posted May-06-2007 04:22 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nobby:
[B] Mary:

"If you're slow, let's make you faster."

B]

---

First off, thanks for not putting down the slower runners. I for one find it very hard to post on these threads for fear of being looked down upon by others. The sad thing is that if I were not interested in getting faster, I would not be here lurking. Another thing is that only I know what I have been through to even get to this point in my running. I’m thankful to even have the experience to run a marathon.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about how I personally could improve my times. I decided the best thing for me to do was to start at the beginning and learn how to run properly. I wonder how many runners really try to improve there running form. After just a few weeks of drills, I was surprised to find the other day that I was running very relaxed at an 8:30mm pace! I now have to keep slowing myself down, because I am concerned that I may be running too fast. With all the bounding I have done, I now have a little spring in my stride. Before my stride looked more like a shuffle than any kind of a running gate. My feet were on the ground too long, and I had given myself hamstring tendonitis. It is now gone.

I guess my point is this: learn how to run properly first and build up leg strength, then go from there. Long slow miles can really hurt.

Thanks Nobby and Kim for continuing posting in this thread and not just going away. I have learned so much. I will guarantee that the next marathon I enter, I will be kicking some butt in my age group division.

Cathy

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 04:24 PM            

Pretty obvious from their training. Top runners do stuff only they could survive. Not something you can "work up to."

------------------
George Beinhorn
Fitness Intuition

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 04:41 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by runbei:
David L. Costill, the famous sports physiologist, said recently on Runner's World Daily that the difference between the average human and a world-class marathoner is huge.

Pretty obvious from their training. Top runners do stuff only they could survive. Not something you can "work up to."

---

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 04:45 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by runbei:
David L. Costill, the famous sports physiologist, said recently on Runner's World Daily that the difference between the average human and a world-class marathoner is huge.

Pretty obvious from their training. Top runners do stuff only they could survive. Not something you can "work up to."

---

I think it's erronious to create an elite vs. normal paradigm. From what I can tell, it's much more a continuum based on various levels of "talent" (or whatever you want to call it)--elite, sub-elite, national class, regional champ, etc. And while a "normal" person may never run a 13:00 5k, they still can bust some minutes off of their time through increased volume, intensity, etc.

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 05:29 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by DavidD:
.... The book Fix Your Feet (Maffetone) does a good job explaining it (his textbook even better with references). Unfortunately, you won't see any of this stuff in the running magazines for obvious reasons. George Sheehan told me long ago that RW (the mag he wrote a regular column for) would not allow him to write on the topic.

---

Small correction. Fixing Your Feet is by John Vonhof.

------------------
George Beinhorn
Fitness Intuition

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 06:59 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kim Stevenson:
Funny this issue should pop up. As I said in a previous post I was in charge of a Drink station at our local marathon this last weekend. How I judged the "old hands" in the race was by the fact that they were the ones who poured water over their heads rather than drink it !!
Yes ! It was something that Jack Foster (and many others did).
In addition : outside our local club rooms is a water fountain plus a tap with a hose attached. Whenever, I return from a run and see that hose I think of Jack. He always hosed his legs after a run. "Good enough for race horses, must be good enough for me" he would say.

---

I trained off and on for a year with Carl Ellsworth who won the northern California road race series in the 60-65 (70?) age group a couple of years, about 10-15 years ago.

Carl never drank during marathons (!). "I'm only out there 3 hours." But he had chronic intestinal problems - for dehydration? An anecdotal case, I know, but suggestive.

I used to do 30-mile ultra-style run/walk outings on plain water and electrolytes. The runs went fine, but the recovery was horrendous - 4 or 5 days of subhuman low energy. Since I started taking regular carbs during my runs, recovery is shorter and I feel much better during the runs and am able to train at a faster pace.

Karl King, a Univ. of Minn. chemistry professor, told me all the runners he'd meet who trained on plain water looked older than their age - and that it was because training without carbs increases the body's output of cortisol, a stress and aging hormone.

