posted Jun-26-2002 07:58 PM               

So, what makes a fast runner. Is it the ability to crank out miles at an arbitrarily chosen round tripple digit number? What if a mile was 4900 feet or 5500 feet? Would we still have a fixation on 100 mile weeks? Probably. Needless to say, a high running volume will result in an improvement in running for most people. However, what kind of volume are we talking about? What about the other variables of training? After all, there aren't a whole lot of ultra runners in here, are there? Additionally, many of us have no designs to run a marathon soon (or ever for some).

So, with this in mind, I will attempt to simply break down the variables that result in faster race performance.

1. Ability to areobically metabolize glucose or fatty acids (VO2 max)
2. Ability to anaerobically metabolize the same substrates
3. Ability to tolerate the byproducts of anaerobic metabolism
4. Running efficiency
5. Desire.

Let's look at these more closely now.

1. How do we get our bodies to become oxygen using, energy producing, calorie burning machines? There are 2 main variables that determine how much oxygen you can use to produce energy: A. Circulatory system efficiency B. Your muscles ability to use energy delivered to them.

1.A.1. Your heart's job is to pump oxygen rich blood to working muscles and organs. It can only beat at a certain maximum rate, you cannot train your heart to beat faster, only to pump more blood per beat. It turns out that the training required for increasing this STROKE VOLUME is done at somewere around a heart rate of 130-150 beats per minute (Spina, Ogawa, Matin, Coggan, Holloszy, Ehsani; Journal of Applied Physiology, 1992). This is a rate that is quite comfortable for most runners. 130 actually feels really easy if you try it. At higher heart rates, the ventricles (large pumping chambers of the heart) do not have enough time to fill fully, hence Stroke Volume drops. So, for increased Stroke Volume, run as much as you want at an easy pace. Your heart will be much stronger.

1.A.2. Your circulatory system, other than your heart, is a series of tubes that carry blood throughout your body. Training will cause this system to be built larger. Trained runners have a much higher CAPILLARY DENSITY (number of tiny blood vessels which are thin walled enough for gasses and nutrients to enter or leave) than do untrained people. This higher capillary density will allow blood to be delivered to working muscles more effectively. It turns out that this density is also a function of time spent training and not nesecarily dependant on training intensity.

1.B. Once blood is delivered to your muscles, it must have the oxygen in it taken out and used to release energy from the nutrients that you body is trying to metabolize. As you run, you will extract a certain percentage of the oxygen available from your blood as it passes through your muscles. The rest will be passed on through and back toward the heart. It turns out that the pace associated with maximal extraction of oxygen from our blood is just below our ANAEROBIC THRESHOLD (AT). At this pace, a well trainined runner will be using close to 100% of the oxygen delivered to his/her muscles. Running at this pace creates HYPOXIA (a low oxygen state in the muscles). Your body does not like hypoxia and will make adjustments so that your next training session does not produce hypoxia again. Some of the adjustments are: the production of more muscle capillaries, and increased stroke volume (as already stated) also, the muscle cells in the trained area will produce more aerobic enzymes, and more mitochondria (cell structures where energy is extracted from food). These second two training adaptations happen more readily when the muscles are exposed to a low oxygen state. This low oxygen state is not caused by simple, easy running. We need to approach our Anaerobic Threshold for this to occur.(many of us will use tempo runs to address this need). The more time we can spend running at this pace, the greater the adaptation will be. This pace is often described as "Comfortably Fast" or "In the Zone", or "Floating" This is not a hard pace that can only be held for 2 or 3 miles, rather a pace that could be held upwards of 10. As it turns out, the race pace of elite marathoners correlates almost perfectly with the pace that brings about anaerobic threshold. Many elites will trainin at this pace every day for at least one of their training sessions (check the training corner link at www.mariusbakken.com)

These are the 2 MAIN variables in your body's ability to use oxygen. For a miler, this about half of the training picture, as race distance becomes longer, this variable becomes more and more important to the point that many marathoners focus almost exclusively on this variable.

