I don't agree with your definition of slow. (anything slower than threshold).

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https://markmcdermott.substack.com

I think you're right. I was hung up on that definition when I wrote the post.

So let's say that slow is anything below 140-150 beats per minute.

I'm stealing then paraphrasing the stolen quote since I don't remember it exactly nor do I remember from whom or where I saw it:

Without lots of low intensity training your high intensity training isn't going to help you too much

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

I run 60-70 miles per week. Probably 90% or more of it is at a very low HR (sub-140). Once (sometimes twice) per week I'll run much faster and at a much higher intensity (anywhere from 20-40 mins of work per week). It works for me.

That's very helpful. I kinda figured that there must be some faster/speed work in there somewhere.

I've always been an idiot about thinking that to run fast that I need to run fast (or faster) throughout the week- and that gets me injured (eventually).

Ironically, the same formula seems to have difficulty in the cycling discipline?

solid miles dude, nice work

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
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It works for all racing roughly 2min in length or longer. Look up how the world's best 800m track and 200m freestylers train. It's a huge departure from how 400m/100m and down folks train. In swimming 2-4min events are middle distance. 7-15min events are distance events. Swimming and track have a better grasp on "distance" as it applies to physiology than us silly triathletes.

Basically break your training into three zones. 1 < LT1 < 2 < LT2 < 3

LT1 and LT2 are the breakpoints in a lactate curve. Roughly do 80-95% of your time-volume in 1.

Widely accepted... atrociously adopted and misunderstood.

Physiological premise... 1 builds heaps of mitochondria... and it's the nuanced interplay between fatiguing yourself in 1 and occasionally fatiguing yourself in 3 that builds great fitness.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

I think the best way to accept or make sense of it is to surround yourself with some fop guys who train like this. Watch them, ask them questions.

The guys who train slow and race fast are logging bulk hours consistently year round. They don't have one or two big weeks they have months of it. Youll find they dont have an off season and they are confident in themselves that they don't need to prove anything in training.

They will also have their nutrition dialled in to a t so that come raceday they can also fuel themselves to the next level.

I hate to open a can of worms but this is where the hflc crew nail it. Training low, building the aerobic engine they need on minimal carbs then on raceday introducing the carbs they need to fuel their body to the next level.

I've run my 15km and half-marathon PRs (both sub-4min/km) this fall, but the last time I ran that pace before those two races was more than a year ago. In fact, I don't have a single session on my log with an interval faster than 4:30/km. What I do have is consistent, week in week out runs at conversational pace, Z1 for me. I run them with my wife, along the beach, in the neighbourhood or on off-road trails and make sure we're both talking; over time, this progressed from 5:40 pace average to 5:10 on the same routes, and even lower HR than before. I finish a run, shower, and feel like I could go again - which is exactly the point, the next day I do go again.

Get your aerobic system into gear. The body will know what do to with it when it needs to.

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

Read this:

http://www.sportsci.org/...ss.htm#_Toc245522381

The way I look at it is as follows:

Let’s say you have a max heart rate of 175 and your aerobic system maxes out at the 140 used in your example above.

140/175 = 80%

Above 140 you are tapping different energy systems.

Why flog yourself above 140 to increase 20% of the pie.

Increase your aerobic system with increased volume and drastically reduce risk of injury.

You will not be fast at any distance if your injured.

And without high intensity training? If I was short of time and had to skimp on either...

Sooo are we saying the same thing for cycling? Alot of slow ridding? I'm coming off the mentality of high-intensity all the time.

How do you dial in nutrition if you're not training the way you race?

Example: A friend of mine does most a lot of her training in Z2 with short Z4 interval work, and she's fine on her nutritional plan. When she races, she spends more time in Z3 and gets wicked leg cramps and has real GI trouble, regardless of whether she uses her pre-planned, pre-practiced nutrition or grabs what's on the course.

Do other people have that problem? How do you solve it if you're following a philosophy of "train slow, race fast"? We're trying to figure out whether she should be training more in Z3, or attempting to race in Z2. She's heading for her first full this year, and it's a major headache.

You can do a lot of slowtraining and it will work the problem is it’s A LOT of slow training. Hence why you hear about pro cyclists doing 6-7 hour rides frequent they aren’t crushing those rides it just takes a lot for that adaptation to occur.

The key is trying to determine how much time you have to train and how hard you can go to recover and train at that same level consistently.

There is a chart in Training and Racing with a power meter that gives which zones produce what levels of adaptation.

Running slowly is important. But the concept of train slow race fast is incorrect. The real key is "train fast at the right time race fast".

I've had some success running, and never is all or anywhere close to 90% of my volume done slowly even when I was up in the triple digits in weekly volume. And even on days where you go slower, it's important to touch on speed like with doing strides.

On a truly easy day I don't worry about speed or pace at all. And when fit my recovery days will be 2+ minutes slower than marathon pace. But my general aerobic pace that I'd do for an unstructured long run will be more like 45 seconds slower than marathon pace. And then obviously my workouts will have paces much faster than marathon pace.

When I was peaking I had a schedule that usually had a structure where 1 days was a general aerobic day with 10-12 miles, a workout the next day, recovery on day 3, another general aerobic day on day 4, a light workouts on day 5, a long run on day 6 and a recovery day on day 7. And strides on 3-4 of those days. I wouldn't hold this schedule while increasing mileage, but this was when I was in the meat of a build. And very little of it is defined as "slow", and this is a very common type of competitive runners schedule (this is a structure that some used on the old Nike Farm Team under Jack Daniels).

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https://markmcdermott.substack.com

[jstonebarger]


If you're short on time you still need that LIT time. Do you HIT but make sure you've got some LIT in there.


Most triathletes do a great job of being somewhere between LIT & HIT the majority of the time.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Here are two of my workouts that may help illustrate the “how it might work” part. There are two runs that I did the past week on the order of 80-90minutes, 80% or more at at zone1/2 intensity (ventilatory threshold - supported by breathing in through the nose is a good reference if you aren’t on HR). I DO combine speed with slow on the same days (I have been doing about two months of strictly slow and high volume up till now and am dipping in the higher intensity well). I save the speed for late in the routine; for one to see if I can hit the target efforts on tires legs and also preserve as much low effort time as possible (I find that if I go fast early, running at low intensity and meeting the target levels is more difficult).

For this session I worked into 4x 4min @ 5:45/mile pace (For my 3hr marathon VDot)
https://www.movescount.com/moves/move19316408

For this session I did a pretty long run and then worked into a 10min effort at a 5:50-6:00pace with two one-minute reaches into 5:15 area (VO2). I know the VO2 efforts probably need to be higher in number and closer together, but as I mention, just getting into speed so I find there is as much value in the leg turnover that is achieved.
https://www.movescount.com/moves/move193323577

For swim and bike I do exactly the same, although when on the mountain bike, it’s a little more difficult to exercise the discipline around the parameters because sometimes it simply requires efforts that are extraneous to the targets.

Please tell me when/if you get an answer to this. I suffer the same during races (debilitating leg cramps) yet train mostly in Z3. Nutrition plan seems fine (300 k/cal/hr, 20oz water/hr, 2 salts/hr). Not sure I can consume any more?

cramps often fitness related.

exactly.

A lot more frequent than not, "cramping" is just lack of endurance.
Refer back to the start of the topic to figure out how to build further endurance.

I'm curious how this applies to bigger guys. I am overweight, take that for what it is. But for me, to train "slow", I need to basically walk. Even a slow run 11:00/mi eventually gets my heart rate up. Is it still prescribed to do most work at low HR?

run/walk.

progress by running a bit more and walking a bit less each week

More miles, less Z3.

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https://markmcdermott.substack.com

Absolutely! When I roll into my base block, I have no problem and enjoy starting off with several hours of walking and or walk/jog combos. When I have access to a trail system, it becomes a great way to do it as well...jog if I can, walk up the hills, run downhill at an abbreviated step to get some turnover.

Using specific days to dial it in. Pick one session 3 months out then another 4 to 6 weeks out. Something in the range of 100-150k bike with 10 to 15km run off. With the last 2 hours of bike at race pace and run at race pace. It's a tough session but that and then using B and C races is how I dial in my nutrition.

But re your friend. That just sounds like she isn't fit enough to race at that level. Nothing to do with nutrition.

I just got back from a ride with a mate who hasn't trained all week. He blew me away in 2x15min efforts at the end of the ride where I stuck to IM power and he just rode off. Ironman efforts in training aren't "sexy" enough for most triathletes. It's slow grinding and tbh it hurts with a week worth of training under your belt. If you haven't logged bulk hours in the week then slow on the weekend isn't going to be a magic bullet.

As I said in my first post its months and years of consistency in that aerobic zone which makes people fast. Not one or two sessions a week.

I run at 15min/mile pace and used to race professionally. It takes time but basically you have to learn how to ride/run slowly. I never took the time to do so in the pool (trials cuts growing up) and I now struggle to know how to swim slowly. So i'm completely out of shape and gasping for air after a 100 because my programming only knows how to swim fast. I'm working on it.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

Thanks. Not so hard when you stop swimming (not since Kona 2014) and barely ride a bike anymore.

Are you seriously running a 15 min mile?

Yup, it's also allowed me to refine my stride mechanics and it's easiest to do on the treadmill. Outside I've got the HRM on and might walk for a tad if the BPMs start to creep up too high. I've had my LT1/2 tested a couple times and we know fairly well where my heart rate lies on that spectrum.