I know Ernst Van Aaken recommended doing 20-milers without fuel so as to force the body to develop its ability to "burn fats." I'm not sure it benefited me all that much that way. I seem to get more out of my training when I "carb-up" at least moderately (200 cal/hr).

------------------
George Beinhorn
Fitness Intuition

[This message has been edited by runbei (edited May-06-2007).]

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 07:00 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by runbei:
Small correction. Fixing Your Feet is by John Vonhof.

---

Maybe so, but I have "Fix Your Feet" by Dr. Philip Maffetone.
Thanks for reminding me about it.

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 07:10 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by StealthRunner:
Maybe so, but I have "Fix Your Feet" by Dr. Philip Maffetone.
Thanks for reminding me about it.

---

Oops, my error. After posting, I wondered if there were two books. Anyway, readers might like to know about Vonhof's book, which is very good.

------------------
George Beinhorn
Fitness Intuition

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 07:16 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by AndyHass:
The axe I have to grind with exercise physiologists is that, as a discipline, they seem to be unusually guilty of picking apart the machine, analyzing one part, and then declaring they understand the machine from that one part without checking to make sure their findings make sense in the context of the whole machine. As a scientist I know how important it is to look at big-picture context when trying to apply findings. If what you've discovered by studying the widget does not make sense when you apply it back to the whole machine, chances are your widget interacts with another gizmo in a way that you have not figured out yet!

This was especially poignant when reading through a string of editorials in the J of Ex Phys with Noakes et al arguing about oxygen deliver and metabolism limitations. Many of the scientists were making very broad conclusions off of very narrow observations....everyone wants their personal research to be the explanation of everything it seems.

Science can be a true aid to training, but only if applied in a way that adds to the body of knowledge we have developed about what works, and does not work, with training. It cannot yet form the fundamental base for how we train as endurance athletes.

---

Couldn't agree more! Ironically, Noakes himself has commented on this. I'll make bold to post a passage from my book - reckon the indents won't come out, but it should be obvious what's quoted:

In Lore of Running [4th ed.], Timothy Noakes, M.D., one of the world's most respected sports scientists, makes a rather startling admission:

Surprisingly few studies of the effects of different training regimes on athletic performance have been quantified in scientifically designed trials. In part, this is because few exercise scientists have considered this to be important, choosing rather to study how the body adapts to training at the cellular and molecular level. Perhaps they believe that neither the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine nor its sporting equivalent, the International Olympic Committee Science Prize, will be won by the exercise scientist who first discovers the most ideal athletic training program.

Just hours ago, I read a New York Times article about new research that completely discredits the lactic-acid theory of fatigue, which for 80 years was considered an unassailable pillar of sports science. It seems that lactic acid doesn’t “cause fatigue” after all, as we were led to believe. In fact, lactic acid is an important fuel for the working muscles.

From the Times article:

"It's one of the classic mistakes in the history of science," Dr. Brooks said. [George A. Brooks, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley] ....

Yet, Dr. Brooks said, even though coaches often believed in the myth of the lactic acid threshold, they ended up training athletes in the best way possible to increase their mitochondria. "Coaches have understood things the scientists didn't," he said.

Through trial and error, coaches learned that athletic performance improved when athletes worked on endurance, running longer and longer distances, for example.

That, it turns out, increased the mass of their muscle mitochondria, letting them burn more lactic acid and allowing the muscles to work harder and longer.1

If science can’t tell us everything we need to know about training, we’re left with little choice but to “train empirically” – that is, conduct our own experiments and figure out what works best for our own, individual bodies. And that may not be a bad thing. In a Runner’s World Daily interview, David L. Costill, one of the world’s leading sports scientists, put it like this: “The best computer in the world is in your head. The experience of training, of running a race. You learn what the thresholds are.”2

In fact, all of the most successful training systems have been empirically derived. Arthur Lydiard, the legendary coach whose methods were adopted by successive waves of Olympic champions from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Finland, Mexico, Africa, and the US, evolved his ideas by first testing them on himself. When Lydiard wanted to know the best weekly training mileage for a talented distance runner, he ran 80-300 miles a week and painstakingly tracked the results. Based on this and many other experiments conducted in the laboratory of his own body, Lydiard evolved the systems of "periodization" and "peaking" that would dominate the training of world-class distance runners for decades, and that are enjoying a modest revival today.