So, for a recap of section one, Train long for your heart and blood vessles while at the same time training intensely enough to lower the oxygen levels in your muscles. Too intensly and you won't be able to go very long, but, too slow and you won't be maximally train your muscles to remove oxygen from your blood.

2. Eventually when running at increasing paces, you will reach a point where your muscles will not receive enough oxygen to meet their energy demands solely with aerobic energy production. At this point, a much less efficient system begins to provide a larger portion of energy than at slower paces. This system is the GLYCOLITIC or anerobic system (I will not discuss ALACTIC anerobic energy production because it has very little berring on distance running). Your body can produce a great deal of energy using this system, however, the byproduct of this system's metabolism is LACTIC ACID. In an Mile race this is about half of the equation and becomes less important as the race distance increases.

To increase your body's ability to maximally produce energy anaerobically, you need to run at a pace fast enough to create a demand for energy greater than can be provided by aerobic metabolism alone. The more you train at this intensity, the greater your ability to use anaerobic metabolism. This is why interval training was invented. You can run 1 mile at mile race pace if you don't take breaks, but you can run 2 or 3 miles at mile race pace if you break it up into increments of 400 meters. When training for this type of ANAEROBIC CAPACITY it is important to take adequate rest between repetitions.

3. As you run fast, lactic acid from anerobic metabolism will begin to build up in your muscles, the faster you run, the more quickly it will build up. An 800 runner will be swimming in it after 650 meters while a 10k runner may only reach super high levels after 24 laps of a 25 lap race. Whatever your race distance, you will be able to run it faster if you can tolerate higher levels of lactate in your blood. There are a number of ways to approach this. Here are my 3 favorites (in no particular order) A. Tempo runs at slightly faster than your AT pace, B. Intervals with short rest which allow your body to only partially remove accumulated lactic acid. C. long slow intervals with only one or 2 minutes of recovery. Some people call these "Cruise Intervals" In reality, they are really an interrupted tempo run.

Your racing goals will dictate which type of tolerance workouts you do. A staple workout for my mid distance runners is 4x4x200 meters at close to 800 meter race pace. We take 40 seconds between 200s and 3-5 minutes between sets. A miler of mine who ran 4:31 this year (with a 2:07 800 PR) did this workout with all of his 200's in 31-32 seconds. My 2 milers might do a very similar workout, just taking out the rest between sets. They might run 16x200 at mile race pace. For instance a 2 miler of mine who ran 10:40 (and 4:57 for the mile) did this workout running about 37 seconds for each 200.

A good tolerance workout for a 5k runner might be a 4 mile tempo run at 10k pace.
There are myriad ways to structure workouts, but that is not really my goal here. Remember, I'm just trying to explain what makes a person run fast for a specified distance

4. If 2 runners have the same VO2 max and can tolerate lactate equally well, but one can run at 5 min pace and the other can run at 4:50 pace using the same amount of energy, then one obviously is a more efficient runner and is more likely to win a race. I will not go deeply into biomechanics here, but, suffice to say it is important. A great way to increase biomechanical efficiency is to run fast. When you run fast, your nervous system gets used to running fast and you will be able to be more relaxed (hence more efficient). Striders after your run are a great way to address this need in a low stress setting.

5. Desire. None of these other factors are important if you do not have the desire to do the training or to race hard. Your training program needs to be something that you like so that you desire to do it. Also, the drudgery of a training program that you do not like will quickly kill your desire to race hard. Some people that really race well, do not train especially hard. Why, they intuitively know that their desire to race will be killed by an overly hard training program or one that does not suit them.

So, the point is:

YOU CANNOT FOCUS SOLELY ON AN ARBITRARY WEEKLY DISTANCE BASED ON AN ANCIENT ARABIC COUNTING SYSTEM OF TALLYING DISTANCE BASED ON SOME RANDOM KING'S STRIDE LENGTH! Each race requires a different training strategy and different runners require different training strategies. I hope that people can read the information here and use it to help them.

Your comments, questions, complaints are anticipated.