Other data points: I've had 5 folks run under 3:10 OTB in a full. 3 of them it happened after I got them to do 90% of their running at 8:30s or slower. My best OTB mary is 3:15. When i did that my "out the door pace that i can't run any slower then" was ~7:15. :-p

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

what's going on with you... are you back?

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
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Interesting about swim. My daughter's swim team has a new coach, who has coached some Olympians thru their development years, and my biggest takeaway from talking to him is how terrible he thinks the kids are at swimming at easy effort (I would say slow, but it's not that) in that they all previously raced every set and they do not know how to hold form while going easier. It's a much more aerobic based training (and a large volume increase) but seems to be working with the kids. But yeah, lots more slowing them down than the previous coach.

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

So true. I do 80% of my running like 9;30 pace with lots of hills. I smile when i have friends tell me how fast they run in training but not very fast in races.

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I am 56. I qualified for the 2018 Boston Marathon in March 2017. My PR at the time was 3:59. I needed a 3:37 to realistically get in. I ran a 3:28. Through the winter all I did was run on the treadmill as fast as my legs would let me run. Never anything more than 7 miles. I ran to sheer exhaustion. I neeed a nap afterward to function properly. I figured if you want to race fast you need to train fast. The proof was in the pudding, as they say. The pace I needed to run 26.2 miles felt like I was standing
still. This run slow to race fast stuff makes no sense. Junk science for coaches to use as a means of justifying their existence.

I think you just discovered N=1 vs aggregate research methods. Congrats. Please don't try to coach anyone.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
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To be fair - 9:30 with lots of hills out here in Washington state is pretty fast depending upon the hills :)

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

Completely agree with you Marky. Just plain stupid training there.....

My best running was also with low HR based, easy effort. Mark Allen says he was always easy effort based and capped HR. Went from walking up hills to 5:30 pace based on easy miles. I've used that approach and it certainly does work.

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thats good, but I would posit that it’s not that fast (even for 56...you’ve got a 2:25 sitting at the WR). Looks like you could get that time down by changing up your training. Do a lot more slow stuff and then you’ll be able to run even faster when you do your treadmill sets.

Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread.

I appreciate your input!

No. A 15 minute mile is called walking.

The neuromuscular firing patterns for walking are distinct from those used for running. You can walk a 6min mile or you can run a 6min mile (thinking Oly speed walkers) but you're training two different things.

I'm sure Eliud Kipchoge, if he were overly simplistic, might refer to 7min miles as walking but then again he starts his runs in the 9min range and occasionally ends 10 mile runs with average paces above 8min miles so perhaps he understands nuance.

*source: personal communication with Phil Skiba who worked with him on Breaking2

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

I find MA and that lot kinda funny. They are prescribing the right things but when they try to science-y explain it's best to put the ear plugs in. :)

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

Somewhat true. That said, the method works.

Cool insight, thanks for sharing. I've read some of Dave Marsh's stuff and it's really awesome to see how swim coaches are approaching training these days as opposed to what I did growing up. When I hear athletes protest "oh, i can't run that slow, that's walking" I'm reminded of how I felt the_exact_same_way. And then I learned, first by observing and then by progressively finding that sweet spot where I needed to be. Easier with run and bike cuz I could use HR to keep me in check but now, hoping back into the water for the first time in 8 years armed with all the knowledge i've acquired being the coach, finding the struggle on the swim to be monumental. Also find it hilarious that i still default to a 1:10ish per hundred stroke despite zero fitness.

Where do your kids train?

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

I'm having a momentary lapse in sanity.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

This post really tells us nothing. That winter even though you ran fast might have been the most consistent training you had done for all we know.

Imo any healthy male your age with a good base and consistent training should be able to BQ regardless of what method they use. Is 3.28 the best you can produce though? Not likely.

For sure. There's a half mile up behind Padden than I don't think I've ever covered in less than six minutes. There are many places where pace becomes an irrelevant metric.

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Any run that doesn't include pooping in someone's front yard is a win.

I’ve done tris in the past but am currently only a runner. I’ve come to realize that I am guilty of making my hard runs not hard enough and my easy runs not nearly easy enough. As I get older (currently 36) and definitely more injury prone I’m looking to start training the right way. My question is what does a typical week look like and where does the hard stuff fit in?

For a little context marathon PR is 2:48 (5 years ago, also my last marathon—lots of layoffs due to injury). Most recent race I trained for was a 10 miler back in May—59:47. My basic philosophy has always been 3 main runs—tempo (done in treadmill to lock in pace), medium long, long. In my mind tempo meant 40-45 minutes of a 60 minute run at best pace I could hold—usually 6:15 as I got closer to race day. And then two or three other runs where I’d just run. For the record I’m a horrible judge of pace and always run faster than I think I am.

Currently training for my first 50K (in the mountains of western Virginia) in March and then the 10 miler in May. And currently about 50-55 miles per week on 5-6 runs. What should a typical week look like for me (understanding that the typical week will likely look somewhat different when I transition to the 10 miler, or will it)?

Thanks all.

Walking, running, and cycling all use essentially the same motor pattern. Even running or pedaling backwards only results in modest differences.

I've been running for 45 years. Started tris about 10- years ago. I always did every workout hard. That's a throw back to the high school track days.
I've been reading about this 90% slowwwww and 10% super fast for several years but could not bring myself to do it. Last year I finally caved. It was so weird trying to keep my HR below 130. We'll, at my annual 10K race on July 4th, I decided to run the whole thing easy. Much to my amazement, the whole race seamed easy and I ran my best time in 11 years.

In the past when I did everything hard, I would get to the point some weeks where I just had to take days off. I was so tired and I could feel my throat getting scratchy. I used to get sick a couple times a year.

I think it's about allowing time for recovery and "active recovery" on those easy days. I have not been sick in over a year.

I'm sold on the new strategy, especially since I turn 60 this year.

Sounds to me as if he has discovered that, over a broad range of exercise intensities (and hence durations), the physiological adaptations to training are really all the same. Factors such as specificity, overload, motivation, are therefore far more important to the final result.

IOW, there's more than one way to skin the training cat...only what I like to call "training faddists" (akin to food faddists) mistakenly believe that there is only "one true way.'

I have spent much of my endurance career somewhere in the black hole between slow and fast.... too fast on my slow days and too slow on my fast days.

After a running injury in the second half of 2017 that required multiple months off from running, I have slowly built my training back up, but I'm running slower than ever. Except when I run fast. Then I'm running faster than ever ;-)

Who knew it worked like that? (I know, I know, every decent endurance coach and athlete) Better late than never for me.

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----------------------------
Jason
None of the secrets of success will work unless you do.

Andy maybe its like the study they did on 3 diet types.
High carb low fat.
Moderate carb/fat
Low carb high fat.

All three had positive results.

Though only low carb high fat worked for everyone.

The problem with train slow is most don't give it the time or volume it needs. Getting home from a long ride with a 27kph average isn't sexy enough to post on insta or Facebook so people don't like it. They also don't like their mates riding away from them when they put in an effort.

The proof is in the pudding that it works and the guys getting the results are going to continue to dominate especially at IM distance while the guys worrying about training hard will continue to come up with excuses on raceday. Funny how it's generally nutrition...

She's at the Bellingham Bay swim team in Bellingham, WA. Pretty good little swimmer, 52.91 100 free, 14yo. Really loving the new levels she is reaching with easy and HARD training.

The week before Christmas they had triples and a couple 19-20K days - today for her and some teammates (one swimming at the Pro Series next weekend) it was 4x100 all out on 8:00. I find that I am learning a lot just watching some different methodology and someone who really seems to know their stuff.

I am not even in her world lol, but I hear you - I will try and swim at 1:20s even though I've been out of the pool for a few months next week. Fun times...

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

Many hard runs in this area have been over 11:00/mile and not an easy one among them!

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

What's a good way to estimate these without a lab?

Also, I'm thinking there must be a lower bound, as in it is possible to go too slow? Particularly if you don't have time for mega hours.

Don’t disagree but with running (which is what that athletes personal reference was) we are talking increasing durability or sustainability first before you start talking about various creative ways to manipulate training load.

Maurice

Yeah, running is a different animal than cycling when it comes to overuse injury risk. That's clearly not what motivated Marky's comments, though.

I don't see many people running. If I saw a person running a 12-15:00 minute mile then I might wonder if I should stop and offer aid to him/her (seriously, I just don't see anybody running that slowly). The few runners that I see are usually clipping off 8-9 minute miles, which is what I used to call a tempo run, but now it seems like every runner that I see is running a tempo run at each outing.

As opposed to what? You think people used to do more endurance? Or threshold?

This was specific to running hills in our area. But I'm very used to running 10:00/mile and while I am not fast - I do have a 16:55 5k PR, like 1:21 half without actually racing one...and my slow run pace is slower than most people who I outrun by 7-10 minutes in a 5k.

11:00/mile in our area can be quite hard - that was the case that CCF and I (both in Bellingham) were making.

15:00/mile would be difficult - I know what MarkyV is saying. It took a lot to learn to run 10s.

8-9 minute miles for a 25 min 5k runner would basically be a tempo - so you are right there!

