Explaining "tempo" pace to your athletes.

1776 wrote:

This is the problem wrote:

This is how new runners get confused: “steady, hard, but easy. It should flow, be relaxed, don’t force the pace.” That will mean 100 things to 100 different new runners. It’s like describing music using colors, it might make sense to a top musician, but your typical 9th grader taking their first piano lessons isnt going to understand how F# sounds like the color red.

Hard but easy. Black but white. Hot yet cold. Wtf guys come on keep in mind the audience you’re dealing with.

"Hard but easy", you know what a easy run feels like. You know what really hard race effort feels like. It between the two, above easy, below straining.

High school kids don’t have filly developed brains so what’s the point of confusing the poop out of them?

1776 wrote:

The nutritionist wrote:

Having high school kids run a group tempo run is crazy. First of all, tempo pace is going to be different for each runner, so how do maintain the cohesiveness of the group? Secondly, whenever you have a group of h.s. boys running together, it will always turn competitive. Thirdly, for 95% of high school runners, ten miles should be an easy, conversational long run. NOT a tempo run.

I appreciate that there are probably 100 or so high schools in the country where you have the talent level to send a group out on a 10-mile tempo training run, but there are thousands of schools where this group run is totally inappropriate.

It's called dividing them up into groups. 20+ min 5k guys in one group. 18-19 minute 5k guys in another. 17-18 in another. 16-17 in another. And 16 below in another.

You have a 16 below group?

Kickapoo wrote:

1776 wrote:

It's called dividing them up into groups. 20+ min 5k guys in one group. 18-19 minute 5k guys in another. 17-18 in another. 16-17 in another. And 16 below in another.

You have a 16 below group?

Hahaha. Not many do. I can think of a few teams here in CA that can lay such a claim.

shgsso wrote:

To keep them from going out too fast, I do not allow them to do any strides before.

People don't really do strides to warm up for tempos, do they?

webby wrote:

shgsso wrote:

To keep them from going out too fast, I do not allow them to do any strides before.

People don't really do strides to warm up for tempos, do they?

I do.

Sometimes perhaps maybe I do sometimes wrote:

webby wrote:

People don't really do strides to warm up for tempos, do they?

I do.

Why?!

(You probably run your tempos too fast?)

cashew cheese in my shorts wrote:

Sometimes perhaps maybe I do sometimes wrote:

I do.

Why?!

(You probably run your tempos too fast?)

No, I don't run them too fast. Usually about marathon pace, which is my goal. I do them to get my legs firing.

Well you can go this route, and try to teach physiology to your kids. After getting in lengthy discussions here about whether lactic acid exists instead of lactate and H+, and whether physical aerobic, anaerobic, or lactic thresholds exist, or it's a continuum, I'm of the opinion that going too deep into the details of physiology is not helpful. (But a picture and some simple explanations would probably be fine -- except split into 4 regions -- see below). I had a coach who created a simpler analogy like when you build a fire, it leaves ashes, and you need to learn to get rid of the ashes in order to burn hot fires. This seemed to accomplish the same goal. In my opinion, if you want to make them understand effect and running goals, you should talk about building 4 qualities connected to running: Endurance (easy and long runs) -- the ability to run for a long time Stamina (Tempos and intervals) -- the ability to run faster for longer Speed (Intervals with fast bouts with partial recovery) -- the ability to run fast while tired (aka Aerobic Capacity) Sprint (Intervals with shorter, faster bouts, with full recovery) -- works on keeping your form from breaking down at high speeds (aka Anaerobic Capacity) With respect to describing "tempo" pace, I've always thought a simple synonym to think about is finding a good "rhythm". "mcmillanrunning" website had a lengthy article about 12 kinds of workouts, and what they accomplish, which I thought was great, including similar pictures with LT1 and LT2 (and synonyms like Aerobic, Anaerobic, and Ventilatory Thresholds) but they reformatted their site and I cannot find it now. It might be buried somewhere in an article in their "University".

CoachB wrote:

I've struggled for years to come up with a great way to explain tempo pace to my athletes. This summer I've been working on some of my own pace charts and ways of simplifying all of the different terminology that gets thrown around in books and on the internet.

Take a look and see what you think. I'm of course open to constructive criticism and willing to answer questions. Yes, I know that it's a big ask to expect kids to read through all of this stuff, but my best ones do read what I post then explain it to the other kids.

Interesting. I've only ever heard of people doing strides after runs or before races or fast speed work. I'm curious to know how common it is to warm up with strides for slower runs.

webby wrote:

Interesting. I've only ever heard of people doing strides after runs or before races or fast speed work. I'm curious to know how common it is to warm up with strides for slower runs.

There is more than one way to accomplish things. Training should have some individualism to it.

I know a few people touched on tempo intervals and broken tempos of varying kinds, but I think that makes the most sense for high school runners throughout the season as opposed to a more traditional sustained tempo of 4-8+ miles that is common in college training. I personally love those longer tempo runs (currently a junior in college), but it took a long time to learn how to get the effort right. I think 1200m-2k repeats with 30s-60s “rest” is best to teach the feel and get the most work done. Maybe for athletes planning to run collegiately, you can have them do some sustained tempo running starting their senior year.

CoachB wrote:

I've struggled for years to come up with a great way to explain tempo pace to my athletes. This summer I've been working on some of my own pace charts and ways of simplifying all of the different terminology that gets thrown around in books and on the internet.

Take a look and see what you think. I'm of course open to constructive criticism and willing to answer questions. Yes, I know that it's a big ask to expect kids to read through all of this stuff, but my best ones do read what I post then explain it to the other kids.

https://hughsoncc.blogspot.com/2019/07/threshold-training.html

My coach has always said “comfortably uncomfortable” it seems to work well.

steeplechase12 wrote:

My coach has always said “comfortably uncomfortable” it seems to work well.

My coach always said tempo was "green with splashes of red".

lease wrote:

Kvothe wrote:

Somewhere between 10 mile and half marathon pace, ie the pace you could race at for 1 hour.

A very small percentage of high school kids can go farther than 10 miles in an hour, even at max effort. And most high school kids don't run ten-mile races or half-marathon races.

So this probably would not be a help to most of them.

Hopefully you train these athletes to be able to run at least an hour by the end of summer, assuming you're the coach. I don't like watching the watch and letting it dictate pace over perceived effort, but I guess you could say 5k pace + 30-45 secs for these athletes.

We had a pretty good session last Wednesday. 6k on a 1200m section of our CC course that loops back on itself and can be done continuously. I told my kids to start out at 80% on the pace chart (or perhaps a little slower, since the course has a ton of twists and turns and the test was on an all weather track.

Top 4 varsity guys came through the first 1200 in 5:04, but then progressed down and finished the workout at 24:02 (4:00 per K average). They were starting to get a little out of control on the 4th circuit, coming through in 4:35, but then backed it off because they were feeling that they were going too fast (plus, I was there telling them it looked like they were straining a bit).

All in all, it was a really positive day.