In a talk that Lydiard gave in Japan, shortly before his death in January 2005, he emphasized the need to adapt our training to our own, individual requirements, and to avoid relying too heavily on the blanket advice of others:

One of the reasons why Americans don’t produce very many good middle distance and distance runners, with millions of people there running, is simply because of this factor: coaches determining with hypothetical figures exactly what athletes should do in anaerobic training. Well, as a coach, you may be able to determine pretty closely what your athlete can do. You may be right in saying he can do fifteen 400 meters in 65 seconds with such-and-such interval. But the main thing is to explain to the athlete not only how and what to do, but why he is doing it. What physiological reactions he is to bring about with the training. And when he finishes, when he hits the wall, he’s had enough. And he should determine when to stop, not the coach. The key to training is to train to your individual reactions to the training. [Italics mine.]

Speaking in Boulder, Colorado on December 2, 2004, Lydiard said: "You need to find your own limits. Everyone wants to know how much, how fast. They want it on a piece of paper. Your conditions change every day." [Italics mine.]

------------------
George Beinhorn
Fitness Intuition

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 07:40 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by bigapplepie:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by runbei:
[b]David L. Costill, the famous sports physiologist, said recently on Runner's World Daily that the difference between the average human and a world-class marathoner is huge.

Pretty obvious from their training. Top runners do stuff only they could survive. Not something you can "work up to."

---

Oops, I need to get in the habit of quoting the original poster...

The point I wanted to make is that the elite start out with very different bodies than the average runner. A study at U. Louisiana of older subjects found that just 10 percent had bodies that were "extremely trainable," while 10 percent had bodies that, in the view of the researchers, weren't trainable at all (at least within the time span of the study; hard to imagine they wouldn't have improved some with continued training). The other 80 percent fell within a broad span of average trainability. Costill was saying essentially the same thing: if you want to make the Olympics, you had better choose your parents well, because you need an exceptionally talented body to start out with.

------------------
George Beinhorn
Fitness Intuition

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 09:06 PM               

Thank you for your kind note. I'm glad someone feels like he/she is learning somethinf from what we contributed. Make note also, though, that we ARE learning just as much (at least I am).

I have to thank Richard99 for starting this thread. This has been a very interesting debate and I have learnt a lot.

George:

That comment from Dr. Costill about the difference between world class marathon runners and average human being is huge is one of the silliest comments I've ever heard (not direct at you but this comment from him). Remind me of that Arthur Lydiard's comment about his bow-leg. It is quite obvious, isn't it? World class runners can run 4:50 mile pace for 26 miles almost entirely aerobically while us average human can barely manage one mile at 6:30 and up to our ears with lactic acid! It's like saying, "The difference between black and white is huge; one is white and the other is black"! Seriously! Do we need a PhD to tell us that?

In my opinion, scientific researchers do researchs well. They see what is and make note of that (such as difference between black and white). I personally am more interested in what can be. So if someone "only" runs one mile in 6:30 today? What would he/she be in 6 months time or 12 months time or 3 years from now? What would a sciencist would say when they see a tadpole? It breathe through its gills so it's a fish? Of course, it will turn into a frog and start breathing air out of water. Is it still a fish? We watched that Discovery channel program, Planet Earth, and one of them showed this "fish" that lives in a cave. It actually came out of water and started to crawl on a rock. "No wonder land animals evolved from fish," my wife said. So billion years ago, scientists saw this type of fish and would they imagine it would eventually evolve into land animals? So what if a tadpole turns into a dog or a monkey or a stalion? Is it "wrong"? Coaches and runners are a dreamer. It annoys me when people ask "What time do you think I can run?" If you know it today, would you be satisfied or would you give it up?" It's the unknown that you want to find out. "You never know the potential of the individual until he/she applies a intelligent program systematically over several years."--Arthur Lydiard.