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

I swam through college and can definitely attest to the advantage of taking it easy more often. My freshman year I worked harder than anyone on the team (have the award to prove it), and raced every interval of every set. I was a mediocre swimmer on that team. I actually got laughed at when I told someone else on the team that my goal was to be the best on the team. Sophomore year both my coaches (one a former US Olympic trials qualifier, the other a Turkish Olympian) told me I was working too hard and needed to slow down. I was told to pick just one set per workout to focus on, and go easy for all the rest. I didn't fully believe it, but with the pedigree of my coaches I listened. That year I drastically improved and won a conference championship, qualified for NCAAs (D2), and earned All-American on a relay. I stuck with it and and was team MVP my Jr and Sr year (who's !aughing now!).

I always assumed that slowing down made me faster because I could focus on technique, and I'm sure that was part of it, but the past few years I've refined my Tri training and come to understand that going slow really does a lot of things physiologically to help you adapt and improve. And somehow this applies whether it is my 1-2 minute swimming races, or my 1-2 hour triathlons (or presumably longer ones, but I don't race those much anymore).

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Powertap / Cycleops / Saris

Thats's awesome. How does she like the day in day out of "being a swimmer"?


Triples? 😳

I have a few athletes whose kids are getting into higher levels of competitive swimming and it's fun to chat with them about what they "see" when they observe a practice. So many good things both sport and life that come out of being a dedicated swimmer.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

Is this another wording for midlife crisis? Even though the math could be right, you seem too young for one of those ;)

When I watch her and her teammates who she has been with since about 8, they amaze me. They show up, day after day, work their tales off, and the life lessons are so numerous. It makes me wish I had that kind of focus when I was a kid. If it leads somewhere great - that's awesome - but already it's taught her so many lessons if she never gets in a pool again.

Triples aren't usual - and it was easily the most those kids had ever swam for sure that week!

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

I'm not sure. When I first got tested in this space, because i was such a tweener rider (zone 2 above), I didn't _feel_ anything at that point, it just seemed arbitrary. I've seen all sorts of subjective explanations about how one might be able to figure it out but they just seem quite loose and imprecise. When/If you find one, let me know! The lab I send folks to and go to myself is a stickler for the test being the best way.


With running I'd argue no. Mostly because the vast majority of triathletes don't run enough as well as the chassis benefits being very much worth it (soft tissue adaptation to the pounding - durability). With swimming I'd say no as well, but there's some caveats there. Lots thrash just to achieve what they've got, asking them to go slower is like asking an airplane to stall. I deal with this when I occasionally skate ski. There's two gears in these situations, stop and go. There's also the spectrum argument that what most people think is "too slow" is actually just right. That's a bit subjective tho in terms of this discussion. As for riding... if your LT1 is 200w and you are riding around at 100w then yeah, that's not doing much for ya. Remember that the fitness spectrum is additive. So when doing Z2 work you are also doing Z1 work. The pitfall is when you extrapolate that and end up in the SST myopia.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

My first was at 25, the second at 28.

Something finally lit a fire under my ass (not sure what) in a way to be motivating. Not sure what it is but I'm glad it's going :)

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
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This is a really good discussion, I'm enjoying it. One question, regarding your athletes who have run 3:10 off the bike on mostly 'slow' training: how did they discover their goal pace? Getting off the bike and just running until you blow seems like a bad idea. I assume you had them doing some sort of weekly tempo runs (as per BarryP), maybe as bricks, to dial in goal pace?

This season I'm going to follow the BarryP plan of frequent runs, consistency, and weekly tempo runs starting 8-10 weeks before my first race. I've never done a 'quantity over quality' program before. But, I've never had a decent run split before either, so what do I have to lose?

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Any run that doesn't include pooping in someone's front yard is a win.

You need to change your mindset - running slow doesn't mean compromising on "quality". Good luck with the plan!

Seems to me that the important thing to improving is increasing the training load/stress, which is a combination of time and intensity. How best to do that (i.e. how best to skin the cat) depends on your personal strengths/limiters.

In my case, and I suspect I'm fairly typical for many:

- In running my main limiter is injury. Running doesn't really take that much time, but if I do a lot of intensity/speedwork I tend to injure myself pretty rapidly. So my best approach is to run frequently but at low intensity, which allows me to build my training load without getting injured

- In cycling my main limiter is time. I have 2 young kids, a full-on job and a wife with a career. I typically "only" train 10-12 hours/week, if including running and swimming then realistically I can't regularly spend more than about 5-6 hours in the saddle and that's nowhere near enough to keep improving on low intensity. My best option for increasing my training load and thus improving in cycling is therefore to incorporate a fair amount of intensity, typically a lot of sweet spot and threshold work. I also find that this tends to give some cross-training benefits to running - I'm pretty sure that my running results from low intensity training are better for having done high intensity in other sports than if I was doing low intensity across the board, however many hours that included

- In swimming my main limiter is getting to the pool enough, which as I don't have a swimming background means that technique is also a limiter. Motivation is also a factor since I don't enjoy swimming as much as running since I'm relatively crap at it. I think in an ideal world my swimming approach would be both high volume and with plenty of intensity. In my frequency- and motivation-limited world it tends to get relegated to 2 sessions/week, in which I incorporate as much intensity as I can, but which is really only enough for maintenance and not much improvement

Meaning...??

A.k.a., "it's your glycogen budget - spend it wisely."

I disagree for the sake of endurance training because glycogen is exhausted after about 90-120 minutes and then you switch to other fuels- either you burn fat, muscle, or you eat while training.

You seem to have missed my point. Yes, you will run low on glycogen after a couple hours of *high intensity* exercise, such that after that you must reduce the intensity. There is also a limit to the rate of glycogen resynthesis, even if you consume a high carbohydrate diet. Ergo, when faced with such constraints, you should design your training program accordingly.

ETA: CHO supplementation during exercise can enhance performance, but at the end of the day, there is a limit to which plasma-borne glucose can substitute for muscle glycogen.

We always have to remember two things:

1: There is a time and a place for each pace (or level of effort)

2: Everyone reacts different to a certain stimulus

I think polarized training works to a great extent, but there is more to training than the hard/easy philosophy.

For longer races, (e.g. marathon, 70.3, Ironman) this "middle zone", or racepace or threshold is usefull immediately before the race. (Law of specificity). For shorter races, those zones can be incorporated to the foundational period (if it is an experienced athlete that is already able to handle high volume).

The elite marathon times have progressed a lot over the last decade and so has the training. I know, Kenyans can run very slowly in training if necessary. But they also do tempos in the middle zone, they do long runs fast and they do fartleks with efforts above racepace with "recoveries" that are not slow but brisk.

Developing african runners (training for shorter distances) do runs where they start slow and progress and build in speed. They accumulate a lot of time just below threshold and they sometimes do such runs in the base phase day after day.

I give you an example. Last year over the winter I run around 40 miles a week with no "hard" workouts at all. I went out and run as fast as I wanted to and as it felt right. Sometimes when I was tired it was slow. But often it was quite brisk but always under control. I did runs like that, where I just let it flow, and I did some strides and nothing more, as it was my base phase.
After that, i run a 10k and I expected it to be a shock to my body. But it wasn't. I run 33.30 and that was a PB by half a minute.

After that I was ready for some really fast intervals on the track. Now my training got more polarized. I run hard in workouts and slow in all my other runs. My winter of brisk running was a good base from where I could develop further. Unfortunately I was not able to see the benefits as I missed the summer road racing season due to a mild concussion.

When I came back, I prepared for a half marathon. Now I did fast long runs and treshold intervals. I run a 1.13 over a hilly course.

This winter my goal is to get to higher mileage. So I will slow it down and take it easy. But there will again come a phase where I will do a lot of brisk running and then again a bit more of a polarized approach.

All I want to say is that there is not a general rule for too slow or too fast. It always depends on the context. It is important that you set stimuli that are demanding for your body. That can be more miles (so you need to slow down) or it can mean faster miles or it can mean very fast workouts (so you need to slow down during all the other runs). And it is important to prepare fot the specificity of your event. You don't need to start running long runs ar racepace in January for your Ironman in August. But come July, it makes sense to do that.

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

Howdy Professor,

Quick tangent Q, I thought Bellingham was flat(ish)? North side of town at least? South, yeah, hilly. I'm guessing you and DFRU live on the south side?

Goal pace I use Alvaro's full/half-IM run charts in tandem with our critical pace testing (5ks mostly) to get a rough approximation. So we have a CP number in our head and a rough OTB IM pace then, profile the athlete based on bike endurance, run durability, and run endurance to refine that figure then do periodic bouts at it.

I think of bricks as a mental and time useful construct. Only place running OTB is needed to be trained as a skill is ITU.

Thinking back to the three dudes in my head... 2 just were SST'rs all over the place (i inherited 1 from endurance nation), so getting them to not run at near full tilt all the time and actually not be aerobically and physically broken was 75% of the solution. The other fella was just a gradual progression of sensible training over a longer period of time. He was never doing anything wrong, he just needed more time to improve his talent.

The week mainly looks like "just run" 5-9x a week and one fast session. One of the "just runs" is a long run or broken long run. Some of the "just runs" have strides or hill bounds to finish. There's very little "sexy" in it.

Reach out any time and good luck with the BP plan!

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
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Great stuff there. Too much "sexy" generally injures people...haha.

Bellingham north and west is pretty flat. But to get to the mountain trails is a 15 minute drive and then it's just nice, wonderful trail running mecca. South is indeed hilly though!

