11:17 - 11:40 of this video.
Is this why he performed so poorly at Worlds and the big competitions this year? The man rarely runs above 6:00 pace. He must be feeling the burn.
Discuss.
11:17 - 11:40 of this video.
Is this why he performed so poorly at Worlds and the big competitions this year? The man rarely runs above 6:00 pace. He must be feeling the burn.
Discuss.
Daniel88 wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MzPwWFlbfE&t=308s11:17 - 11:40 of this video.
Is this why he performed so poorly at Worlds and the big competitions this year? The man rarely runs above 6:00 pace. He must be feeling the burn.
Discuss.
On the other hand, maybe it's why he has an Olympic medal.
I'm not surprised, he's really intense to the point of borderline creepy
Pretty sure he says "I very rarely run slower than 6.20".
At 60 to 70 miles a week for someone with his ability, that doesn't surprise me too much.
Maybe that’s why he got that medal, but you ever see a high schooler that changed from 8:00 easy to 7:00 easy and improved his times but eventually came crashing down. It could be like that.
Whatever it is I hope he can find what works the best for him
Maybesomethinginthemiddle wrote:
Maybe that’s why he got that medal, but you ever see a high schooler that changed from 8:00 easy to 7:00 easy and improved his times but eventually came crashing down. It could be like that.
Whatever it is I hope he can find what works the best for him
No, I have not seen a high school boy come crashing down by progressing from 8:00 to 7:00 pace days. Ever. I have, however, seen a lot of them improve tremendously by doing just that.
Here's the thing, Letsrun generally promotes ridiculously slow paces for easy days, but it doesn't work for everyone, especially if the mileage is low and the person is training for a mid-distance event. Clayton Murphy running 7:00 pace would feel like he's dragging his feet.
I know, I know, "but the Kenyans train slower." When Clayton bumps up to the marathon and 140+ miles per week, he'll probably slow his easy run pace too.
I used to work with a guy who is a 2:10 marathoner. He ran around 130-140 mpw and did most of it in well under 7:00/mile. He probably did as much sub-6:00 mileage as Murphy just with another 70 miles on top.
He used to say, “ I’m trying to run 2:10, I can’t be £*#%ing around running over 7 minutes.”
It's not the Kenyans, it's every elite aerobic athlete in every sport. Runners. Rowers. Cyclists. Nordic Athletes. Swimmers. Every one of them has intensity distributions with 85%-95% of their training below VT1, and 5-15% above VT2.
It's been validated extensively that elite training scales down to recreational athletes doing lower volume.
I've been coaching for a while, and I have NEVER had an athlete who hasn't improved when I've gotten then to go slower on their training on non quality days. However.....
I don't coach athletes running 400/800. It might be different there with the significantly larger anaerobic contribution. The studies and results with athletes racing aerobic distances (for running 1500 and up) are really clear here.
A long highly successful career is no guarantee for any elite athlete in any sport. Didn't Murphy tear one of his Achilles when he attempted 800/1500 double in some goofy invitational in U.S. two years ago? He is not the only 800m runner who does most mileage runs sub-6 pace. If Murphy would have done Lydiard training as is loved on this site, Murphy would have never broken 1:44
800m of intensity wrote:
A long highly successful career is no guarantee for any elite athlete in any sport. Didn't Murphy tear one of his Achilles when he attempted 800/1500 double in some goofy invitational in U.S. two years ago? He is not the only 800m runner who does most mileage runs sub-6 pace. If Murphy would have done Lydiard training as is loved on this site, Murphy would have never broken 1:44
1) hamstring, not Achilles.
2) ‘some goofy invitational’ lol
Yeah, he says that he runs 60-70 miles at an average of 6:00 -- rarely running slower than 6:20 pace. I would guess that's pretty standard for guys who can run 1:42.
