Discus - Easy runs, tempos and short intervals is the recipe for success?

So basically, you can reach most of your potential in running by just running a lot, whenever you feel good do a "run to the barn"/steady state run/progression run and doing some short reps(defined as what?). Not surprised. Keep it simple stupid.

I assume you thought long intervals to be a key component of long distance success? In my opinion it is no surprise that long intervals were found to be not so relevant, as these neither show the same intensity as short intervals, nor can be able to mimic the continuous grind of a long distance race like tempo runs do.

Read the whole thing and its beautiful. Noticed that at the top of the range, athletes reported running upwards of 60,000 km over a 7 year period. Thats an average of over 5,000 miles per year, and almost exaclty 100 miles per week.

I’d be interested to see a breakdown of marathon runners versus 5k/10k runners as in this case they were all treated the same. This study really just proves what most of us here have thought all along: the major importance of tempo runs and to not have too high of intensity on any intervals longer than 1km.

For those of us too lazy to read ourselves, what’s the definition of “tempo runs” for this study?

They defined tempo runs are being

between 45 and 70 minutes in duration or running intervals from 1,000 to 5,000 m and from 82 to 92% of HRmax

It's worth noting that it seems like cruise intervals were included in the tempo running category.

Long intervals, which the study found to be the least relevant to improvement, were defined as being

between 1,000 and 2,000 m long and from 92 to 95% of HRmax

Clarity wrote:

They defined tempo runs are being

between 45 and 70 minutes in duration or running intervals from 1,000 to 5,000 m and from 82 to 92% of HRmax

It's worth noting that it seems like cruise intervals were included in the tempo running category.

Long intervals, which the study found to be the least relevant to improvement, were defined as being

between 1,000 and 2,000 m long and from 92 to 95% of HRmax

So what are long intervals for a normal runner? Mile repeats at 5k pace? 3k?

Practically what the study say is this: Forget about the old advice to run your maxVO2 workouts 3-5 min , just run 200-600m reps for this kind of training. Then you save the long reps 1000- 3000 m to the cruise intervals, the so called lactate threshold intervals. Thats it ! Gives tremendous results!

I chat with Tjelta a couple of years ago and he confirmed this to be the way to go. Good luck!

So another big proof that Tinman's system works incredibly well. He has it all - lots of very easy mileage, longer, moderate tempo runs instead of the 20 min Daniel's tempo and slower 1k intervals at CV pace rather than Daniel's VO2MAX pace. This should finally be the death of college coaches prescribing hard 1k or even mile repeats at close to VO2MAX (98-100% HR according to Daniels).

Tinman prescribes VO2MAX pace very sparingly - often in form of a few short intervals of 300-600m, just in the competition phase to peak a runner.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

So another big proof that Tinman's system works incredibly well. He has it all - lots of very easy mileage, longer, moderate tempo runs instead of the 20 min Daniel's tempo and slower 1k intervals at CV pace rather than Daniel's VO2MAX pace. This should finally be the death of college coaches prescribing hard 1k or even mile repeats at close to VO2MAX (98-100% HR according to Daniels).

Tinman prescribes VO2MAX pace very sparingly - often in form of a few short intervals of 300-600m, just in the competition phase to peak a runner.

And still he has very little success! Whats wrong with his so called CV-pace( practically 10 k pace) ??? Well........There is no need for it!!! The only paces the runner needs are maxVO2-pace, LT-pace and long steady distance pace. But the best way to run the maxVO2- intervals is to run short reps of 200-800m. Thats it!

You left out weight training and technique. The discus is not that easy to throw at the top level , even if Daniel Stahl's recent performance may have looked that way.

Maybe he stalled in his wait training, but I doubt that led to all those >69.5m throws.

The Swedish Mzungu wrote:

Practically what the study say is this: Forget about the old advice to run your maxVO2 workouts 3-5 min , just run 200-600m reps for this kind of training. Then you save the long reps 1000- 3000 m to the cruise intervals, the so called lactate threshold intervals. Thats it ! Gives tremendous results!

I chat with Tjelta a couple of years ago and he confirmed this to be the way to go. Good luck!

This brings to mind the training of Mark Scrutton, NCAA xc champ in the early 80s. As I recall, he did hard 5 milers three times a week. Eventually, he would replace the 5 milers with 200 repeats with a float recovery -- first, one, then two, then finally 200s three times a week to peak for races. He once posted to LR and partially confirmed the descriptions of his training. I don't know what he did on the other days.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Anecdotally this has worked for me as well: 6 to 10 miles tempo runs (adjusting pace accordingly, but somewhere between half-marathon pace and marathon pace) were much more effective than traditional shorter 20' ones (done at 10M-HM pace), and so were 1 mi to 10' cruise intervals (rather than faster 1k-1M VO2max intervals).

The shorter stuff makes sense too. 200-600 repeats help a lot with running economy. I never seem to find the sweet spot in 800-1000 repeats. They feel like they attempt to do too much at once (speed, endurance, running economy).

To be fair long repeats probably have their place in training too, depending on the event. I would imagine they'd help a 10k runner much more than a marathoner.

Very similar, I get the best results by doing hard steady runs. Whenever I do traditional forms of interval work. I just don't feel the same benefit or feel like I did a workout. Now I just need to add some shorter reps. All this talk reminds me of this thread:

Mark Nenow and Ron Clarke are probably the best known examples of no interval success.

Someone gave a review of Ron Clarke book, gives pretty good overview of his training history.

Malmo in the Nenow thread linked down below:

Another thread on Nenow:

Had success:

Running lots, lots of doubles.

"To the barn" sometimes, sometimes just 10-30m as hard as I felt like going.

And 200s, or short hills when I could.

Had not as much success:

Lots of miles, a bit too fast.

1K intervals.

Thanks for the link.

The study has some limitations. For one, it's a bad example of P-hacking. They didn't formulate a hypothesis and test it with a control group. Instead, they threw a bunch of data in the pot and went on a fishing expedition for correlation. Maybe that's an okay way to find possibly interesting things to explore, but it's not exactly top-level science. With 85 athletes spread over 4 events, there's some chance for random variation that looks like statistical significance.

Also, the data is self-reported. The 85 subjects wrote down the training they remembered doing. 72% of them (61) had access to training logs. 24 did not. How much of your training from 7 years ago do you remember?

NB: Searching for correlations in self-reported data is how diet studies work. Long intervals are just as bad for you as butter and eggs are (this week).

That faster athletes run more miles is...not surprising.

The definition of short intervals goes all the way up to 1000m. It's also not exactly news that 6 x 800m or 8 x 1000k are good workouts. For the purposes of this study, what distinguishes long intervals (1000-2000m) from tempo intervals (1000-5000m) is heart rate; above 92% is a long interval,and below 92% is a tempo interval. That seems like a really high threshold for 1000-2000m repeats. Maybe the elites can do it, but 3-5 x 1mile at 90% max HR seems like more of a long interval workout than a tempo pace workout to me.

I won't call this crap science, but there are some limitations to be aware of before giving up on long intervals as the term is usually understood.

my 2c wrote:

It's also not exactly news that . . . 8 x 1000k are good workouts.

Yeah, 8 x 1000k is a essential workout.

Yes. If you want to be good in long distance running you need to run.

If you need to be good in the 800 meters or under, not as much.

NEWSFLASH! SCIENTISTS DISCOVER WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN!

malmo wrote:

NEWSFLASH! SCIENTISTS DISCOVER WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN!

But but what about Peter Coe ?????

“The 5K pace is golden. It eradicates the need for big mileage” – Peter Coe.