[This message has been edited by CoachB (edited Jun-26-2002).]

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posted Jun-26-2002 09:59 PM              

This forum is a competitive one, so, let's be honest. The reason we in here run is so that we can run faster.

I agree, so I'll leave the scientific stuff to the Scientists, and box on with the training methods / volumes, that real runners have proven to be successful.

Also

So, the point is:
YOU CANNOT FOCUS SOLELY ON AN ARBITRARY WEEKLY DISTANCE BASED ON AN ANCIENT ARABIC COUNTING SYSTEM OF TALLYING DISTANCE BASED ON SOME RANDOM KING'S STRIDE LENGTH!

I have never heard of a runner using ancient Arabic counting systems or random kings stride length for tallying there training distances, but I do know that a very large number of competitive runners use guide lines set from the great runners of years gone by, that history has proven their training methods / volumes highly successful at world class level and put them on top of the dias !

So, what makes a fast runner. Is it the ability to crank out miles at an arbitrarily chosen round tripple digit number? What if a mile was 4900 feet or 5500 feet? Would we still have a fixation on 100 mile weeks? Probably. Needless to say, a high running volume will result in an improvement in running for most people. However, what kind of volume are we talking about?
History shows us world records and gold medals are won by building up to the 80 to 120 miles a week range depending on the individual, and staying there consistantly, @ 5:30 to 7:00 pace range depending on the individual, not just for 2 or 3 weeks;
then 4 to 8 weeks of sharpening speed work at the appropriate time.
Throw in a little genetics and a lot of will power.

What about the other variables of training? After all, there aren't a whole lot of ultra runners in here, are there? Additionally, many of us have no designs to run a marathon soon (or ever for some).

If you mention ultra and marathon runners, because of the large component of mental toughness required to succeed then I think any runner could learn a lot from them, and the mental side of the sport is something that a lot of champion milers may well have used over the years.
Sure it is not an hour after hour slog, but the sheer pace at which the best milers race takes more than just fitness to achieve. The body is being deprived of something it likes to have ( Oxygen ). They have learnt to tell their body to wait the agonising 3 and ¾ minutes
Maybe that falls in your catogorie number 5 = Desire (very strong desire )
Your comments, questions, complaints are anticipated.

Good post and lots of fodder for those who like to get into the physiology discussion, I hope you accept my reply as comments, all 2 cents worth.
Cheers.

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posted Jun-26-2002 10:06 PM              

The biggest has been making sure to put anaerobic work in rather late in a track season. One season I tried to transition from being a 800/1600 guy to a 400/800 guy and it was disasterous. I felt good coming off of XC but trying to become a sprinter and doing fast sessions in DEC and JAN peaked me for indoor conference but MARCH, APR, and MAY were completely worthless if not detrimental to my health. I can see how malmo and others can relate that sort of situation with training "fast"(up to 6min pace) in the summer but sprinting and the 5K are world's apart.

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posted Jun-26-2002 10:59 PM            

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posted Jun-27-2002 01:43 AM               

The reason I brought the scientific aspect into play here is because, distance running, as a whole is light years behind other endurance sports as far as using science to enhance workouts. I will paraphrase the cycling comentator Phil Ligget on Lance Armstrongs training vs. the training methods of 30 years ago. It's something like this "Lance has spent so much time working on the wattages and variables of power output, his riding position and gear ratios. When I was racing, they told us to go out and ride 100 miles a day and we'd be alright".

There is that darn 100 again. Different sport, different context, same number.

I am in now way saying that we can throw out all of the hard learned training methods that have developed over the years, but that we can use an understanding of the underlying physiology to help us improve those methods.

denton:

If you are trying to imply that I somehow sidestepped taking sides on this issue, you are right, I am just trying to put out information and let people make decisions on their own.

If you are implying that I am taking a know it all approach, perhaps I am. I have had a long interest in Physiology. Long before I got my MS in it, I wrote a paper in my high school chemistry class called "The Chemistry of Middle Distance Running" I took it upon myself to research the differences between the glycolitic and aerobic metabolic pathways. So, yes, I (humbly) do know more about EP than most people on this board. Has this made me a better runner or coach, I would like to think so. Am I arrogant about it, I try not to be.