Brent

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

Insofar as running is concerned, the peer-reviewed literature is virtually unanimously in favor of lots of miles performed at low intensities, and a small proportion performed at high intensities. And this strategy appears to hold for all endurance events, even down to 1600m. My anecdote is that this strategy is utter crap for me. I should mention that I make a living as a research scientist, so it's almost painful and blasphemous for me to disagree with the published consensus. I can elaborate on exactly how my performance declined if anyone is so interested. Now (similar to before the ~9 month slow training program) there's never an exercise session that I engage in that I'm not trying to achieve some sort of PR. Warmup and cool down is the only time I'll ever spend any time at or below ~80% heart rate reserve. For me, intensity has been vastly more productive than duration. For reference, the training plan I followed is copied below.
https://www.runnersworld.com/race-training/solving-the-5k-puzzle

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Yep, you're pretty much right. Flat between here and the border (heading north and west) but lots of hills/mountains surrounding town. DFRU is wrong when he says 15 minute drive, but that's just because I'm lucky. :)

There are some good road hills, but most of the longer climbs are on gravel or dirt (hence my earlier statements about 10-12 minute miles running). Several great 30+ minute (biking) climbs on gravel fire roads or hard pack dirt (lots of excellent single track as well, but that's a different discussion). It's actually really great for climbing, hop on your hardtail or CX bike and head into the hills. The longest road climbs are in the 7-10 minute range, but it's also very popular to head towards Mt. Baker and do a true HC climb.

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Any run that doesn't include pooping in someone's front yard is a win.

both of you reference west as flat....

Um.....


;)

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

That area gets more hilly when it's windy.

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Any run that doesn't include pooping in someone's front yard is a win.

Just to be clear:

You are a former pro racer and you do the majority of your running at a 11-15:00 min/mile pace?

How did you come about that? I presume that to win races that you were running off the bike at <7:00 min/mile pace (regardless of distance). Did you change your formula?

If you changed your formula, then why did you change?

Actually, it's not. Not only have the vast majority of studies of polarized training entailed sports other than running, even ones of other sports aren't entirely consistent. For example, when Seiler et al. recently revisited the issue of optimal interval intensity/duration, this time 'round longer intervals at a lower intensity came out on top:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21812820

(This sort of variability, of course, is precisely what you would expect when doing small n training studies, which is why trying to define the "perfect" training plan using such an approach is a rather naive waste of time.)

I raced 2007 to 2009 then stopped because my endocrine system went in the shitter (bad training, bad nutritionist, and a bad accident). I've been coaching since 2005.

Personally I've sat on the couch for the last 8 years and done jack shit (sorta "had to" to fix my system). But I'd always tinker in the lab and with protocols before subjecting my peeps to them.

I've only recently started training with a purpose again.

My CP on the run is roughly 9:4x ish. My LT1 breakpoint occurs ~125 BPMs. At 120 BPMs while jogging on the treadmill this happens around 4.0mph. This is all likely to change shortly (hopefully!!!) but the point I'm trying to make is opening folks' minds as to what is appropriate pacing. FWIW LT1 on the bike is ~130 BPMs and for many of my rides my AP is 130-140w. CP on the bike is 290ish. I'm also at 5500 feet.

When a dude who runs a marathon in 2:03 jogs 8min miles on a regular basis, I take notice. When a dude with a 420w CP averages below 200w for most of his rides, I take notice.


As we learn more we adapt. What was relevant in 2005 is now discarded as the science has moved on and we've become more informed about how to approach training.

ETA: tri lifetime bests for CP for swim/bike/run 1:03y/375w/5:45

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

I'll have to go through the literature again, but my recollection (again, running only) was that the polarized approach, emphasizing low intensity efforts, produced consistently favorable results across the board of measurable variables. I scanned everything from early 2000s to 2016. It's certainly possible that I exaggerated the consensus out of shock; it's so completely counterintuitive that challenging a physiological system LESS could ever produce anything other than LESS positive acclimation. Tangentially, I also distinctly recall the absence of a satisfactory mechanistic explanation. And I still haven't come across one.

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good post

I guess for triathlon the more interesting question is should all diciplines trained the same way or should we do most of the slower stuff on the bike, as this is where we spend the most time on and it has less injury risks than running. etc.

Canova for instance seems to want to push more miles , run faster also for the easy running and focus more on recover better.
I like a lot what Seiller is doing but it also a bit to faddist in my mind.

It does seem that way and who is making it more so? Seiler or the faddist?

I watched this play out on one particular forum a few years ago and there were some really pushing polarized training and being overly obnoxious to anyone sticking to the pyramidal approach. But I think a bunch of us can see how to take all these approaches and put them into the tool box of our training methods and know when one or the other may be the better fit for our goals. For me personally I don't see the polarized tool getting much use out of my toolbox because I have limited training time. When I get done with training in the evening and upload to Strava and I see some of the pros and former pros posting rides on Strava and they have been out riding all day every day while the rest of us are working. If that was my typical day to be out on the bike than I might follow that approach.


IMO - the faddist are pushing polarized more aggressively than Seiler and many of them still cannot figure out how Seiler has clumped his three zones. It is interesting to see them get all militant about the approach and yet in a few pages of discussion begin to argue amongst themselves over how intense is zone 1.

I'm not sure Faddist is the right way to characterize it (only because fad to me suggests short lived and contemporary). Long and slow with fractional hard fast (when I say fractional I do about 10-20% mostly above threshold) has been in my training lexicon for 22 years and I was schooled by crusty old Swedish XC skiers plying the Norbotten Gnar who had been doing the same for who knows how long.

Awesome, eye opening post Marky. Thanks for this. Really good info....

No disagreement at all, what do you think is the right word ?

Cornflakes - taste them again for the first time :)

whewdoggie :-) that's a good bit of time above threshold. Is that an annual measure?

I compiled my data back in November (for the span of data between 2014 and 2017*) after watching the most recent Seiler video. I follow more of the pyramidal approach, but I am more of a recreational roadie that enjoys a TT type pace while out solo. I rarely have a personal reason to sprint or go to Pmax. I understand why competitive road cyclists would train more to be well-rounded and especially to have that top end in a crit or sprint.

* I have data from training back to 2008 logged in with WKO3, but only have from 2014 in WKO4. Note that these charts do not actually parse rolling average of power and take power in segments as recorded by the power meter so it may not mean much. I compiled the years because the Seiler seemed to be focused on lifetime hours trained for elite athletes and that is what I wanted to see with this particular chart.

Link image below

It is a lot and now that I see it highlighted not accurate from a total year / lifetime training picture. Its not year-round and I will build to that distribution leading into a race period.

For example, my November / December block has been nothing but slow / volume only. I'm starting to build intensity this month and looking at my 7 day log stats show the hard stuff comprises 3% of the time (based on HR intensity).

When I dream up my workouts, I look at with the eye of achieving that 10-20% target...for example, one that I'd like to do in about 4-6 weeks time is 3 hrs of work (running), first two hours easy with the last hour comprised of 8-10 interval paced efforts 3-4 minutes in duration down to full recovery topped off with a 4 minute all out (1500ish TT) ->180minutes, 30ish of which are intense.

Depending on how the race season is stacked, I may be spending a boat load of time at race pace anyhow so the effort profile tends to go more pyramidal as a consequence.

I'm not sure what the point of that 3 hour run is. Literally, no point. Whatever stimulus you're going for in the last hour you won't get as you'll be too tired. What do you think you'll get from this?

Here was another view from my November post that shows the 90 day period. Even being in rehab mode from a torn PCL in a June crash and having to camp out at lower intensities I still ventured into some higher level intensities at times. So even though my annual and multi-year data shows a very small amount of time in higher intensities I would not call myself a train slow or train low kind of guy. I find it interesting that a number of people think that those of us steady state types are taking it easy or cruising around on a country road and avoid anaerobic moments. :-)

When I look at it from a 90 day view and while I was injured (screenshot attached) I am not scared of hitting those higher intensities when I want and when I feel like it. I have one session I created called Minute Clinic, which is an hour of 1 minute on at FRC+ and one minute 100 watts. I do this for however long I can manage for the session. Don't count that session for anything other than just breaking up the monotony of day to day extensive aerobic training every once in a while. I love HIIT, but train mostly for endurance. It compiles at a very fractional amount in a year though.

Image link for larger view

I'll see in April what the point is (was?), but I'll let you know when I've done it. I may just be KoM hunting?

Hey thanks for the candid response.

This question is directed at the forum in general:

If staying healthy, running slow, and sprinkling in some > LT threshold work is what leads to better/faster performance (many of us are type A persons so going avoiding going too hard is a learned skill), then what about the athlete who has a job/occupation where walking at a fast pace is a 5-10 hr daily occurrence (like an ER nurse)? Wouldn't it follow that the athlete would experience better results than a person who is sedentary, but does the same (or comparable) training program?

How much does a person hurt his/her performance ability by sitting at a computer all day?

I'll try and take a stab at this (one element of my ex phys research has tangented away from high performance and into holistic well being). Read up on what Dr. Inigo San Milan is doing in this space. He's got some great stuff.

We know that athletes that move throughout the day retain more of the fitness they earned in their training as opposed to those that are 8 hour desk jockeys. At what point that activity level becomes detrimental to recovery? I'm not sure what that is.

