Tinman CV pace/ int. muslce fiber question.

It's not about does vs doesn't- all paces train all muscle fiber types. As Tinman says, there's not such thing as different energy systems. It's all ATP hydrolysis.

CV pace is about efficiency. What pace allows you to work at a moderate effort for a long amount of time? That happens to be CV pace. CV seems to be a "sweet spot" that moderately stresses the body without pushing you into exhaustion or overtraining.

That's a good question and I think the other poster pretty much answered it.

Running 8x400m at mile pace would develop those fibers, but so would 7x1000m, and you can get a lot more volume with 7x1k @10k pace than you will with 8x400m, and arguably 7x1k is an easier workout, and also helps improve LT more than 8x400m will.

So the idea is that its the best bang for your buck training pace.

ThatAverageRunner wrote:

That's a good question and I think the other poster pretty much answered it.

Running 8x400m at mile pace would develop those fibers, but so would 7x1000m, and you can get a lot more volume with 7x1k @10k pace than you will with 8x400m, and arguably 7x1k is an easier workout, and also helps improve LT more than 8x400m will.

So the idea is that its the best bang for your buck training pace.

That's why it's better to do mixed intervals i.e. 5 x 1k @ 3k pace + 5 x 400 @ 800m pace

Mixed intervals wrote:

ThatAverageRunner wrote:

That's a good question and I think the other poster pretty much answered it.

Running 8x400m at mile pace would develop those fibers, but so would 7x1000m, and you can get a lot more volume with 7x1k @10k pace than you will with 8x400m, and arguably 7x1k is an easier workout, and also helps improve LT more than 8x400m will.

So the idea is that its the best bang for your buck training pace.

That's why it's better to do mixed intervals i.e. 5 x 1k @ 3k pace + 5 x 400 @ 800m pace

With 2 days recovery between sets!

kmaclam wrote:

Mixed intervals wrote:

That's why it's better to do mixed intervals i.e. 5 x 1k @ 3k pace + 5 x 400 @ 800m pace

With 2 days recovery between sets!

I'm dyslexic, I meant 5 x 1k @ 5k pace+ 5 x 400 @ mile pace

Mixed intervals wrote:

kmaclam wrote:

With 2 days recovery between sets!

I'm dyslexic, I meant 5 x 1k @ 5k pace+ 5 x 400 @ mile pace

I was gonna say...That first workout you mentioned would be crazy intense.

And the actual workout you mentioned would do the job, but at a much higher stress than a tinman 6-7x1k @ CV + 4-6x200m at mile to 800m pace.

I had a lot of the same concerns with his explanation of how the fiber types develop. I mean, why wouldn’t daily 2 hour runs also develop those IIa fibers if all systems work at all paces?

Don’t get me wrong, cv pace is super effective, but I just don’t know how you’d back up hos claims without pre training / post training muscle biopsies.

One thing that tinman gets right is as Lee Haney said, "Exercise to stimulate, not to annihilate."

For most training tinamn does his cv then hills and then strides. But for post season peaks he does mixed intervals with 4 x 1k cv + 4x400m mile pace + strides for drew. Thanks to everyone for answers!

CoachB wrote:

I had a lot of the same concerns with his explanation of how the fiber types develop. I mean, why wouldn’t daily 2 hour runs also develop those IIa fibers if all systems work at all paces?

Don’t get me wrong, cv pace is super effective, but I just don’t know how you’d back up hos claims without pre training / post training muscle biopsies.

In his podcasts he mentions your concerns. Race pace work can develop the athlete quickly but has a high risk-high reward in terms of how quickly the athlete can garner adaptions before he is good to go again. He posits that most athletes also run their easy days too fast. That would mean that suddenly these workouts become very, very high risk for a high reward.

He specifically mentioned this when talking about 3k-5k effort intervals. He also mentioned how threshold running develops the intermediate fibers and the lactate threshold with low risk-moderate rewards. He mentions a study about how the athletes lactate threshold improved with both VO2 max, threshold, and CV. However, VO2 saw the least improvement, with CV garnering the most. This was over a 4 week period conducted with runners in Australia. All three paces will get the job done, but VO2 is hard to recover from which means that the adaptations take longer to occur. Threshold running is good, but it takes a longer period for the athlete to develop through it. CV is a middle ground where the intensity helps with further development than threshold, but also is easy enough to bounce back from it quick enough to do more of it so you can keep compiling fitness. I would assume super long runs like you said would accomplish all of this too but extremely slowly.

He claims his ex-wife burned his files on the Australian study (I am not kidding), so I don’t know what he is really referencing. But that’s where he claims to get his info from.

All of these suggestions WORK. The reason why he is a proponent of CV is because it isn’t sexy and just gets the job done. It’s easy to bounce back from it so you can do more and more, but it is hard enough to rapidly develop the athlete. Again, his claims not mine.

