Background: I’m a 10th grade boy who just finished XC and is getting ready for my first indoor season.
I had a successful xc year and pr’ed by a lot. I’ve never ran winter track and want to know how I should train in the winter and how I should run the races..
For every indoor meet, I will probably be running the 1600 and 800. Do I go all out and go for a pr every meet or run them like a workout? Will this burn me out if I go all out in every race? We have 6 meets over the winter. My main focus in on spring track.
How does peaking work?
High School Running
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Just train through indoor. Also don’t expect that PRing every meet is a given. Yeah it’s easy to PR right after a successful XC season first meet, but it’ll get progressively harder to PR.
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coleiolio wrote:
Just train through indoor. Also don’t expect that PRing every meet is a given. Yeah it’s easy to PR right after a successful XC season first meet, but it’ll get progressively harder to PR.
So what you’re saying is that I can go all out in the races and it won’t hurt me for spring? -
- Yes, you can go all out in races. 2400 meters total per meet is not that much.
- When a lot of people talk about "peaking," they're really just talking about a period of time when you WERE running well that preceded a period of burnout or overtraining. That's not quite right. Peaking is typically the result of a reduction of volume and increase in intensity. This is a short term approach to maximizing speed. You can nail workouts because you're fresh, and the harder workouts prepare you for faster races. But you cannibalize some of your base, and you'll have to return to that again. (This is not a scientific description, but it's basically how it works.)
- Peaking is more an art than a science, and it's somewhat individual. Slow twitch runners (which is relative to the event--a slow twitch 800 runner would be a fast twitch 5000 meter runner), tend not to peak as much, and they're usually able to run close to top speed for a longer stretch of time. Fast twitch runners tend to have shorter, more dramatic peaks where everything comes together.
- The main thing for you is that you don't lose your strength. Easy to do during indoors, when days are short and weather is bad, and practice is often inside. Make sure you keep getting most of the mileage that made you strong in cross. Then make sure that you're not doing workouts so hard that you don't sometimes feel fresh and springy on your easy runs. It should be about half the time; it's fine to feel like you need to shuffle through your easy runs some of the time as long as it's not constant. -
I would only disagree with the point about twitch. I think slow-twitch guys doing high mileage have a more dramatic change in training, more dramatic freshening of legs, and more dramatic spike in performance... At least if they've truly planned out a long-term programme for one dramatic championship peak.
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Viren, a master of peaking with the aid of his coach, has said that he actually peaked a couple of weeks before the '72 Olympics and was actually starting to decline during those Olympics, so evidently a peak can't be maintained for too long a time for some distance runners.
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I have a question, and I will try not to sidetrack the conversation(it is a good one). League Finals are on Thursday of next week, and I was just wondering what to do until then, or how hard should I run on the days leading up to run a decent time. This is a very hard course, and so I want to at least go sub 20(18:51 guy), so should I run every day leading up like a recovery, or run hard, then slow down leading up to the race?
-EGF -
As others have said, train through indoor. The winter is the off-season between cross country and outdoor, so it should be treated like a base phase. At your age, in a base phase you should just be doing easy runs and long runs, no workouts. This will help you build a big aerobic base and get really fit and strong for outdoor. The indoor meets will be more than enough speed work on their own.
Whatever mileage you ran during summer/xc try to increase it a little this winter. For example, if you ran 35-40 miles per week during summer and xc, try bumping it up to 45-50 miles per week this winter. Make both your easy runs and your weekend long runs a little longer. For example, if your long run was 10 miles during summer and xc, try bumping it to 12 miles this winter. -
jXCk wrote:
coleiolio wrote:
Just train through indoor. Also don’t expect that PRing every meet is a given. Yeah it’s easy to PR right after a successful XC season first meet, but it’ll get progressively harder to PR.
So what you’re saying is that I can go all out in the races and it won’t hurt me for spring?
They're races, you race them. Races by their very nature are supposed to be all out. You only don't do them all out if your coach tells you to take it easy and pace a slower teammate to a PR or something.
Also, look at the pro runners. Some of them race 4 weeks after a 2-3 week post-season break. You should be racing year-round. But you shouldn't be over-racing, which would be doing a lot of races every month throughout the year. Doing 1 indoor meet here and there is fine, and if anything, preferable as it keeps you in touch with your speed while you build your aerobic base for outdoor in training. -
800 dude wrote:
- Yes, you can go all out in races. 2400 meters total per meet is not that much.
- When a lot of people talk about "peaking," they're really just talking about a period of time when you WERE running well that preceded a period of burnout or overtraining. That's not quite right. Peaking is typically the result of a reduction of volume and increase in intensity. This is a short term approach to maximizing speed. You can nail workouts because you're fresh, and the harder workouts prepare you for faster races. But you cannibalize some of your base, and you'll have to return to that again. (This is not a scientific description, but it's basically how it works.)