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posted Jun-27-2002 02:56 AM               

Congrates on laying the ground work for a good "quality vs quantity" debate. You covered a lot, but there is much more to say - especially concerning strategy. I hope this group will accept your example and not shy away from a good 'applied physiology' discussion.

Physiology is something most people would rather ignore. Many prefer instead to point to specific values from a winner's routine, but everyone knows the trouble with that.

So the next preference is to point to typical values from "all the winners". The trouble with that is "all the winners" did not get there on the same set of numbers no matter how it looks in summary. To emulate blindly the average pace or the average volume of any one group, even the winners, is to seek the middle - not excel to the top.

I hope this thread gets plenty of attention.

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posted Jun-27-2002 04:55 AM              

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posted Jun-27-2002 08:06 AM               

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posted Jun-27-2002 10:10 AM              

Also, as you said point # 5 is by far the most important - desire. It is the will to train, not the will to win, that makes champions. Everyone wants to win, but not everyone wants to put in the necessary work.

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posted Jun-27-2002 10:19 AM            

[This message has been edited by tigger (edited Aug-05-2007).]

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posted Jun-27-2002 12:52 PM              

interesting stuff nonetheless.

quote:

---

Originally posted by CoachB:
Alright, let's not confuse this with a "running is my zen" or I run to feel good post. This forum is a competative one, so, let's be honest. The reason we in here run is so that we can run faster.

So, what makes a fast runner. Is it the ability to crank out miles at an arbitrarily chosen round tripple digit number? What if a mile was 4900 feet or 5500 feet? Would we still have a fixation on 100 mile weeks? Probably. Needless to say, a high running volume will result in an improvement in running for most people. However, what kind of volume are we talking about? What about the other variables of training? After all, there aren't a whole lot of ultra runners in here, are there? Additionally, many of us have no designs to run a marathon soon (or ever for some).

So, with this in mind, I will attempt to simply break down the variables that result in faster race performance.

1. Ability to areobically metabolize glucose or fatty acids (VO2 max)
2. Ability to anaerobically metabolize the same substrates
3. Ability to tolerate the byproducts of anaerobic metabolism
4. Running efficiency
5. Desire.

Let's look at these more closely now.

1. How do we get our bodies to become oxygen using, energy producing, calorie burning machines? There are 2 main variables that determine how much oxygen you can use to produce energy: A. Circulatory system efficiency B. Your muscles ability to use energy delivered to them.

1.A.1. Your heart's job is to pump oxygen rich blood to working muscles and organs. It can only beat at a certain maximum rate, you cannot train your heart to beat faster, only to pump more blood per beat. It turns out that the training required for increasing this STROKE VOLUME is done at somewere around a heart rate of 130-150 beats per minute (Spina, Ogawa, Matin, Coggan, Holloszy, Ehsani; Journal of Applied Physiology, 1992). This is a rate that is quite comfortable for most runners. 130 actually feels really easy if you try it. At higher heart rates, the ventricles (large pumping chambers of the heart) do not have enough time to fill fully, hence Stroke Volume drops. So, for increased Stroke Volume, run as much as you want at an easy pace. Your heart will be much stronger.

1.A.2. Your circulatory system, other than your heart, is a series of tubes that carry blood throughout your body. Training will cause this system to be built larger. Trained runners have a much higher CAPILLARY DENSITY (number of tiny blood vessels which are thin walled enough for gasses and nutrients to enter or leave) than do untrained people. This higher capillary density will allow blood to be delivered to working muscles more effectively. It turns out that this density is also a function of time spent training and not nesecarily dependant on training intensity.

