

Running high base volume to train for a 10k does DIDDLY to improve your "aerobic" system. That was bro science already decades ago. You don't stress any of your energy systems with slow running. You stress your cardiovascular system a bit, and your musculoskeletal system, but at no point are you using lots of oxygen, and you won't get adaptations to use a lot.

Training for 800 meters will get those adaptations, because low muscular pH allows you to use much more oxygen, not to mention applying much more force by running fast instead of slow. But that doesn't translate to 10k because it's not needed there, unless you are planning to turn the screws with 800 to go and devastate your opponents. What you should do is improve your efficiency at speed so you can run faster and faster at the same level of energy output. The elites who click off 67's in a 10,000 aren't exerting a lot of force or using a lot of oxygen, rather they are light as birds and have supremely perfect form.

I think "base" training is traditional because training methods developed in the high latitudes of the world, where winter makes it hard to do much else in any case.

It depends on what you're training for. If you're actually training for 10k, then building on speed wont do much since 95% of the race will lean on your aerobic engine.

The best advice I can offer is "dont try to reinvent the wheel". There is literature out there. People have tried everything and there is research and evidence and examples for whatever training you want to try. Just read and do a little research first. Your results will be far better for it.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Running high base volume to train for a 10k does DIDDLY to improve your "aerobic" system.

Don't comment ever again. You are so wrong its scary.

This entire thread shows how bad LRC is becoming.

10 years ago there would have been proper replies back up with science, evidence and research.

Now it's people commenting with purely anecdotal evidence, hearsay, or theories on why they think something should happen because it just seems like it should be that way when they have no sports science background.

If the boards weren't filled with non-running related tabloid news stories and racist/sexist/homphobic threads then maybe the quality posters from 10 years ago wouldn't have left, and OP could get a proper answer.

dirk savagewood wrote:

This is a really dumb thread.

Earth to OP: the 10k is not 90% aerobic, For all except elites it is more like 95% aerobic. Many people like doing speed work/weights and that's OK, but make no mistake they will make ZERO difference to your 10k time verses steady miles. Repeat after me...ZERO. They will not improve your 'sprint' finish (like that matters to a 32 min guy) or give you the 'strength' to handle a long finishing burst.

The ONLY value of speed work/ weights is to break the monotony of miles, and, as pointed out, they greatly increase your chances for injury. For 10 and up, Miles are the only thing that matter. More = better. It's not hard to understand.

For some reason people want to get better at running but then want to look for any reason to do something other than run. Newbies>experienced runners will come up with all kinds of contrived ideas of doing X (jump rope, swimming, biking, lifting light, lifting heavy, calisthenics, body weight excersizes, spin class, yoga...) in order to avoid doing the one thing that will make them a better runner- run.

People see these Olympic runners doing weights and think that's the big key, but what they are seeing is just a tiny tiny amount of the work that these athletes are doing relative to how much they run. Spending all this time doing ancillary stuff is just majoring in the minors.

Run short hill reps

Run long hill reps

Run tempo runs

Run intervals

Run repeats

Run long runs

Run fast finish long runs

Run progression runs

Run wave tempos

Run cruise intervals

Run strides

Run

Which factor is more limiting on a growth chart. In other words, what can be more developed, speed or endurance? Speed can be developed to a point and then genetics plays a part in how fast you are going to be able to sprint. To an extent, so is endurance, well, I would say more, VO2max has a genetic limit. It can be trained slightly to improvement, however the biggest gains are made in the area of the amount of time that you can run at a high percentage of your VO2max. Now, some will say, well then why can I just train to be more efficient at my top end speed by running for a long period of time at 80 percent of my 100 speed. It's true that you can improve in that area and it will help with your overall efficiency, however you are still riding with an energy system that has a limited supply and will only last so long. With Aerobic Glycolytic systems, which the 10k mostly utilizes, the window is much large for that supply of energy. Why would I train extensively with speed which is limited to under 10 seconds when my race is 30 minutes? I think there is a place for the sprint to work on efficiency in the last 100 meters of a 10k....but that's 10-15 seconds, which is .8 percent of a 10k. If we are only talking about bio-mechanic efficiency. Take some time to read the research on IAAF that studied that in all events at last years world championships. Interesting stuff. With all of that being said, I think it's important to train all the systems utilized in a race at all times throughout the year at varying percentages, but for a 10k, a good progression run of 5-8 miles at your Aerobic Threshold, YEAR ROUND has been critical in my 20 years of coaching that event.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Why do you need a ‘base’? I know we are slaves to linear periodization because of Lydiard, but why not a non-linear periodization model?

Maybe something like this:

1 week high miles

1 week tempo/hard aerobic focused

1 week long interval focused

1 week short speed interval focused

Repeat all year. Each week progresses differently based on the focus of that week.

For a race week at 3 days out you do a short workout at that goal race pace. Nothing too fatiguing, but again based on that week’s race goal.

It’s an idea.

Alan

Have you ever used this method with your athletes? I ask because I have never thought about training like this and am intrigued by it.

The same thing was happening 10 years ago, buddy. I assume Paolo knows how to find you in Kona?

ezby wrote:

This entire thread shows how bad LRC is becoming.

10 years ago there would have been proper replies back up with science, evidence and research.

Now it's people commenting with purely anecdotal evidence, hearsay, or theories on why they think something should happen because it just seems like it should be that way when they have no sports science background.

If the boards weren't filled with non-running related tabloid news stories and racist/sexist/homphobic threads then maybe the quality posters from 10 years ago wouldn't have left, and OP could get a proper answer.