I was in no way ever an elite runner on that level. But in college and post college I was consistently under 1:50 for 800 and low 3:40s for 1500. Unless I was completely wrecked from a session, 6:20-6:00 pace felt fairly easy. Especially during fall training where the sessions aren’t super intense and mileage is at its peak. I’m sure he can run well under 5 min pace for a 6-8 mile tempo with ease if he wanted to so why would 6:20 pace be a problem, 6:00 pace surely feels the same once he gets warmed up.
On recovery days in the spring if I was dead from the workout before I would start a run around 7:00 pace but would warm up to around 6:40s and that would feel like a trot. Hobby joggers that run 19/20 min for 5k probably don’t understand but if you’ve been a collegiate runner or even a solid HS runner you get it.
Flipside wrote:
Here's the thing, Letsrun generally promotes ridiculously slow paces for easy days, but it doesn't work for everyone, especially if the mileage is low and the person is training for a mid-distance event.
SO TRUE.
The hard/easy mantra wrote:
Flipside wrote:
Here's the thing, Letsrun generally promotes ridiculously slow paces for easy days, but it doesn't work for everyone, especially if the mileage is low and the person is training for a mid-distance event.
SO TRUE.
How much does he run? The point of the easy day isn't to run slow - it's to reover and run easy. My brother was famous for running very slow on his recovery days but one day when he was coming back from injury we went out for the morning run and I thought he was messing with me. He was running at least 30 seconds per mile faster than normal. I said, "What are you doing?" He said. "This is how i normally run." I said, "No it's not." SUre enough I was proven right when we got to the turnaround point.
When you are running 0 mpw, 7:00 minute pace doesn't feel very fast. When you are running 140 mpw, it's not nearly as easy.
rojo wrote:
[quote]
How much does he run? The point of the easy day isn't to run slow - it's to reover and run easy. My brother was famous for running very slow on his recovery days but one day when he was coming back from injury we went out for the morning run and I thought he was messing with me. He was running at least 30 seconds per mile faster than normal. I said, "What are you doing?" He said. "This is how i normally run." I said, "No it's not." SUre enough I was proven right when we got to the turnaround point.
When you are running 0 mpw, 7:00 minute pace doesn't feel very fast. When you are running 140 mpw, it's not nearly as easy.
Spot on!
The point is running easy by feel not FORCEFULLY slow staring at their gps watches like many do.
*FORCEDLY
I am all for running slow on easy days but what people miss is that 6:00 pace is very easy for Murphy. 6:20 is a jog.
Hardloper wrote:
I am all for running slow on easy days but what people miss is that 6:00 pace is very easy for Murphy. 6:20 is a jog.
Murphy probably has a threshold of around 5:00 pace. I really can't see Murphy being able to run a half much under 65'.
6:00 pace is 83% of threshold . That's....not hard. I can understand why people would call that easy, but that's going to be approaching VT1, which is absolutely the upper bound of what we could call easy. It's "hard easy". 6:20 is probably a little more moderate, but it's still very, very quick compared to most elite athletes. Kipchoge, who is closer to 4:30 threshold, does most of his running round 6:30 pace, sometimes over 7:00. So do most elites if you scale it.
Now, situation is different here because Clayton focus on 800, so there may be some mechanical or other benefits to 6:00 pace for someone focused there. For the typical 1500 or longer athlete, there is just no reason to run this fast.
At the end of the day, sub VT1 (easy running) benefits have been shown to not be dose dependent. They are time exposure dependent. Running at 70% of VO2 max for an hour does not give better gains than running at 55% of VO2 max for an hour. There just isn't a need to go that hard. The easier you go, the more you recovery and/or the more volume you can do, leading to improved performance.
Here’s the thing (part 2): Letsrun overlooks the fact that not every non-workout day is an easy day. There are other days mixed in- call them whatever you want- that aren’t simply for “recovery” but rather for maintenance and aren’t as slow as the true recovery days. Depending on the time if year, a guy like Murphy might have more days like that than anything else. Conversely, during competition phase, he probably has considerably fewer of those maintenance days.