1.B. Once blood is delivered to your muscles, it must have the oxygen in it taken out and used to release energy from the nutrients that you body is trying to metabolize. As you run, you will extract a certain percentage of the oxygen available from your blood as it passes through your muscles. The rest will be passed on through and back toward the heart. It turns out that the pace associated with maximal extraction of oxygen from our blood is just below our ANAEROBIC THRESHOLD (AT). At this pace, a well trainined runner will be using close to 100% of the oxygen delivered to his/her muscles. Running at this pace creates HYPOXIA (a low oxygen state in the muscles). Your body does not like hypoxia and will make adjustments so that your next training session does not produce hypoxia again. Some of the adjustments are: the production of more muscle capillaries, and increased stroke volume (as already stated) also, the muscle cells in the trained area will produce more aerobic enzymes, and more mitochondria (cell structures where energy is extracted from food). These second two training adaptations happen more readily when the muscles are exposed to a low oxygen state. This low oxygen state is not caused by simple, easy running. We need to approach our Anaerobic Threshold for this to occur.(many of us will use tempo runs to address this need). The more time we can spend running at this pace, the greater the adaptation will be. This pace is often described as "Comfortably Fast" or "In the Zone", or "Floating" This is not a hard pace that can only be held for 2 or 3 miles, rather a pace that could be held upwards of 10. As it turns out, the race pace of elite marathoners correlates almost perfectly with the pace that brings about anaerobic threshold. Many elites will trainin at this pace every day for at least one of their training sessions (check the training corner link at www.mariusbakken.com)

These are the 2 MAIN variables in your body's ability to use oxygen. For a miler, this about half of the training picture, as race distance becomes longer, this variable becomes more and more important to the point that many marathoners focus almost exclusively on this variable.

So, for a recap of section one, Train long for your heart and blood vessles while at the same time training intensely enough to lower the oxygen levels in your muscles. Too intensly and you won't be able to go very long, but, too slow and you won't be maximally train your muscles to remove oxygen from your blood.

2. Eventually when running at increasing paces, you will reach a point where your muscles will not receive enough oxygen to meet their energy demands solely with aerobic energy production. At this point, a much less efficient system begins to provide a larger portion of energy than at slower paces. This system is the GLYCOLITIC or anerobic system (I will not discuss ALACTIC anerobic energy production because it has very little berring on distance running). Your body can produce a great deal of energy using this system, however, the byproduct of this system's metabolism is LACTIC ACID. In an Mile race this is about half of the equation and becomes less important as the race distance increases.

To increase your body's ability to maximally produce energy anaerobically, you need to run at a pace fast enough to create a demand for energy greater than can be provided by aerobic metabolism alone. The more you train at this intensity, the greater your ability to use anaerobic metabolism. This is why interval training was invented. You can run 1 mile at mile race pace if you don't take breaks, but you can run 2 or 3 miles at mile race pace if you break it up into increments of 400 meters. When training for this type of ANAEROBIC CAPACITY it is important to take adequate rest between repetitions.

3. As you run fast, lactic acid from anerobic metabolism will begin to build up in your muscles, the faster you run, the more quickly it will build up. An 800 runner will be swimming in it after 650 meters while a 10k runner may only reach super high levels after 24 laps of a 25 lap race. Whatever your race distance, you will be able to run it faster if you can tolerate higher levels of lactate in your blood. There are a number of ways to approach this. Here are my 3 favorites (in no particular order) A. Tempo runs at slightly faster than your AT pace, B. Intervals with short rest which allow your body to only partially remove accumulated lactic acid. C. long slow intervals with only one or 2 minutes of recovery. Some people call these "Cruise Intervals" In reality, they are really an interrupted tempo run.

Your racing goals will dictate which type of tolerance workouts you do. A staple workout for my mid distance runners is 4x4x200 meters at close to 800 meter race pace. We take 40 seconds between 200s and 3-5 minutes between sets. A miler of mine who ran 4:31 this year (with a 2:07 800 PR) did this workout with all of his 200's in 31-32 seconds. My 2 milers might do a very similar workout, just taking out the rest between sets. They might run 16x200 at mile race pace. For instance a 2 miler of mine who ran 10:40 (and 4:57 for the mile) did this workout running about 37 seconds for each 200.