- Peaking is more an art than a science, and it's somewhat individual. Slow twitch runners (which is relative to the event--a slow twitch 800 runner would be a fast twitch 5000 meter runner), tend not to peak as much, and they're usually able to run close to top speed for a longer stretch of time. Fast twitch runners tend to have shorter, more dramatic peaks where everything comes together.
- The main thing for you is that you don't lose your strength. Easy to do during indoors, when days are short and weather is bad, and practice is often inside. Make sure you keep getting most of the mileage that made you strong in cross. Then make sure that you're not doing workouts so hard that you don't sometimes feel fresh and springy on your easy runs. It should be about half the time; it's fine to feel like you need to shuffle through your easy runs some of the time as long as it's not constant.
Also, peaking is very individualized, so you need to keep a careful log if how long you spend decreasing volume and how intense you run during the peaking weeks. It is also affected by your age, so your peak preparation will change over time.
Fast twitch vs. slow twitch assumptions can be misleading. Outlier examples from my swim coach experience: male sprinter of NCAA d3 runner-up status best performances on 1.5 week peaking. Male distance swimmer of NCAA d3 runner-up status best performances on 3.5 weeks peaking.
Again, best peaking is an individual thing, so be willing to experiment in your career. -
jXCk wrote:
Background: I’m a 10th grade boy who just finished XC and is getting ready for my first indoor season.
I had a successful xc year and pr’ed by a lot. I’ve never ran winter track and want to know how I should train in the winter and how I should run the races..
For every indoor meet, I will probably be running the 1600 and 800. Do I go all out and go for a pr every meet or run them like a workout? Will this burn me out if I go all out in every race? We have 6 meets over the winter. My main focus in on spring track.
peaking is a very real thing and is the secret to winning championships.
first thing is to establish a base, of like 12 weeks of running say 100 miles per week, = volume
then you drop the mileage say to 80 miles per week for maybe four weeks and do more quality. like repeat miles, repeat hills 800m, some intervals,
then you drip the mileage to 50-60 miles per week and do even more quality. intervals, time trials,
then race....running 50 or less miles per week, with a race or 2 per week.
after about 3 weeks of racing, you will have peaked. and you can go on for another few weeks at this peak, or a month.
if you are in high school your base could be 60 miles per week, next phase 50 miles per week, next phase 40 miles per week and racing with 25-30 miles per week.. -
You can go for a PR every meet but as in cross country, I doubt you will get one. Could be you are having a bad day or are tired, could be a slow pace. But certainly if there is anytime to go all out it is in competition. There are tactics that work best for you and you will want to use them to finish as well as possible. You will not burn out from running hard every race, that occurs from going hard every training session or too many hard training sessions. You have built up a strong base as you have been training to compete at 5k, now you will be racing at a 1/3 or a 1/6 the distance so your focus will be switching to speed related training, shorter and faster. Did you trust your coach for cross country? Then trust your coach for indoor and outdoor track. You will be improving, your first race at any distance will be a PR and you will have more 800/1600 training behind you at the end of the season than at the beginning.
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BigFan wrote:
You can go for a PR every meet but as in cross country, I doubt you will get one. Could be you are having a bad day or are tired, could be a slow pace. But certainly if there is anytime to go all out it is in competition. There are tactics that work best for you and you will want to use them to finish as well as possible. You will not burn out from running hard every race, that occurs from going hard every training session or too many hard training sessions. You have built up a strong base as you have been training to compete at 5k, now you will be racing at a 1/3 or a 1/6 the distance so your focus will be switching to speed related training, shorter and faster. Did you trust your coach for cross country? Then trust your coach for indoor and outdoor track. You will be improving, your first race at any distance will be a PR and you will have more 800/1600 training behind you at the end of the season than at the beginning.
Yes, I trusted my coach and still do. We don’t have an indoor coach, it’s individual. -
It’s 100% a science and and creating the false dichotomy between art and science is disingenuous: you can break down great art and skill into factors that make it replicable. Artists would never be known if they could t replicate their skill.
Tapering: when you train, you develop fitness (chronic training load, CTL) while also becoming fatigued (acute training load, ATL). If you train too much too soon, your ratio of ATL/CTL breaks 1.49 at which point the likelihood of injury, extreme fatigue or sickened sky rockets. So, it’s best to build gradually and to then hold weekly training volume steady (see a lydiard build up) so that your CTL curve is curvlinear (flattens off) vs exponential (keeps getting steeper). As a curvlinear CTL progresses, ATL/CTL begin to plummet, even once you start track work because a hi CTL developed with a steady base period can absorb the work on the track without spiking ATL/CTL.
When the curvlinear CTL curve starts to flatten off, ATL/CTL drops below 0.70, at which time you are in peak shape and have optimized your fitness and are fresh. This can be modeled and tracked daily to ensure that ratio is below 1.50 and to see what it will take to build adequate fitness to absorb track training and peak well. It’s not guesswork. It is the art of science. -
Your explanation seems flawed, and overkill for a 10th grader.
