Jonathan Marcus on coronavirus: "To train hard now is irresponsible."

Well.......the very best training should never be "hard"......just perfectly smart and exact, and just enough what it takes to reach the individual running goals.If you do that your immune system is on top mostly.

- The Magic Coach -

He and Magness talk a lot of crap, especially on their podcast when they are together, but this time he is TOTALLY RIGHT. To protect ourselves AND all other humans around us, we should avoid any anaerobic sessions, time-trials or race-like efforts. This will not just avoid the "compromise of the immune system", but also make sure we don't peak early and waste our peak in a period with 0 official races, and are able to peak next year or whenever this whole thing is over and races start again.

This is Seiler's statement which is very similar:

https://twitter.com/StephenSeiler/status/1238009450679734274

Yeah, because somehow peaking right now would prevent you from peaking IN A YEAR from now.

Just when I think you’ve said the dumbest thing yet on here, you come back with more.

Also funny that your god, tinman himself is having his athletes run time trials currently.

anacondarunner wrote:

Discus.

https://twitter.com/jmarpdx/status/1238940697727647744

Rubbish. I'll train hard when I want. Training hard now is dumb, not irresponsible.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

He and Magness talk a lot of crap, especially on their podcast when they are together, but this time he is TOTALLY RIGHT. To protect ourselves AND all other humans around us, we should avoid any anaerobic sessions, time-trials or race-like efforts. This will not just avoid the "compromise of the immune system", but also make sure we don't peak early and waste our peak in a period with 0 official races, and are able to peak next year or whenever this whole thing is over and races start again.

This is Seiler's statement which is very similar:

https://twitter.com/StephenSeiler/status/1238009450679734274

Seiler's argument isn't similar at all. He's not suggesting, as Marcus is, that it would be MORALLY WRONG to train hard right now.

What I want to know from Marcus is what constitutes too-hard training? Can we still go on long runs? Tempo runs? Are any intervals allowed? CV work?

A lot of misinformation is easily disseminated in these major virus outbreaks. That runners

could help the situation by not doing anaerobic sessions and so on is just an example of this misleading information coming out. The problem with covid-19 as a new virus ( corona virus) is that there are no vaccine( and not a lot of people who have got immune last season) and therefore no immune people in the chain of infection . So far we know for sure that covid-19 is mostly dangerous for older people / people with already compromised immune systems and other complicating diseases.And that situation is the same as every year when the seasonal flu comes, except that there is so far no vaccine to protect these risk groups against covid-19.

The chad Rowberry vs the virgin jmar

Marcus is a twat. I've got a may marathon and a busy work schedule next fall Will continue putting in the effort for it, until its cancelled, at which point I'll pick a summer race.

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

A lot of misinformation is easily disseminated in these major virus outbreaks. That runners

could help the situation by not doing anaerobic sessions and so on is just an example of this misleading information coming out. The problem with covid-19 as a new virus ( corona virus) is that there are no vaccine( and not a lot of people who have got immune last season) and therefore no immune people in the chain of infection . So far we know for sure that covid-19 is mostly dangerous for older people / people with already compromised immune systems and other complicating diseases.And that situation is the same as every year when the seasonal flu comes, except that there is so far no vaccine to protect these risk groups against covid-19.

So,.....you can just calmly keep on your normal training and build for the future , and no one have to peak now when there is almost no races to peak for... ;)))

Suppressed immune system = overtraining

This is really basic and JMar doesn't even get it.

The Ghost of Ryan Deak wrote:

Suppressed immune system = overtraining

This is really basic and JMar doesn't even get it.

Nope, it's not as simple as that. One single race or hard workouts with very high lactate production already significantly weakens and suppresses the immune system.

Risk of getting sick is highest after a hard, anaerobic track session and after races. Overtraining, for example doing too much during a training camp, is another reason for a weakened immune system, but not the one JMar was talking about.

When you train with lactate levels in the 8-15+ mmol range (5k pace and faster), and do a decent amount of volume with it, your body needs to work very hard to recover from the insane stress you put on it. You broke down most of the glycogen stores in your body and a lot of muscle tissue. Lots of good stuff about this in Magness's book, Science of Running with many scientific sources.

I agree he was not good on the definition - a long run on a moderate pace or containing MP segments could also suppress the immune system, even tho that's down with lactate levels between 2.0 and 3.0.

I don't want to see anyone hammering hard VO2MAX or anaerobic intervals, such as 5x1k@3k pace or 10x400 @mile pace with just 1 minute race. You might not be the one dieing from getting the virus, but you are supposed to protect the people around you and getting the virus because you weakened your immune system due to the "balls to the wall" track session is immature.

If you get infected , you get infected, no matter how good your immune system is.But most cases

will just get a cold-like process or a stronger kind of cold for about a week or more.......

Kvothe wrote:

Marcus is a twat. I've got a may marathon and a busy work schedule next fall Will continue putting in the effort for it, until its cancelled, at which point I'll pick a summer race.

Your May marathon is going to be cancelled.

I can tell you never ran in high school or college.

There are days I feel badly for J Marcus. How is such a know-it-all not coaching a DII or DIII backwater with a permanent source of income. He seems to have a need for attention which is pushed by that need to pay the bills this saying asinine things and speaking in pseudo intelectual jargon and sophomoric seminar babble.

Hard training also increases exhalation of carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas. Highly irresponsible. Eliud Kipchoge alone has probably raised the globe's temperature by 0.1 degrees. I really hate that guy!

The plan: get all other professional runners to stop training so my athletes can finally catch up and stop being lapped at races!

-JMAR

Honestly, you should stop with this nonsense. Throwing out blood lactate levels and citing Magness doesn't make you sound informed. Not that his book isn't great, but it doesn't discuss this issue at all, so it makes me wonder if you've actually read it.

In any event, the effect of exercise on the immune system is NOT maximized at 8-15 mmol. First of all, nobody is capable of accumulating a "decent amount of volume" at 8-15 mmol. That's very hard running. Most distance runners are incapable of even getting to 15 mmol in an all-out 800 meter. Some slow-twitch runners would struggle to get to 8 mmol. Second, the evidence suggests that the immune system is most suppressed by the combination of high volume AND high intensity that's characteristic of races lasting over an hour and long, marathon-specific workouts. The effect of normal track work and races of 10k or under is minimal, unless you're dealing with general overtraining.

The basic factual point, however, is sound: There are at least some kinds of training that can increase your risk of a coronavirus infection, which could increase the risk to the the public at large. The moral point, I think, is a little more dubious. To be sure, we all have a responsibility to minimize harmful externalities, but we are also all making decisions that strike some kind of a balance between personal responsibility to the world and personal inconvenience. For instance, we practice "social distancing," but we are not all engaging in full-blown quarantine procedures.

For a committed and competitive runner, the personal benefit of doing some really solid training might be so great that it's worth dealing with some minor immune system suppression in the couple of days following a few key workouts. And let's be clear here, unless the athlete is overtrained, we're talking about a fairly small window of suppression. This is not truly reckless behavior by any stretch of the imagination. An athlete who suppresses her immune system by doing a hard workout can probably balance out her contribution to the pandemic by being extra careful in the days following the workout and by not drinking (which suppresses the immune system, and which everyone seems to be doing lately). Of course, all the running the athlete did already put her in the net positive column because her immune system started off at a stronger baseline, and her cardiovascular health means she's far less likely to require medical attention.

Jonathan Marcus does not have the championship mentality.