A good tolerance workout for a 5k runner might be a 4 mile tempo run at 10k pace.
There are myriad ways to structure workouts, but that is not really my goal here. Remember, I'm just trying to explain what makes a person run fast for a specified distance

4. If 2 runners have the same VO2 max and can tolerate lactate equally well, but one can run at 5 min pace and the other can run at 4:50 pace using the same amount of energy, then one obviously is a more efficient runner and is more likely to win a race. I will not go deeply into biomechanics here, but, suffice to say it is important. A great way to increase biomechanical efficiency is to run fast. When you run fast, your nervous system gets used to running fast and you will be able to be more relaxed (hence more efficient). Striders after your run are a great way to address this need in a low stress setting.

5. Desire. None of these other factors are important if you do not have the desire to do the training or to race hard. Your training program needs to be something that you like so that you desire to do it. Also, the drudgery of a training program that you do not like will quickly kill your desire to race hard. Some people that really race well, do not train especially hard. Why, they intuitively know that their desire to race will be killed by an overly hard training program or one that does not suit them.

So, the point is:

YOU CANNOT FOCUS SOLELY ON AN ARBITRARY WEEKLY DISTANCE BASED ON AN ANCIENT ARABIC COUNTING SYSTEM OF TALLYING DISTANCE BASED ON SOME RANDOM KING'S STRIDE LENGTH! Each race requires a different training strategy and different runners require different training strategies. I hope that people can read the information here and use it to help them.

Your comments, questions, complaints are anticipated.

[This message has been edited by CoachB (edited Jun-26-2002).]

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posted Jun-27-2002 01:55 PM              

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Chuckster

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posted Jun-27-2002 01:59 PM              

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posted Jun-27-2002 02:56 PM              

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posted Jun-27-2002 03:10 PM              

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posted Jun-27-2002 04:51 PM               

None of what I have posted is new. I do know however that many people do not understand the basics of why we get faster from training, so I was trying to spell it out as simply as I knew how. Sorry about the spelling errors. It was getting late when I typed that out. Plus, if some stuff doesn't make sense, sorry, I was writing off the top of my head

thoner,

I tried to list the variables in order of importance (as I see them) for a distance runner, say racing 5k and up. I didn't even mention AT, but I believe that if you train at just under your AT, you will see the greatest benefit per training mile.

sigis

The types of workouts you do should be based on your short and long term racing goals. If you are a marathoner, focus more on Aerobic capacity. Use lots of long runs. If you are an 800 runner, focus on anaerobic power and lactate tolerance.

jib.

Where do I weigh in? Well, in easyrun's case, I would say since he can already do 60-80 miles a week, but his pace is slow, he needs to spend more time addressing the other factors that make a good runner. My advice to him would be to gradually try to increase the pace at which he runs on his daily runs. Do not confuse that with pushing every run, simply stated, he should run as fast as he can comfortably go.

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posted Jun-27-2002 04:57 PM              

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posted Jun-27-2002 05:05 PM              

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posted Jun-27-2002 05:38 PM               

A better use of a physiology is perspective on your training strategy. For example, why do some runners swear by easy high mileage? Could it be that their weak link is stroke volume or just plain CV fitness or other things cured by this approach? Another runner might champion intervals. Maybe he's short on mitochondria or has trouble buffering high concentrations of positive ions.

Everybody is different. People change over time. You might need something now you didn't in the past. Training may have improved your weak area. You might need to make a change because you now have a different weak area. An understanding of physiology helps you put the pieces in place. It's a way to gain an objective view of your training.

Don't follow too close behind the other guy and don't get stuck on training mantras. There is no holy grail of training routines. High mileage might be right much of the time. A shifting emphases toward quality might be right other times. It depends. On what?

Physiology. Yours.