Arthur Lydiard didn't just pick up some "talented" runners and won medals. He took a 19-year-old 1:57 half miler and turned him into a 1:44 800m runner and he won 3 gold medals (Snell). He took a near-death 17-year-old, skinny as a plucked chicken and turned him into a gold medalist and world record holder (Halberg). He also took a 15-year-old "completely devoid of any athletic talent" and he went on to become the world master's marathon champion (John Robinson). He also took a 74-year-old business man with 3 coronary attacks who coudln't even jog a half a lap around local high school track and turned him into a marathon runner (Andy Stedman who shocked Bill Bowerman to learn jogging from Lydiard). He also took a 40-year-old man who never ran or did any athletic sport and turned him into a US master marathon champion and beat Hal Higdon years ago (Stephen Goldburg). He made many different animals from a tadpole. He didn't see a mere "fish" or "soon-to-be frog". He saw potential of a human being and defied "logic". He wanted to see someone go from near-death-bed by running 2-mile to running 22 miles comfortably. He wanted to see someone go from 6-minute-miler (one single mile) to 2:15 marathon runner. Some scientist may say, "Choose your parents." Lydiard would have probably said, "How do you know the potential of your parents because most likely they never applied themselves (my parents went through their youth during the WWII)."

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 09:10 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by runbei:
Just hours ago, I read a New York Times article about new research that completely discredits the lactic-acid theory of fatigue, which for 80 years was considered an unassailable pillar of sports science. It seems that lactic acid doesn’t “cause fatigue” after all, as we were led to believe. In fact, lactic acid is an important fuel for the working muscles.

From the Times article:

"It's one of the classic mistakes in the history of science," Dr. Brooks said. [George A. Brooks, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley] ....

Yet, Dr. Brooks said, even though coaches often believed in the myth of the lactic acid threshold, they ended up training athletes in the best way possible to increase their mitochondria. "Coaches have understood things the scientists didn't," he said.

Through trial and error, coaches learned that athletic performance improved when athletes worked on endurance, running longer and longer distances, for example.

That, it turns out, increased the mass of their muscle mitochondria, letting them burn more lactic acid and allowing the muscles to work harder and longer.1

If science can’t tell us everything we need to know about training, we’re left with little choice but to “train empirically” – that is, conduct our own experiments and figure out what works best for our own, individual bodies. And that may not be a bad thing. In a Runner’s World Daily interview, David L. Costill, one of the world’s leading sports scientists, put it like this: “The best computer in the world is in your head. The experience of training, of running a race. You learn what the thresholds are.”2

In fact, all of the most successful training systems have been empirically derived. Arthur Lydiard, the legendary coach whose methods were adopted by successive waves of Olympic champions from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Finland, Mexico, Africa, and the US, evolved his ideas by first testing them on himself. When Lydiard wanted to know the best weekly training mileage for a talented distance runner, he ran 80-300 miles a week and painstakingly tracked the results. Based on this and many other experiments conducted in the laboratory of his own body, Lydiard evolved the systems of "periodization" and "peaking" that would dominate the training of world-class distance runners for decades, and that are enjoying a modest revival today.

In a talk that Lydiard gave in Japan, shortly before his death in January 2005, he emphasized the need to adapt our training to our own, individual requirements, and to avoid relying too heavily on the blanket advice of others:

One of the reasons why Americans don’t produce very many good middle distance and distance runners, with millions of people there running, is simply because of this factor: coaches determining with hypothetical figures exactly what athletes should do in anaerobic training. Well, as a coach, you may be able to determine pretty closely what your athlete can do. You may be right in saying he can do fifteen 400 meters in 65 seconds with such-and-such interval. But the main thing is to explain to the athlete not only how and what to do, but why he is doing it. What physiological reactions he is to bring about with the training. And when he finishes, when he hits the wall, he’s had enough. And he should determine when to stop, not the coach. The key to training is to train to your individual reactions to the training. [Italics mine.]