I *believe* Yann Le Meur (the guy that does the ex phys graphics on twitter) has made a graphical representation of the study that I'm referring to. I can't recall off the top of my head the exacts of how much better a daily active person is vs a desk jockey.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

FWIW, cyclists have long employed long training sessions that build to race pace during the last hour or so. The approach also seems to be catching on in running (or runners have also been doing it all along, and I'm just getting wind of it). It can be bit risky, but also seems to be rather effective, perhaps because glycogen depletion, per session, seems to be one of the triggers of the metabolic adaptations to training.

I get this, and doing a long run with some race pace or maybe even slightly faster can be useful. I don't know many "good" runners that would do what the guy I replied to is doing. He mentioned interval pace, which leads me to believe he is talking Daniels I pace which is more of a vO2max type of stimulus, and doing it after already running 2 hours. Maybe I'm way outta the loop, but doing 30 minutes of vO2max effort stuff after already having run 16-18 miles doesn't seem to have any real point. Running the 2nd hour of a 2 hour run at marathon pace? Makes total sense.

I'd also add it's not really "faddist" because the alternative strategies, e.g. "the 2x20" threshold religion" have no more solid basis. They're just "fads" that are now accepted as mainstream doctrine.

As Coggan said you can get your training stimulus over a wide range. He's probably right that, at this point, seeking the "perfect stimulus plan" is probably folly. But that doesn't mean that it's wrong to experiment with certain stimulus patterns based on anecdotal evidence. A training plan needs *some* kind of governing structure.

to quote myself,

Never underestimate how much improvement you can get from consistent aerobic training. There was a great interview with Peter Snell at Runners' World, but it's vanished now. Luckily letsrun has preserved it (about a third of the way down the page).
"Most physiologists are trained on the idea of specificity, and simply can't understand that slow training makes you faster. "
Bear in mind that Dr. Snell is himself a physiologist.

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"It is a good feeling for old men who have begun to fear failure, any sort of failure, to set a schedule for exercise and stick to it. If an aging man can run a distance of three miles, for instance, he knows that whatever his other failures may be, he is not completely wasted away." Romain Gary, SI interview

from the Peter Snell interview mentioned in my last post,
"When you run at a moderate pace, your slow twitch muscle fibers are the first ones recruited. But if you run far enough, they become glycogen depleted and can no longer contract, so eventually the fast twitch fibers are recruited."
Slow training trains all the parts..

Also as MarkyV mentioned - mitochondria and capillary development happens at all training speeds, but the slower training (specifically for running here) allows more consistency in training, which ends up maximizing the training effects. HIT and HIIT always ends in tears and breakdowns unless very carefully coached/monitored.

My fault, I wasn't specific enough. Elevated capillarity and mitochondrial kinetics are classic explanations for longer endurance events (or those where the peripheral utilization of oxygen limits performance), as they allow you to work at an increasing percentage of max VO2. This is logical. My question is, what are the mechanisms by which slow training improves performance in VO2 max-dominated events, where the local ability to process oxygen outstrips the heart's ability to deliver it.

And I don't know about Peter Snell's explanation. With all due respect, I'd be surprised if he could find a single peer reviewed reference to support that claim, regardless of the race distance.

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Even ignoring the importance of increases in a-vO2diff to training-induced improvements in VO2max, one could hypothesize that it takes a very large volume of training to maximize central cardiac adaptations, and hence maximal cardiac output.


Snell's statement is absolutely correct. (This is undergraduate exercise physiology textbook-level knowledge.)

And surely it isn't just about the training effect and adaptation from any one session. It is probably quite easy to demonstrate how one session provides a more optimal set of adaptations than another. The art surely is in writing a plan, containing multiple sessions across all relevant disciplines, that creates training stress yet allows adaptation through sufficient recovery. The art is in balancing the stress and the recovery in a way that creates the best long term adaptation, and then the fine art is in writing a more nuanced plan in such a way as to target your adaptation curve to maximise at the right time for your most important event.

I'm no coach or sports scientist, just an avid reader round these parts.. but it seems very important to me to take a step back, and then another step back again and look at a much wider picture. Without somebody painting your picture for you in a more nuanced way (ie an experienced coach), the polarized approach is probably a very simple and effective formula for balancing out stress vs recovery.

Which raises the question, wherein lies the sweet spot?

IOW, if you were going to train at only one intensity all the time, what would be hard enough to still provide a stimulus for adaptation, without requiring enormous volumes of exercise, yet not so hard that total volume must be unduly limited, or even different adaptations induced?

Does it have to be "only one intensity". Why can't it be a combination of intensities that give the same training load/score and duration?

No, of course it doesn't have to be one intensity.

OTOH, depending on your goals (and tolerance for tedium), one intensity may be all that is required.

Really, though, it was meant to be more of a hypothetical/thought-provoking question.

I'm on a Carmichael/Rutberg plan from the time crunched series. I don't have 11 hours a week to ride my bike just to be a Cat 5 road racer this year.

So, the plans focus on the tasks for the event: being able to surge and recover in limited time and repeat. It's mostly high intensity and threshold work with a couple hours of endurance miles each week. Even then the endurance miles are NOT what I'd consider LSB, LSB being probably around 100 to 130 watts. My endurance rides average around 200w or so, up to a metric century.

LSB is often used by pros with unlimited training time, since it is their job. Tour riders easily ride 400 miles a week on a low/medium week. That's 16 hours if you even do it at 25mph average. I'm in a Strava club with our company's pro team, and those guys are just a lower tier pro team, not TdF or Giro caliber but always are doing 350, 385, 425 miles per week.

Maybe you should ask the guy that kind of created the term sweet spot ....

LSB = long, slow base?

Historically, it's been termed long, slow distance (LSD), or, alternatively, long, steady distance (since the "slow" is only relative to the heavily interval-centric training programs of the Zapotek/Ryun/Prefontaine era that preceded the popularity of LSD).

Bah, what does that guy know?

As it (low intensity to glycogen depletion) dictates the order of motor unit types recruited, of course. But in the context of the OP's question, to say that training fast fibers is optimally accomplished only after glycogen depletion of slow fibers???

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Snell was quoted as saying that fast twitch fibers will be recruited, and hence trained, even at lower intensities of exercise, provided that the duration is sufficient. This was offered as a possible explanation for why training at lower intensities of exercise still enhances performance at higher intensities of exercise. Whether this is the optimal approach is a different question.

I see. I was fixated on slow training being optimal.
This is just me mumbling publicly, but I still have a conceptual mental blockade that's preventing me from appreciating how operating consistently at (for instance) 60% max VO2 will translate to improved performance in a highly-trained individual's 5k (for instance), accomplished at ~95% max VO2. I just can't understand how training at those intensities (or higher) isn't paramount, practically to the exclusion of all other intensities. And I feel like for the professional athlete, we're always interested in "optimal" training conditions.
Similarly, if you're going to run for 90 minutes, when would it ever produce favorable results to run at 60% max instead of 65% max? Or 70% max?

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did you read the Peter Snell interview ?
As Andrew mentioned, for a long time run training was based on the HIIT methods of Stampfl, Zatopek et al.
Long-term run training this way is guaranteed to produce injuries, burnout, overloaded sympathetic nervous system, etc etc, for the vast majority of athletes. We already know this, because it has been tried. There's a reason Lydiard-style run training is now orthodoxy.

Stampfl famously trained/advised Roger Bannister to the 4-minute mile. What is not so well known is the large volume of slower work Bannister did previously, which let him tolerate and benefit from those HIITs. Bannister's book "The Four-Minute Mile" shows he started building base as a schoolboy, then added to it with marathon bike rides as a student.
"my bicycle expeditions grew longer and longer, 70 miles in a day was a common average."
And, those 70 miles/day were most likely done on a 50lb bike with no gearing..
He also took up rowing shortly before starting at Oxford, and ran cross-country for Oxford.
There was a lot of training there that isn't high-intensity intervals.

For basic run training philosophy I am in complete agreement with Dave Roche, see
http://trailrunnermag.com/...r-trail-runners.html
Most running is done easy, but it is also necessary to do run economy and higher intensity work. Too much time at the high intensity is counterproductive.

See Seiler's hierarchy of training needs, paper cited here,

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=6265044#p6265044

And Dr Seiler himself on slowtwitch,
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=4940045#p4940045
"I also am still of the opinion that 3 zones works quite well for most people: Green zone (talking intensity, starts feeling like you are working after an hour, feel like eating as soon as you are finished, Yellow Zone (threshold, typical zone for those 45-60 minute workouts you hustle to squeeze in after work, pretty tough workout, but you did not have to go near your personal cellar of mental fortitude to finish), Red zone (requires mental mobilization, clear increasing perception of effort with every interval bout, no appetite for about an hour after training). And of course the most common training mistake is that a green zone session becomes yellow because of half wheeling, and the next day's planned red zone session fades to uhhhh....pink. Show me a champion and I will show you a person with intensity discipline who plans the work and works the plan, even on days when someone rides past them that they know they could reel in :-) "

And,
https://journals.humankinetics.com/...0.1123/ijspp.5.3.276
"Endurance athletes appear to self-organize toward a high-volume training approach with careful application of high-intensity training incorporated throughout the training cycle. Training intensification studies performed on already well-trained athletes do not provide any convincing evidence that a greater emphasis on high-intensity interval training in this highly trained athlete population gives long-term performance gains."