His approach is pragmatic and I love the love for him on this forum. I am displeased with the slanderous objectors though. It goes to show that Letsrun is populated by many slow runners that train too fast. Tools.

So he mentions that CV is around 88-92 percent of VO2. In layman's terms what pace is this? 10k or Lactate Threshold, or somewhere in between?

Also, does anyone know how he presents these in interval form? I've read kilometer rep's, but do they do mile's as well? And recoveries?

Suzie Q wrote:

So he mentions that CV is around 88-92 percent of VO2. In layman's terms what pace is this? 10k or Lactate Threshold, or somewhere in between?

Also, does anyone know how he presents these in interval form? I've read kilometer rep's, but do they do mile's as well? And recoveries?

CV is 8k-10k pace, or the pace you can hold for a 30ish minute race. Might be closer to 5k for slower folks.

Check out Tinman’s website, The Run Zone, for old forum posts and calculators for paces.

Recovery for 1k reps is 200m

Recovery for mile reps is 400m

Mile reps may be done a bit slower, closer to threshold than 10k

Hjmcjnfjv wrote:

Suzie Q wrote:

So he mentions that CV is around 88-92 percent of VO2. In layman's terms what pace is this? 10k or Lactate Threshold, or somewhere in between?

Also, does anyone know how he presents these in interval form? I've read kilometer rep's, but do they do mile's as well? And recoveries?

CV is 8k-10k pace, or the pace you can hold for a 30ish minute race. Might be closer to 5k for slower folks.

Check out Tinman’s website, The Run Zone, for old forum posts and calculators for paces.

Recovery for 1k reps is 200m

Recovery for mile reps is 400m

Mile reps may be done a bit slower, closer to threshold than 10k

I believe your definition of CV pace is a touch too fast. I've heard it described more as 10k-12k pace, or 40 minute race pace.

Ultimately, dialing into CV effort is more important than CV pace. Tinman himself is a huge proponent of effort-based training. A solid CV workout is 4x1600 starting at a 7/10 effort and ending at 8-8.5/10. You should not be doubling over your legs at the end of each rep. It should feel crisp- comfortably hard.

The issue with CV pace is that the effort at a specific pace varies wildly depending recovery, weather, etc.

He specifically states in his writings and podcast that CV is the pace at which you could sustain for a race in the 30-35 minute duration range. For more elite runners it will be closer to 10k, while for women and less elite runners it is closer to 8k. In the end, he does advocate for effort based training but he has never mentioned 1600m reps in distance. The only thing he has spoken of is 1000m/3 min or 800m reps for underdeveloped HS athletes. He has never spoken of anything more or less than that. The recoveries he has spoken of are 200m jog if it is measured distance, or 60 seconds for effort based training. He has mentioned starting people at 90 seconds and eventually dropping it to 60 seconds as well. Also, he has talked about doing as little as 4000m in volume and as high as 8000m MAX (Tinman elite does 7-8k worth of CV).

That doesn’t seem like a lot of total volume but you must remember he layers the intensity on everything he does with speed work afterward. Furthermore, I am guessing that aftermentioned layering is why he hasn’t spoken about doing CV longer than ~1000m. That distance gets the job done without having the potential of too much fatigue before you go into the faster work afterwards. He talks about it being bad trying to do speed work with too much fatigue because you can’t do it with “skill” (his words, not mine). I would assume 1600m reps would be a little too much risk, especially for slower runners who are doing them close to what their 8k race pace would be.

Yeah he has said explicitly recently that it is 30-35min race pace. And he typically mentions 1k or shorter reps, but he typically mentions overal volume and has talked about longer repeats before too. Maybe on his forum but I know I’ve seen it

My gosh it’s just cruise interval tempos. Anyone who buys into this cv crap I got boat I can sell ya to climb Everest.

Just run mostly tempo workouts, lots of volume volume, and rarely a gut busting workout/race.

Speaker of da truth wrote:

My gosh it’s just cruise interval tempos. Anyone who buys into this cv crap I got boat I can sell ya to climb Everest.

Just run mostly tempo workouts, lots of volume volume, and rarely a gut busting workout/race.

Cruise intervals are slower homie.

Why aren’t you a coach of a budding elite/sub elite group?

I think you’re citing daniels’ definition of cruise intervals as T pace, just broken up. But in his book even he admits that you should run them as hard as you can and still be cruising.

I can show you my running logs from a small D2 school 10 years ago where we did this training. Tempos, thresholds, 1000s at 10k effort, hill sprints and 200s afterward, strides on easy days, quality long runs.

James Li is also laughing at you all thinking this training is unique. It clearly works, by the way! He’s a smart guy prescribing sensible training.

And I’m guessing the above poster can’t show you the sub elites he’s coaching because he hasn’t lucked out and gotten to coach a super talented high schooler like Drew Hunter, which opened up the opportunities he has. Although according to Tom, Drew isn’t uniquely talented