Speaking in Boulder, Colorado on December 2, 2004, Lydiard said: "You need to find your own limits. Everyone wants to know how much, how fast. They want it on a piece of paper. Your conditions change every day." [Italics mine.]

---

George:

Can you tell me more about this article? Link or which issue? I would very much like to obtain this entire article.

Thank you in advance.

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 09:13 PM               

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 10:20 PM               

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 10:54 PM               

Yes, the lactate can be recycled as fuel aerobically by the mitochondria...but this requires oxygen! If the cell didn't have oxygen in the cytoplasm for aerobic respiration, then it won't have it in the mitochondria for burning lactate. The body isn't wasteful; this is just how a waste product from one process (lactate from anaerobic metabolism) is recycled once oxygen is again available. Remembering the timing and context in which all of these inter-dependent metabolic reactions are happening is vital.

Lactate is not the factor causing fatigue, but its level is directly correlated with anaerobic metabolism in the cell, which leads to fatigue. So it's a marker. This means the term "lactate threshhold" is not useless after all, from this perspective. If levels are low, you're staying aerobic. If levels begin to rise rapidly, your time at that pace is limited before fatigue sets in.

IP: Logged

posted May-06-2007 11:19 PM            

1) Mileage up about 15% on avg over the past 18 months.
2) Weight about the same as the last PR, but down about 8% over the past 6 months.
3) Other than one 5k race, nothing was faster than threshold pace.
4) Lots of hills, including two long runs (27 km) on a 4k hill with about 1300 ft of elevation change.
5) Generally, long runs in the 2 hr range, with max at 3 hrs for the 27 km hill runs. Mid week runs were up to 1:45 or so. Recovery runs were 35 min or less at a very slow pace. Sometimes 4/1 run/walk. (Good heavens! Did I actually admit that?) Threshold runs were 20 min to 45 min at around 85% of MHR, rising to 90% towards the end of the longer runs.

Qualitatively....I felt like I could go forever, but didn't seem to have high gear. I expected that, due to the lack of VO2 work, but I had never experienced it before. Legs just would not turn over fast enough to get into high gear.

For the next race I think I will add some rep sessions in the final month, or perhaps three or so 5k races. That should get me another minute or two off the new PR.

IP: Logged

posted May-07-2007 05:21 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by runbei:

I trained off and on for a year with Carl Ellsworth who won the northern California road race series in the 60-65 (70?) age group a couple of years, about 10-15 years ago.

Carl never drank during marathons (!). "I'm only out there 3 hours." But he had chronic intestinal problems - for dehydration? An anecdotal case, I know, but suggestive.

I used to do 30-mile ultra-style run/walk outings on plain water and electrolytes. The runs went fine, but the recovery was horrendous - 4 or 5 days of subhuman low energy. Since I started taking regular carbs during my runs, recovery is shorter and I feel much better during the runs and am able to train at a faster pace.

Karl King, a Univ. of Minn. chemistry professor, told me all the runners he'd meet who trained on plain water looked older than their age - and that it was because training without carbs increases the body's output of cortisol, a stress and aging hormone.

I know Ernst Van Aaken recommended doing 20-milers without fuel so as to force the body to develop its ability to "burn fats." I'm not sure it benefited me all that much that way. I seem to get more out of my training when I "carb-up" at least moderately (200 cal/hr).

---

George : Great to have you on Board. I am familiar with your work.

The I made the comment about Jack Foster and the "old Hands" pouring water over their heads. I did not mean that they never hydrated.
The guys coming into the feed station would grab 2 cups of water. One went down the throat the other over the head.
A few would take more for drinking.

They banned sponges here in NZ (health & safety ???) a few years ago and many Marathon runners used to grab a sponge along with their drink, Sponging water over their heads. I have done exactly that and also carried the sponge with me until I hit another water source whereupon I repeated the process.. Problem was many also sucked on the sponge to get more fluid (Yuk !!) Hence the banning.