I am trying out this train slow, run fast method this year. All of my runs are being done under 150 bpm (my max is 197). I'm doing 45-55 mph depending on what phase of build I'm in. I have found my runs can differ in pace up to 30 seconds per mile depending on how I feel and the terrain. Should I just run at a consistent pace every single day or should I run off HR and let my pace fluctuate. If I do this, my pace can drop into faster zones so I feel I'm going too fast for this method.

Thanks for all of the references Doug. I mean, I can't be the only one that thinks "run slow, race fast" is counter-intuitive. Hopefully these help me make some sense out of it.

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What is the rationale for using 150?

In general, yeah, the idea is to follow HR as a proxy for lactate. Occasionally you'll see an athlete tweet about how their "50min loop" was "an hour loop today." Such that they are letting feel or HR guide them to what is needed that day... i.e. i feel like shit but not so bad as to skip the workout thus i'll just slow it down and jog nice and easy."

In the case of running a too fast a pace because that's what HR said to do I would consider the possibility that you are/were carbohydrate depleted during that session or were carrying a significant amount of fatigue such that raising HR was difficult. Chatting with a prospective athlete today we discussed a session where he was supposed to be hitting a max effort over a 30min period at conclusion of which his avg BPM for the segment was 15-20 BPM below what it should have been were he fresh.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

It was good to get a little better understanding of Seiler's 3 zones in the latest video or at least to me it helped me understand better as he described it . Of course it would be even better (for me) if Seiler had a graphic that corresponded with Coggan's classic levels. He said that his 3 zones is based on a 5 zones used in Norway.

Starting at 0:14:00

However, my desire to understand his zones has nothing to do with my own training. I continue with my own training based out of WKO using the new ilevels. That is the personal preference path I have chosen to measure training and progress.

On a different note and I was really intrigued by Amanda Coker's go at the women's world record for most miles in a year last year. We could not call what she did as train slow (even though this was a record attempt and not training) because her daily average was between 230 to 240 miles a day with a 20+ mph average. Fairly fast for 240 miles/12 hour day and yet it had to be a low intensity effort because she only had a few hours of rest between the next day. I never attempted to see what kind of TSS that would be even if it was low L2. What was amazing was toward the end of the year she was holding 25mph for a number of miles so she seemed to show improvement even after a very long span of time in high volume low intensity. Just to get a better understanding of this I did a flat solo rails to trails path and was able to maintain a 22 mph average at my low L2, but still ended up with 0.8 IF to hold that over 40 miles with the slightest up gradient in some areas. I wanted to see how fast I could maintain and yet end up with the lowest TSS to get an idea. Even at lower wattage and only 40 miles I could still feel a slight bit of fatigue the next day. I just found what she did daily for a year interesting when it comes to fatigue.

But this too is not the path that I can take for training based on my weekly life structure. The best bang for the buck that I have found is sweet spot indoors during the work week with a 90 minute limit and if the weather permits I will do longer courses on the weekends at a mixed intensity with most of it at L2 and with hope to keep the ride under 300 TSS in order to stay consistent with the training schedule. Eventually, if things are progressing it all moves up and sweet spot is now the previous L4 and repeat and repeat while this thing stews in the crock pot. I will say that cooking in the crock pot of SST type training is that a lot of the time things don't seem to move for weeks and then all the sudden a big jump. I have just learned to stay patient with the schedule and wait for the adaptation.

I can see where those who have more weekly training time available could pick the train slow race fast path or even the polarized path.

FWIW, Rick Murphy also came to much the same conclusion.

Looks like i need to redefine what i consider "slow" for myself.

All these years I have watch other runners and critiqued their technique and form (as to whether i observed something that i might want to adopt) and now it seems as though the slow running has it's on metrics.

For a few days after a race or hard effort, I notice that my HR doesn't go up as much during subsequent sessions (granted that I try to keep it slow and easy for several days).

However, my problem is that more often, my HR goes up too much on day-to-day training sessions, and now I'm trying a new plan that limits pace based on HR.

I've been running for 30 yrs and cycling for 20 yrs and other than instituting a taper, I've never found a rhyme or reason to training (other than notations for illness, stress, sleep, etc.).

Allow me to blow your mind a bit more :-D

Taper can be tricky. It's connotation largely evolved as we know it because we overtrain and then need to recover from that overtraining in order to assure that what fitness we do have can be expressed on race day. I know a number of folks that don't taper... and then win Ironmans. Phil wrote into Apollo Race Day (software that is discontinued) a neat feature that would calculate an effect curve. Basically estimating how far out from an event a training session would have a maximal impact on the race. For some folks this was 3-6 days out. How this would manifest is if an athlete had an effect curve of 3 days on the bike and was racing an IM, they would go do a simulation ride 3 days before the race. Seems messed up but the proof in that pudding was an 8.47 debut IM effort by a rather fast female in his stable. After the apex of the effect curve is reached then they would just "taper" those last couple days. For someone whose effect curve peaked 3 weeks out from an event, yes, their taper would resemble what we think of when we hear the word.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

The confidence intervals of the time constants in Banister's model are so wide as to make the effect curve essentially meaningless, at least on an individual basis:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16608765

So what you are saying is that some athletes have a really short recovery time in relation to the overload that they have injected into their (specific event) training?

I did not know who this is so I did a Google search and it led me back to this post by you http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=6519804#p6519804
Thanks for this because it is always nice to get some reassurance on the training path selected. Of the ways to skin the cat it is always my hope not to butcher the cat in the process.
Then again I've butchered a quite a few through the years by trial and error. :-)

My N=1 for going slow to get fast vs. going hard often:

I started triathlon my junior year of HS after being consistently injury prone in XC for 3 seasons (17:50 5km PR, 4:48 for the mile). When I started, I assumed injuries were my way of life with running, and that I would likely never be able to run more than 20-25mpw consistently. At the time, I would do a few (3 or 4) 4mi steady runs (6:30 pace) throughout the week, and one max effort 20min tempo run off the bike. Maybe an easy 3-4mi recovery run one day. Nothing long, and not much slow, if ever. Results: typically 18:50ish off the bike for 5km, results trailed off significantly over 5km although I was only racing sprints at the time.

3 years later, had been running 25-30mpw typically with some steady runs, maybe some progression runs, but still not slowing down on easy days much. I decided that I was going to slow the hell down and run more, out of necessity due to fatigue from other life changes. I ran 40+ mpw, but rarely ran faster than 8min/mi. Was wondering the entire time if I was losing fitness and going nowhere. Results: 18:20s off the bike in 85-90deg heat, low 17min for 5km, much better results for 10km+ (low 36min equivalents in 99% humidity/80deg heat, definitely would've been <36:10 on a flat/cool day). Much better running off the bike, and wasn't afraid to push the bike because I had better run fitness.

I'll allow myself to run hard at the end of maybe 2 runs per week, for 1-2mi - last night I closed an 8.5mi run in 5:30 for a mile, started building from 1.75mi out. Just enough fast time (in the context of 40+ mpw) to stay in touch with speed.

I struggle to train with friends of similar of even slower ability, because they run too fast on easy days for me. I have no shame in running 9-10min miles.

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"Don't you have to go be stupid somewhere else?"..."Not until 4!"

Ok, so you have found improvement and are happy with your progress by running slower miles. Now, say, you want to drop that 5k off the bike from 18:20 to 17:00 or faster. How would you go about the training? Speed up the slower runs or do more speed workouts? I’m not worried about losing fitness, I’m worried about not improving.

I think that right now my goal is to keep building mileage to the 55-60 range (over a long period of time, maybe this whole year!) and consistently sit there for a long time. When I get comfortable with 55-60mpw + some short strides and progression runs, I'll look to add in tempo and maybe some modest track work in the 4-6 weeks before racing.

I would not jump to speed up the easy days. Let it happen naturally. If you're using heart rate, that will be easy to do, because your pace at 150bpm (or whatever number you've decided to cap yourself at one easy days) will slowly drop over time. I would be more inclined to make my hard days much harder, and leave the true easy days very slow.

Another thing I've found for myself is that it helps for me to alternate reasonably long days with pretty short days. For example, if I want to run 2hrs across 2 days, I feel and recover better if I do 80-90min the first day and only 30-40min the next. Typically the shorter day would also have a ride. Over time the goal would be to do 80-90min one day and up to 60 the next on a consistent basis.

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"Don't you have to go be stupid somewhere else?"..."Not until 4!"

Ah, ok. Right now my coach is having me run all easy runs in Zone 2, which is 144-152 bpm and ~6:30-7:00 pace. I’m doing 45-55 mpw but I’m not seeing how this will help my 5k sprint time. My main focus is building strength for the 70.3 half marathon so I get the slow miles. I just think I should be doing hard repeats as well. My fastest sprint 5k is 15:25. How will I improve that if I’m running all or nearly all my miles 90 seconds slower than that pace?

You're much faster than me, so take this with a grain of salt of course, but I would say to take a look at how a lot of the top runners of the past have trained. Lots of mileage slower than 6.5min pace for guys who raced marathons at 5min/mi.

To keep (or even improve) speed you might try some short hill sprints or striders after a few easy runs each week. You're clearly already a fast runner so I would guess you've done these many times. Doing 4-6x100-150m pretty fast a few times (3-4) each week adds up over time. It's an extra 1-1.5mi of free top end speed work every week. This is one thing that I'm guilty of slacking off on, and I would bet that simply adding them in with diligence would drop my times substantially with very little overhead.

