Slowman, this has been a fantastic thread. I wish more of these came up in the forum. I apologize if the following point has already been exhausted, but I'm working may way through this.
As I've always tried to explain, my coaching experience resides primarily in getting novice runners to the not so novice stage (including a couple of high school state champions). I also have a bit of experience coaching myself at a higher level than that and keeping in touch with other athletes and coaches who are at that level.
I noticed early in the thread that, despite seemingly coming from opposite ends of the argument, Mark did advocate "building durability first." A while ago a found an interesting post by John Kellog on Letsrun:
"The ingredients for making the most out of your talent are consistency, high mileage with a focus on high-end aerobic running, a proper transition to hard track training, a limited amount of VERY HARD training, and an overpowering desire to MAKE yourself into the runner you want to be.
When you DO train intensely (and when you race), you must be willing to REALLY HURT BAD to achieve your goals. I mean go to the sludge at the bottom of the well. However, I've seen numerous elite runners (most from the 1970s) do this kind of hard training and can say with no hesitation that I've also witnessed countless high school nobodys who have trained every bit as hard relative to their own fitness levels as any elite runner I've ever seen. The difference is that the HSers don't HAVE much fitness either because they simply have less natural aerobic capacity or (more often) because they spend MOST of their time doing the hard track training and they ignore the base work and transition work.
The "secret" you're looking for is the high-volume, high-end aerobic base training. Without that, you won't ever reach your personal summit. You may be so gifted that you still turn out awesome compared to most others, but you won't be the BEST you COULD be. For over a decade, Americans wanted dearly to believe that they could skip the foundation work and hammer themselves into greatness. Why? Probably because a quick fix is more alluring. But the experiment resulted in FAILURE. Dramatic, obvious, measurable-by-the-stopwatch FAILURE.
We're doing a bit better during the last few years, but MOST Americans still don't get it. They need to forget the "horses for courses" training LIE and start training like REAL DISTANCE runners. Once they set the base over first months, then years, THEN they can spend more time on the specialized training which they have found by trial and error to benefit their racing most.
Lydiard said, "Miles make champions." Runners aren't physically any different today than they were 40 years ago, so that fundamental principle still applies. Toshihiko Seko's coach, Kyoshi Nakamura, likened correct training to the steady fall of raindrops which slowly forges a hole in a rock. Some days the rain falls harder and some days it doesn't fall at all, but the process cannot be HURRIED. There is the "secret" of training. I once wrote that even a football player can train himself to run 10 balls-out quarters, but still won't be in SHAPE. Being in shape means having the aerobic power to run CONTINUOUSLY for 5 miles or 10 miles at a very high percentage of top speed. Any intense training that can be done WITHOUT that kind of basic fitness can be done AFTER that fitness is acquired - and it can be done MORE EFFECTIVELY.
Well, there's another rant. Pertaining to the PSYCHOLOGICAL characteristics of elites, one trait that's shared by most of the best is that they can stay relaxed and confident going into a race, yet can maintain total focus throughout the race itself. Being able to lock into a "competitive zone" and place winning over ANYTHING else is a hallmark of all champions." I would say of the mortal athletes I've worked with on this forum, 70% probably fit into the category of running too hard and not running enough. 20% simply need a little tweaking to the balance of their program, and then fewer than 10% sit on the opposite end of the spectrum where they simply run too slow all the time.
What I have come to learn more and more over the last several years is that the more seasoned the athlete is, the greater and greater proportion of harder training he can handle. One coach I have worked with recently suggests doing two workouts a week at MLSS +/- 15s most of the year. However, his athletes are *still* running 50-100+ miles a week. One also needs to keep in mind that the workouts, though much faster than "LSD" pace, are still fairly moderate workouts when compared to the balls out interval sessions that many of us remember from high school. Now there's nothing wrong with these balls out sessions, but one needs to remember that they are only really necessary in significant quantities when in a "race specificity" phase of training and, more specifically......that your race distance is specific to those sessions. Id argue that if you aren't training for a standalone 5k or fatser, not many of these sessions are necessary.
What I personaly recommend (not that my opinion matters) is that people do "build durability first" (to steal a phrase from Mark). Novice athletes should focus more time on base building. At some point LT training gets phased in. A really novice athlete might only get 6-8 weeks of LT (MLSS) or faster training before their A race. As they progress through their career, that #gradualy increases until they are doing LT (MLSS) and faster workouts for the bulk of the year.
One other point I wanted to make calls back to something Rappstar said. Probably more imporatantly than anything is that the proper training load gets dialed in. If you don't have the time to log in lots of slower (zone 2) running, then you are going to be undertrained. I've said this many times, but you don't train slow for the sake of training slow. You train slow to train more. If training more is not an option, then you have to train harder.
My 2 cents. Since they are American, you might want to spend them while they are still worth something.
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i think it's worth noting a couple of things. first, did you not find that a run where you start slow, gradually building to just below LT, and staying there for the duration of the run, was a pretty easy run? the typical kenyan 5k/10/half-mary runner is typically running 2 and usually 3 times a day, 130 to 160 miles a week, and as you're building to, and maintaining, that mileage, even a "kenyan" can't have many of his runs be much harder than that.
the problem most triathletes have is that they just can't or won't or don't know how to run more than 10 or 15 miles a week. now, maybe that's a function of available time. but my experience is that most of the time invested in a run or a ride is in the time just before and after the workout. the getting ready, the getting back from. the incremental time it takes to run 9 miles instead of 5 miles is not that impactful on my schedule.
how do you get a triathlete from 5 mile runs to 9 mile runs? or from 9 to 15? esp if it's a 45 year old triathlete? i think there's fairly good anecdotal evidence, from kenyans and moroccans, to the best american runners over recent history, that quantity at below LT is a critical component. steve scott is not only the second fastest, but the most durable, u.s. miler in history, and he was routinely an 85 and 95 a week runner (a lot for a miler).
training just below LT, as easy is that may seem to certain runners, still might not be easy enough if you're trying to go from a 10m/wk runner to a 30m/wk runner. especially when we're talking about those who're carrying an extra 15 pounds, and who, unlike kenyan runners, must apportion energy to non-athletic activities.
in general, i think kenyan training principles fit elegantly inside the paradigm of base-building pursuant to further future intensity.
-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
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