One thing I learned from the "old hands' was where every water source on our long runs was.
There is a picture in Murray Halberg's book of him drinking at a waterfall at the Top of the Famous Waiatarua run. I have partaken in that many times as has every runner who has completed that course.
The teenagers I Coach can tell you every water source on all our runs. On my time trial course (5k) we pass 3 sources of "Quality water" at taps. we use them regularly. Re hydration is always important.

------------------
Run easy, Run long

IP: Logged

posted May-07-2007 06:43 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by rengle:
I ran 2:35 with nothing beyond 17 miles. Lydiard shifted from miles based training to time based training because he found that slower runners were out for 4-5 hours doing the 22 mile runs he'd put into his original schedules and he didn't want them doing that becuase he thought they needed to go too slowly to cover that distance. I'm not surprised that you struggled in that one marathon but I'm more inclined to see the 45-50 mile weeks as the problem. I generally think that you need to be around 65 for a reasonable length of time to run a decent marathon. I also think you could manage a decent one off of 50 or so if you've done 50 for a long time. How many of those 45-50 mile weeks had you done?
Most slow marathoners today seem to train on those programs you've mentioned. I don't see that as an endorsment of those programs. It tells me that the programs produce slow runners.

---

At the time, I had also heard that you shouldn't run a marathon if you couldn't do 65 miles per week, and didn't even try until I was well past my prime and had already been running for 15 years - I really wish I had the benefits of today's training plans with lower mileage, alternate weeks for long runs, etc. and had tried one sooner when I was younger and at my peak. As to how many of those 45-50 mile weeks I had done I don't know exactly - over 150 or so? Over 3 years - it's not like I was just building up. Point is regardless of how many years I had run 1:50 minutes as my longest run, with 45-50 mile weeks, my body still needed to build up to longer long runs very gradually. I couldn't jump from 2 hours directly to 2 1/2 or from 2 1/2 directly to 3, etc , and over 3 hours took an even more gradual buildup- so I figure going from 2 directly to a marathon would have been a disaster - I never tried it, never will. My husband was always more of an athlete, and could ramp up a whole lot better than I could, and still found that he did much better when he ran 22 miles in training than when he ran 18, even though 22 miles put him over nobby's 3 hour recommendation and way over your 2 to 2 1/2 hours.

I don't think I'm alone, from some of what I read on the newbie forum. I do think people who can run 2:35 are different from some of the slower runners - not in desire to train hard and long, but more able to recover faster perhaps? Some people need to train for those long distances and times out on the course gradually, and can't jump from running 12-15 to completing 26.2 successfully, and by successfully, I don't mean staggering in the last 10+ because you've never gone that far before. I think the people like Hal Higdon and Jack Fultz who train runners of a lot of different speeds have it right in training all their runners to go at least 20 miles for marathon preparation, regardless of time.

IP: Logged

posted May-07-2007 07:04 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nobby:
Mary:

That's not quite what I'm saying either. Rather, it's like "If you're slow, let's make you faster." I understand that's not everybody's goal. I completely understand some people are totally content with 5-hour marathon. I don't have any intention of making their goals or dreams for them. But I know you can do better.

Thanks for a valuable lesson though. I'll consider it when I coach slower people next time.

Say hi to Jack and Jeff next time you see them. By the way, I think Jack won Boston either 76 or 77.

---

I'm not saying that I think people should be satisfied with 5 hours or 4 hours or 3 hours if they have the potential to go faster. Unfortunately, many of the runners I know are well past their glory days (over 60) and most aren't likely to ever get under 4 hours again. I am saying that if they don't have the potential to go faster than 4 or 5 for that particular marathon whether it's because they are past their prime or newbies who haven't run much at all, then they had better get in some runs of 20 or more, regardless of how long it takes if they want to complete their marathon without needing to stagger in the last several miles.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nobby:I was just catching up with the thread and reading Rengle's post and it occured to me... Now to clarify; my wife or my girl didn't run 2 hours every weekend either. They weren't even that level. We did a progression-alternation program where they would run 1:30 one week, then down to 1:00; maybe do 1:45 and down to 1:15... .[/B]

---

IP: Logged

posted May-07-2007 07:37 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by runbei:
Oops, I need to get in the habit of quoting the original poster...