Ultimately, and you definitely know this, your coach probably has the answers and has a bigger plan in mind.

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"Don't you have to go be stupid somewhere else?"..."Not until 4!"

Yes, that’s true with striders and I do them often. I’m trying to change how I run and become a more well-rounded athlete so I’m asking questions. I don’t want my coach to think i don’t trust him or his training so I ask here for some insight. Thank you!

Thank you for sharing.

Honestly, it’s this type of variation that is confusing for many people much of the time because your slow runs are what I’d consider a tempo run (~8-9 min/mile).

When I was in my 20s then tempo was 6:45, but that was 20 yrs ago.

See how that marky v says he runs 15 min miles on his slow runs and he’s a former pro triathlete.

Rick doesn't seem to post to the 'net anymore, but he used to quite active, both on the wattage list and here. You could try searching this forum for posts by "rmurphy" to read more of his thoughts.

I think another issue is what different people interpret "tempo" to be. I like it to be something around half marathon pace these days, because I feel like I can recover from that more quickly than if I were to use 15k effort or similar. A few years ago a "tempo" was max sustainable effort, more of an excuse to race in training than anything else. More or less a time trial. In the context of higher volume, I can't do that and avoid injury, so I tend towards HMP, with 15k effort being the fastest I would consider tempo running.

I'm sure there's an accepted definition for tempo out there somewhere, but everyone seems to approach it differently.

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"Don't you have to go be stupid somewhere else?"..."Not until 4!"

Your approach may have gotten you a BQ time but is not a recipe for long term success. It will eventually lead to burnout, illness, injury, or all of the above.

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http://www.ceepo.com

I'm quiet happy to do 9min/miles but 15min is walking.

Good call. It used to be a proxy for "threshold pace" but now more and more I hear people using it to describe something along the lines of "sweet spot", around 75-90% of threshold power (from a cycling perspective).

"Overtraining" is another wishy-washy term. I see MarkyV using the term here to describe what sounds like being fatigued from the accumulation of significant-but-routine training stress. While I always prefer the term to mean "overtraining syndrome" or a pathological, acute condition where the body no longer responds to training stress in a normal way.

Andrew,

I am curious and I am also very much a layman with respect to this subject. In regards to your comment "more than one way to skin a cat" are you suggesting that High Intensity could be just as effective as LSD? I had always gone the high intensity route mostly due to time constraints. I tried the BarryP run plan a few years back but didn't get an appreciable gain, in fact I felt I was slower. I get that I am N=1 and maybe I didn't give the BarryP plan enough time. All that said I have read number of articles recommending high intensity for guys 50+ lately ( not tri specific) and was curious as to your opinion on this.

PS. I have been on the form for years and have always appreciated that people with your credentials have always been so accessible. So thanks to you and some others.....

Let's say that you'd been building for a peak at a 15K. You performed well (based on you experience and expectations) at the 15K. How long would you expect to take to recover from that effort?

I am curious when you mention being time constrained. What is you example of time constrained as in per day or weekly?

For instance I thought I was time constrained with a 9 to 10 hour weekly / 60 to 90 minutes week days for endurance training (cycling only) and longer for weekends. I do a pyramidal Lydiard approach with submaximal sustained efforts and I am 54. I am not trying to suggest changing your path or approach. I am just curious of the time constraint.

I can budget 3.5 - 4 hours/week to running. If I don't incorporate some speed work, I don't go anywhere. Spending 20% of the time around race pace and the remainder at 80% of race pace, usually does the trick. Typically 3x2k @95% in a session and 8x400m @105% in another works fine, provided that the remainder is actually ran @80%

Bingo!

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

I don't think Lydiard is fully cross compatible with cycling vs running in all disciplines. It is also certainly not compatible with people not having double digit hours a week to train but also wanting to be fast. There are very distinctly different failure modes to over training running versus cycling. Running is an impact sport. Cycling is not.

I also do not consider long and ultra distance cycling time trial (Ironman for example) to be a majority of traditional cycling training. It is a very unique subset. The typical road race time trial or time trial series is up to a max of about an hour for a pro.

Tom Dumoulin wouldn't have won the world time trial championships on a diet of training like that. Even though it was a time trial.

There is a risk/reward and law of diminishing returns for us folks short on time that utilize higher intensity training. You walk the bleeding edge of the risk of hurting yourself to get as close to the same gains as you can as the guy spending 2x the time per week.

I avg about 5 to 6 hrs a week on the bike. Right now, if I keep up the power and weight changes, I stand to get to a 4.5w/kg by this time next year.

There's people locally that do two long group rides per week (for example). Usually a weeknight 30 to 35 and a weekend century. Those two total probably 130mi and 11 hours at a B group ride pace.

I recognized them, nice people, and rode with them a while at a big fundraiser ride. They stayed together for about 25mi at the main group's A-pace. But then started falling apart because they couldn't hold an A-pace on the rollers and hills. I joined the break-group and we finished probably 15min ahead of them on a 50mi route.

Point being, you have to have some high intensity work as part of your diet at some point and time.

A quote from a Durian rider video about a much maligned doper:
"If you are not trying to snap the bottom bracket out of your bike when you are pushing then you are just too much of a #$%%^.""

You know, deep down, if you are a road racer........that quote has some truth to it.

Nice post. You gave contrast to show the nuances between running and cycling and also between what you get from low intensity and high intensity. The high intensity just cannot be omitted for a road racer b/c of the demands of surges, hills, breaks, etc- there's a mental component to suffering on the bike... gotta train your brain to be patient when it really starts to hurt and know that you can stay with the break if you can hold on for another 30 seconds.

I think that one reason that cycling has such different demands is that it requires drafting- which means that you have to nearly match the strongest kick that your competitors can offer.

Just want to point out that Lydiard and/or Pyramidal does have a high(er) intensity phase or period after the longer period of endurance training at submaximal effort (not necessarily L1/L2). One of the benefits of training around L3/SST/L4 is that it works for some of us that do not have double digit training weeks.

I am all for the individual picking their own path or approach. We reap what we sow sort of speak.

Would seem to me that those who are pushing for intensity over LSD are working under the assumption that an aerobic base of some substance already exists. To me, LSD is functional when your overall volume is such that you need to spend the majority of your time/miles at a pace that will prevent injury. Secondly, if you have no aerobic base, doing speed work isn't going to resolve that. My wife came home with a 13.1 training plan that some running group had advertised. There's a presumption of ones ability to run 6 miles, which hardly counts as an aerobic base. The first run on the schedule is a 30 min tempo run + wu & cool. Second day is 10x400 w/ wu/cool. I wanted to light the thing on fire. My wife would be in foot boots with an achilles injury or other in a matter of weeks. Seems almost irresponsible really. A need to satisfy the "i want it all and I want it right now" philosophy that so many people have these days.

Lydiard would throw up if he saw his name being referenced with zones.

This is a GREAT thread and I’ve reread it a few times to get me to turn down my intensity. TRUST the process!

Thank you all!

I generally shoot for 9-10 hrs. My biggest issue is consistency as it relates to cross-country travel. Some weeks, I may not get an opportunity to workout for 2-3 days (at best I may get a hotel treadmill run in). I have just found that I need some High Intensity to reach that next level. Again, n=1

I've also read that Lydiard laughed at people who bang on about complicated sets of intervals, he argues it doesn't really matter what intervals you do as long as you do them and do them as hard as possible.

I totally understand. I do not have to travel, but have periods where work deadlines hit and foul up everything. Yep, I also understand people find a path and plan that works for them that fits in with life obligations.

Lydiard would probably throw up at the idea of polarized training as well:

http://www.letsrun.com/...d.php?thread=2758075

Yes. Lydiard was all about laying an endurance base. But a lot of people forget that some of these base miles were far from easy shuffling. They did endurance runs that were not really demanding but brisk. I think their sunday longrun was alwasy run at a floating pace. So that it feels good but not shuffling along.

When I run easy I run as I feel. When I am fresh sometimes 4min/k feels good and I can do that with no effort so I just let it flow. And then I am still able to recover and do my training the next day.
When I am in a huge block and I am tired then it is possible that it only feels good at 4:50/k so I shuffle along like that.

I never slow myself down when I'm feeling good and it is effortless. And I never force myself to speed up to a (usually easy) pace when I am tired.

I would also say that it is not too often necessary to run intervals as fast as possible. Sometimes you need to go all out to practise being in a very dark place. But that is mentally and physically very demanding and should be done rarely. Most of my hard sessions are at a controlled effort where it is uncomfortable but not suicidal.

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

I like your point about efforts not being suicidal. It has taken me decades to discipline myself to avoid that break-neck-pace even though I can hold it for x:xx. That pace is probably the ego needing/getting attention rather than commitment to a plan. I'm in the fray because I like to play the long game.

Man, that was the one big mistake I made when I took up but endurance sports in my late teens. I've never had a coach and thought it is only a hard session when you can't move your lege anymore. It cost me dearly.

Nowadqyw I race a lot and these are my all out sessions. But in training I rarely empty the tank. This not only helps physically but mentally as well. Pushing hard in a race is easier than on your own.

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

I used to train a lot in the very high intensity range. I would say a good 30-40% of my weekly volume was at high temp/low TH. It worked very well for me as I was fitter than a large portion of the people around me. Unfortunately I always seemed to have problems with repeated efforts. I could do a few incredibly hard hill efforts, but then I would peter off significantly after that.