Phd fry wrote:
So, it’s best to build gradually and to then hold weekly training volume steady (see a lydiard build up) so that your CTL curve is curvlinear (flattens off) vs exponential (keeps getting steeper).
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When the curvlinear CTL curve starts to flatten off, ATL/CTL drops below 0.70, at which time you are in peak shape and have optimized your fitness and are fresh.
So as I gradually build my CTL and my CTL curve flattens off - that is the exact moment I'm in peak shape? That seems counterintuitive. If anything I would expect that peaking involves lowering CTL and increasing ATL for a short period. But then again I have no idea what those fancy acronyms actually mean in practice or how one might go about converting a run or a workout into CTL units and ATL units. A quick google search does seems to indicate that those acronyms are trademarked by TrainingPeaks... which isn't what a 10th grader is going to get involved with.
@ jXCk: most of the other stuff in this thread is pretty useful for a high schooler like you. As the other posters said: train through indoors. Race the races and enjoy it but don't worry about it too much. Also since you trust your XC coach - I would also ask for their opinion. -
Sure, overkill, but he should just get smarter.
CTL needs to drop if it was gained too quickly which would mean the atl/ctl ratio is too high. In a lyriard style build, that ratio spikes and then gradually drops off while ctl continues to increase but starts to flatten off. When the ratio drops below 0.70 and the curve is flattening off, those two things together indicate an optimized peak. Too complicated? I don’t think so as it demystifies what a peak is. The HS-approved advice has large room for error - this model approach removes that error, more clearly defining what a Peak is and answering the OP’s question in an additional way.
And yes, Copyright-Coggan is annoying for copyrighting these terms, but they’re what Garmin and Strava use as well. But, what this model that I explained does is validate Lydiard, Canova, Vigil and make it clear why miracle-workouts and short and intense volume/intensity rampups negatively affect an optimal peak and provides daily guidance sort of like a virtual (additional) coach. -
What the model accomplishes as well is being able to demonstrate how some athletes can peak month after month for a long season (see World Cup mtb’ing and ITU tri) or weekend Lydiard did, for 6 consecutive weeks during Coordination... CTL begins to flatten off showing that no additional fitness is going to be gained that season and now can do 3-5 day tapers that drop atl/ctl to ~0.65, and then jump back into training to regain, but never surpass, the prior ctl value, which with enough time trends downward, indicating the end of the season...
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Phd fry wrote:
It’s 100% a science and and creating the false dichotomy between art and science is disingenuous: you can break down great art and skill into factors that make it replicable. Artists would never be known if they could t replicate their skill.
Tapering: when you train, you develop fitness (chronic training load, CTL) while also becoming fatigued (acute training load, ATL). If you train too much too soon, your ratio of ATL/CTL breaks 1.49 at which point the likelihood of injury, extreme fatigue or sickened sky rockets. So, it’s best to build gradually and to then hold weekly training volume steady (see a lydiard build up) so that your CTL curve is curvlinear (flattens off) vs exponential (keeps getting steeper). As a curvlinear CTL progresses, ATL/CTL begin to plummet, even once you start track work because a hi CTL developed with a steady base period can absorb the work on the track without spiking ATL/CTL.
When the curvlinear CTL curve starts to flatten off, ATL/CTL drops below 0.70, at which time you are in peak shape and have optimized your fitness and are fresh. This can be modeled and tracked daily to ensure that ratio is below 1.50 and to see what it will take to build adequate fitness to absorb track training and peak well. It’s not guesswork. It is the art of science.
lol...are you mentally ill or what -
Phd fry wrote:
It’s 100% a science and and creating the false dichotomy between art and science is disingenuous: you can break down great art and skill into factors that make it replicable. Artists would never be known if they could t replicate their skill.
Tapering: when you train, you develop fitness (chronic training load, CTL) while also becoming fatigued (acute training load, ATL). If you train too much too soon, your ratio of ATL/CTL breaks 1.49 at which point the likelihood of injury, extreme fatigue or sickened sky rockets.
This is classic triathlete/cyclist mumbo-jumbo. CTL and ATL are not "science." They're just models that seem to work pretty well anecdotally (when implemented in conjunction with a lot of common sense), but mostly they're just approximating what good cyclists and triathletes were already doing. The models are very limited when it comes to event specificity for cyclists, and they're pretty worthless for runners.
I do agree with you that art, including the art of peaking or the art of coaching, is replicable. I don't mean to suggest it's some kind of genius that can't be broken down into discrete skills. All I'm saying is that "science" in the sense of falsifiable hypotheses tested through controlled and replicable experiments, does not have the answers to peaking. There are far, far too many variables, and we don't even know what they all are. True science can offer some hints and guidance, but that's about it.
I agree with you that art is replicable. I don't mean to imply that it's some genius that people can't learn or break down into discrete components. What I am saying is that it's something that takes experience, practice, and trial-and-error, which is admittedly a sort of science.
