What ended up making you really fast?

or maybe not? wrote:

Daltonj800m wrote:

Or maybe doing more than just running helps you get faster. Who would've thought?

Or maybe not, maybe running more is the answer. Maybe running makes runners faster. Prove to me that doing all this other crap really makes anyone run faster?

Good to see you at least admit to being dumb

Times are a changing wrote:

Untrue. Guys on my team ran 100 mpw in order to go from 16 minutes in HS to 15 minutes in college. I went from 14:50 in HS to 13:50 in college by continuing my 35mpw but having somebody to compete against. What makes you really fast is talent. The rest of these dumb posts pertain to improvement, not what makes you really fast. Most of the people posting their elaborate training logs which resulted in 2 minutes of improvement, took them from 18 minutes to 16 minutes.

The talent vs effort thing really hit me when I heard the story of Justyn Knight’s introduction to running. From minimal soccer training and without warming up he ran a 15:30? 5k in trainers on a hilly course in gym class. Granted the course is probably short but even a 3 mile time that fast without any training/racing experience just goes to show that talent is 90% of the battle. A group of guys I ran with in college (4 guys in the year below me) trained consistently for 4 years without any major injury, getting up to 90-100 MPW and only one of them has a shot at sniffing 14:30. You can’t tell me they’re working less hard than the guys at NAU/BYU/CU that run a minute faster for 5k.

Another example of talent winning out: the best kid on my high school team skipped weekend practices, regularly cut runs, and drank every weekend. He got into a good D2 program and wound up all American while drinking even more and smoking cigs. I swear he could have run well under 14 if he gave a sh!t.

For me (an ultra runner), it was longterm commitment, lots of races (good & bad) of various distances, finishing off with 2 races across Colorado (325 slow miles, but with the aerobic extra of 6000 ft avg elevation). Subsequently I got a marathon pr, but more importantly it was the only time I was consistently able to run 6:30/mile for 10 miles in training.

Basically, I’d recommend variety plus a little altitude. 12-hour ultras on a mile loop are very forgiving long, slow runs that build your foundation & confidence.

When I was a teenager it was putting in decent mileage in the off season

As an old person it’s losing weight and lifting weights

I think this was my thing I'll need to work on more for '22. I didn't do enough hill workouts and that could have helped me at WUC a few weeks ago in terms of strength/endurance and not DNFing. It was brutally cold though and I made it 23 miles.

This unusual weather in Cbus is for the birds...

Great thread, lots of tips.

I think I'll even have to run my EZ days 9:30-9:40 and not 8:50-9:20, even though I knew to go slow on them too.

My goals:

Sub 18:30 5k (PR is 18:33)

Sub 42:00 10k (I usually don't run 10k much, estimated PR is 43:00)

Sub-1:30 half (PR is 1:33)

Sub-3:15 full (PR is 3:20)

2022-2023 timeframe. Enjoying the journey though, I love running!

This. Years, not months or an 18week cycle, will make people like us into the best long distance runners we can be.