Then I moved to California for the winter and my training volume increased substantially (working from home on my own schedule helped a lot). I could do 20-25 hours on the bike per week if I wanted to, in the mountains. This changed my way of training. I ended up doing 80-90% of my work in recovery or endurance zones, with very little tempo or TH.

When I moved back to flatlandia (Ontario) my body was very different. I was breaking 1 & 5 minute PR's in races without even trying and I could do the efforts one after the other without a big drop off (eventually it would happen, but it would take a lot). I guess doing the huge endurance volume simply made my body more aerobically fit and able to withstand efforts while getting much more out of the systems I already had in place.

Funny that, according to his actual coach, Renato Canova, and I quote: "Eliud Kipchoge doesn't do any long slow running. The longest he'll run in training at an easy effort is 21Km. His weekly long run of 30 or 40Km is at close to race pace effort - 3:15-3:20/Km on the hills at high altitude."

Now, now, who to believe? Tough choice.

This thread reads like people ready to jump into bandwagon that crosses their path. Claims of science (almost of scientific consensus) without any citation, claims of being in the know about successful athletes when there's plenty information out there directly contradicting it... Just all-round great stuff.

Hence my analogy with food faddists... just as much misinformation, mistaken conclusions, misbeliefs, and religion-like faith abounds in training theories.

This kind of training is one of the reasons why the elite marathon times have progressed as much in the last few years. (Btw. Canova is not the coach of Kipchoge)

You cannot race a fast marathon with two hit session a week and with the rest being only slow jogging miles shuffling along. You need to practise running around racepace for a long time to emulate the punding of a marathon. (But remember Kipchoge has an endurance base of thousands and thousands of miles run at an easy pace).

Funny is that a lot of people say that amateurs push too hard on easy days but not hard enough on hard days. There is some truth to it. But look at Kipchoge. His hard days are solid but, for him, not outstanding. So it is more about consistant days at a good pace.
(Triathletes are like marathoners. They are not milers that need to be fresh for every "workout".)

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You're right about Canova, I have no idea where the brain fart came from, that quote is from Sweat Elite who have actual first hand knowledge and insight on Eliud's training.

His longest run is close to race pace. His race pace is outstanding for him and stratospheric for almost everyone else.

Was listening to a podcast with the fastest amateur run split in Kona and his words of advice are "run longer and run slower"

http://thekonaedge.com/...-run-sub-3-marathon/

On the other hand, adherents to religion-like practices often have astounding and consistent success.

That's the thing - science, so, far has only begun to scratch the surface of all the processes and practices that culminate in a race performance. So the fact that people who actually have to prepare athletes for races (like MarkyV here) back-fill the missing gaps with ad-hoc doctrine and dogma rather than "applied science" is not surprising.

That said, of course, doctrine and dogma should be transparently presented as such, and not covered in a patina of "science."

Sounds like Lydiard's "best aerobic pace"...or (dare I say it?) lots of training in the so-called sweet spot.


Indeed, as I have mentioned before I find it noteworthy that the polarized training concept was largely based on how people reportedly train for rowing and Nordic skiing, i.e., sports in which being able to achieve very high outputs for a few minutes at a time is key to overall performance.

How to make sense of train slow, race fast?


It makes sense if you have a better understanding of exercise physiology, how the body works and adapts and you have the patience and time to really build a serious endurance base of fitness and a long lead time to your bigger goals.

With apologies for being rude, offensive and forward, most, modern endurance sports athletes lack all of the above and they naively think, and further truncating their thinking, they keep running this over and over in their minds - "there must be some silver-bullet or short-cut to higher levels of fitness and success". Short answer - there is not! :)

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Don't get me wrong. I think we make the same point. Of course Kipchoges Marathon pace is from another planet. But when you look at his training logs you see that his longruns (40ish k) average around 30s per k slower than racepace. That is brisk running but not ultra hard. (For us mortals it is ultra hard, but not for Kipchoge. You should be able to run 30s off of marathonpace for a long time. And at Kipchoges pace 30s are more than 30s are for us because it is at a lower percentage)

Kipchoge does run at racepace but usually in the form of a fartlek with, say, 3km increments at pace.

His workload is very high but only so high that he can come back every other day for a key sessions. When you do something that is outstanding for you in training repeatetly then you don't bounce back as quickly.

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Short bursts of high output is not comes to mind with cross country skiing? While there are sprint disciplines, the majority of races are 10k /15min or more. Maybe with the terrain (An FIS event will seem like you are downhill skiing) there are moments of “coasting”, but even tucking and scrubbing to hold line on cross country skis is pretty demanding and no free lunch.

Terrain and drafting are what I had in mind. Either you maintain contact on the uphills, or your race is over.

IOW, the typical cross-country ski race is more like a "sporting" TT than a dual-carriageway dragstrip TT.

ETA: So I got curious, and started looking for some data to illustrate my point. That led me to this article:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16195038

Here is the description of the field test:

"a freestyle skiing (Eisenman, Johnson, Bainbridge, & Zupan, 1989) field test was per- formed. The field tests were conducted mid-season on three consecutive days. The weather conditions were similar on the different test days (temperature of714.58Cto717.08C, wind speed of 2 m×s 71 , faint sunshine (February in the North of Sweden)). The participants did not change their training regime between the treadmill test and the field test, and they were told to consider the time-trial as a competition and to prepare accordingly. The skiing course was divided into two equal laps. The total length of the course (two laps, bird’s-eye view) was 5.6 km"

What was shown was that although heart rate was essentially pegged at >90% of maximal heart rate during the field test, VO2 itself varied between 66 and 81% of VO2max, depending on where the individual was on the course. Moreover, the correlation between physiological capabilities was greatest on the uphill sections, where individuals with the highest VO2max in mL/min/kg out-performed those with lower values. These segment-by-segment measurements demonstrated a greater relationship with performance than just simply looking at the overall time.

IOW, a cross-country ski race is not a simple TT...

Ah, yes ofcourse, the drafting will certainly come in play too, but depends really on the speeds (skate vs classic) and the gains/relief - for me, drafting was often a tactical opportunity and not a given, depending on the course and track position, and again I’m speaking from a classic centric perspective. Also, another detail, most race formats can be a mass start or a pursuit variant, which quickly brings it back to an individual endurance effort - my XC training didn’t differentiate if I was raci g mass start loppets or more pursuit oriented events.

Yes, but don't forget to take into account the type of course he's running (winding dirt roads full of pot holes, mostly bad conditions, sometimes terrible) and at altitude. It works out to a lower effort than race pace but not that lower.

Anyway, I just wanted to dispell the idea that Kipchoge does any LSD of some form. He does not.

Yeah thats true. And I want to make same point as you. Modern Marathoners are far from LSD. They do jog slowly, but only to supplement their hard 25 mile longruns and stuff like that.

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I would think that race pace for a marathoner would be in the upper end of the so called sweet spot. Half a min slower per km (which is about 15%) would be more of a upper zone 2/lower zone 3 work out, wouldn't it?

but this would also a lot like triathlon races would happen on the bike those days... they are for many not real time trials anymore. ( espacially in kona for elites and in gerneral for agers due to large packs in races )
I think maybe paolo sousa is on the money when he said in one of the real coaching podcast that cycling seems to work very well with a polarized approach and running more with a threshold approach.

the thing is when i read this thread , there is so much misconception , people misinterpret various styles and confuse lsd with lydiard etc
i guess overall polarized training has come closer to your sweetspot training in the last few years.

and of course i guess fleck is also very right far too many look for something special and forget the basics of endurance sport .

You're absolutely correct. I believe the clinical definition of the term is such that your endocrine system has near zero response to any stimulus such that you cannot even rouse yourself from bed in the morning. I should place more demonstrative qualifiers when using that term, I usually try to.

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36 kona qualifiers 2006-'23 - 3 Kona Podiums - 4 OA IM AG wins - 5 IM AG wins - 18 70.3 AG wins
I ka nana no a 'ike -- by observing, one learns | Kulia i ka nu'u -- strive for excellence
Garmin Glycogen Use App | Garmin Fat Use App

This is a very succinct point. In rowing the start is so important and requires maximum power output so maximal power over a few seconds is as important as the sustainable power over several minutes. Nordic skiing requires bursts of maximum effort up short hills. Technique is all important in rowing and Nordic skiing but cycling requires almost no technique. Rowing and Noric skiing use the whole body, cycling only the legs in one simple movement.

Too often people assume all endurance sports are the same. My own view, and I would be interested in Dr Coggans comment, is that endurance cycling is a special case because the weight is unsupported and technique, strength and maximal power output are of far less importance than sustainable power over longer durations.

What works for runners may not work for cyclists. Certainly runners need more recovery and can't train for as many hours as cyclists due to the strains on tendons, ligaments joints and muscles from the weight of the runner having to be absorbed with every stride.

Not to mention the mistaken beliefs that 95% of 20 min power, or 60 min power = FTP.

Been following this with interest - I spent a few years running more slowly (8 min miles) versus now where I run a lot of zone 2 but that zone 2 ends up sub 6-30 Miles

I ran my long runs at this pace last year

I am 47 and ran 3-06 in my last IM whilst feeling pretty shit

More than one way to skin the cat i guess

I cannot fathom running so slow ! Not saying it does not work , clearly it does for some