The point I wanted to make is that the elite start out with very different bodies than the average runner. A study at U. Louisiana of older subjects found that just 10 percent had bodies that were "extremely trainable," while 10 percent had bodies that, in the view of the researchers, weren't trainable at all (at least within the time span of the study; hard to imagine they wouldn't have improved some with continued training). The other 80 percent fell within a broad span of average trainability. Costill was saying essentially the same thing: if you want to make the Olympics, you had better choose your parents well, because you need an exceptionally talented body to start out with.

---

I wouldn't be surprised if I would have come out in that "not trainable at all" category, depending on the length of the study. It always took me a lot longer to improve, compared to others trying to do the same kinds of workouts at the same level. Perhaps ability (or not) to recover quickly has something to do with it?

[This message has been edited by maryt (edited May-07-2007).]

IP: Logged

posted May-07-2007 08:55 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by maryt:
I wouldn't be surprised if I would have come out in that "not trainable at all" category...

---

Mary:

That's a load of crap. You improved from not being able to complete a lap around the track to running 5 hours!? If that's not improvement, I don't know what is... Heck, I've never run that long before!

The point is; as I said before, there are different types of "talent" people have. Some can go fast, some can go far, some don't get hurt easily... They are all TALENT. We need to identify what you've got and capitalize your strengths and enhance your weaknesses.

The way I see it; you have been doing all those 4-hour runs or long runs and you must have very vast network of capillary beds. Now there is a point where you start to sacrifice your suppleness and explosiveness by going so far so slow. So IF your goal is in fact to run fastER, then you need to start balancing the program.

I don't give a damn how old you are; whether you are a 16-year-old or 60-year-old or 80-year-old; we have the ability to improve upon where we are. So what if it takes 3 times longer than others? I'd rather get there eventually than not at all. You go visit letsrun message board; people still argue about Coe vs. Ovett. Coe, seemingly, ran 50 miles a week and Ovett 150 miles a week. They both set the mile world records and won gold medal. If I don't have talent of Coe, I'd rather run 150 miles a week and still get there. Peter Snell was mere 21 years old when he won gold medal. Carlos Lopes was 37 years old. I'd rather be Lopes than giving it all up after 3 months simply because "I'm not progressing like others therefore I don't have talent..."

Again, that's not for everybody NOT because they can't do it; but because they choose NOT to do it. It's so much easier, as someone else said earlier, to say, "Well, I ain't got it so why try?" A lot of people would be saticfied or give it up when they ran around a block for the first time and come back breathless and cold sweating. They CHOSE to stay where they were. You didn't. And look how far you've come! If that's not "talent", I don't know what is.

IP: Logged

posted May-07-2007 10:45 AM               

IP: Logged

posted May-07-2007 12:07 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nobby:
Are you talking about Ritz or Hudson's hill training?

---

Nobby, Hudson trains Ritz and he got the hill climbing stuff from Canova.

IP: Logged

posted May-07-2007 12:18 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by runbei:
David L. Costill, the famous sports physiologist, said recently on Runner's World Daily that the difference between the average human and a world-class marathoner is huge.

Pretty obvious from their training. Top runners do stuff only they could survive. Not something you can "work up to."

---

Baloney, average people have run 150 mile weeks. Yes you can work
up to it, and you can survive the daily grind of mileage.

The difference is in the speedwork. In my prime I couldn't run the interval
workouts the Hanson guys did on my track this winter.

IP: Logged

posted May-07-2007 12:27 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nobby:
PS: By the way, I found that lactic acid thing very interesting. In fact, that's pretty much how I feel about cholestrol. Is it really cholesterol that is bad to have so high or is it actually a symptom of something? I sure as hell don't know. But I don't really think doctors and scientists completely understand our body either. One day they might say lactic acid is bad; now they are saying it's actually good... So while they were saying ti's bad, our body was reacting to it differently? I highly doubt it...

---

That article also contained the words " lactic threshold myth."

If it's a myth, then why are so many great runners training at threshold?

IP: Logged