Coach has laid out a guideline for discussion. He suggests areas where we can focus on the impact of certain kinds of training. For example: #4 Running Efficiency. One argument for high mileage would go as follows: (Sjodin & Swedhan 1985, Scrimgeor 1986) found that simply training over 120km per week did not significantly improve a runners ability to sustain a percentage of VO2max over the marathon distance. However, it did support a progressive increase in running economy as a function of mileage.

There are lots of reasons to blend your particular running cocktail. And there are reasons to change it. As someone said above, *experiment*. Malmo says the world is not flat. Ok, what shape is it? You won't know the shape of your world unless you go there. Physiology is a map. It doesn't say much about shape just direction.

'pede

(where did all that come from? i dunno, just poped out... love this physiology stuff, but no one wants to play. oh.)

BTW coach, I disagree with some of your conclusions above, but that's why we run the race.

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posted Jun-27-2002 06:03 PM               

I'd be interested to hear which points you disagree with.

P.S. 120 km only equals 74 miles, so, we are not really near the high mileages that are being thrown around here.

Also, somebody correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the length of a mile based on the distance walked by some English king in 1000 steps? Now that is arbitrary.

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posted Jun-27-2002 10:20 PM              

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posted Jun-27-2002 11:05 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by CoachB:
I'd be interested to hear which points you disagree with.

---

No points, just a particular conclusion.

Ok, I know I shouldn't have said anything because its a matter of preference more than anything else but if I were coaching easyrun I would want him to do about what he's doing. Here's my rational.

I know it popular to do more balanced training in the off season. Stay closer to race ready, work on all the weak points, etc . But as the coach of a high school junior, I would be more interested in having him show up for in-season training strong as a bull and tough as nails. Fitness miles will do that better and safer than anything else.

I'll worry about his speed when I can monitor what's going on. IMO, this is a good example of different prescriptions for different people. It's easy to point to the kind of training MB does and conclude that he's on the cutting edge. He's doing everything right and getting great results, but MB is a seasoned runner with many years of experience plus a full time staff monitoring all the details. He's not a high school kid on his own in the woods trying test unknown territory.

This is not to say he should not touch speed. Plenty of striders every week, fartleks, tailwind parties, long hills and trips to the barn. Things that take him into anaerobic territory on a regular basis, but don't force him to measure performance and compete against what he did last week. Natural running. Lot's of it and plenty of variety. His focus should be on one thing, getting out the door. If he needs to focus on miles to get out the door as much as possible then so be it. (My preferred units would be time, but you get the idea.)

He won't show up for my first workout as ready as he might with the approach you suggested, but he is more likely to be a) healthy b) mentally fresh c) aerobically strong d) structurally strong, and e) better able to recover from the kind of speed work he's about to do under close supervision.

If he were a junior in college, especially one who has done high mileage in the past, I would lean more toward your prescription and ask him to spend more time developing pace. That's easy to say, but doing it takes running experience. Maturity as a runner makes a lot of difference. The 'right' approach may not include optimum physiological training. (hated to say that)

Anyway, it's just an opinion. Lydiard can be followed by anybody. Coe takes a little more savvy to get right.

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posted Jun-28-2002 06:16 AM              

quote:

---

Originally posted by centipede:

Lydiard can be followed by anybody. Coe takes a little more savvy to get right.

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'pede, could you expand on that comment? As a newbie Lydiard disciple who doesn't know Coe's method I'm curious to understand what you mean

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posted Jun-28-2002 08:32 AM            

So, lets keep it in perspective....Coe was not a marathoner and 98% of folks here are not middle distance runners.

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posted Jun-28-2002 12:16 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by CoachB:
There is that darn 100 again. Different sport, different context, same number.

---

Well, here's another point of reference for 100 miles:

From: Lydiard Clinic, page 9

"I discovered years ago, through trial and error methods, that the best results in this respect were gained by running about 100 miles weekly at near my best aerobic efforts and that supplementary to this, by running at an easier effort as many miles as I possibly could. I also found that by alternating the length of the runs by running 10 miles one day and 20 the next, rather than by running 15 miles a day, I gained better
results."

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[This message has been edited by NoRacer (edited Jun-28-2002).]

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