My title is a little inflamatory, addmitedly. I wanted something that would grab your attention. Before I get the angry responses, I am not advocating LSD only training. I think the "higher intensity" IS important. What I am talking about here is what I call "speed" training, or what many of you might know from Daniels' Formula as "rep training."
Anyway, I have copied my response to another thread below (enjoy):
I don't focus on that too much on ST as reps are, IMO, overrated for the type of racing that we do here. They are most beneficial for 5K and shorter races (a sprint tri requires 10K speed, not 5K speed). I once looked through all the sources I have and combined it with my personal experience and a couple college programs that I am aware of and put together a formula.......that apparently only I can understand ; ^ ) BUT, its still a good resource for me to use.
Anyway, lets consider a 10 mile standalone race (or a tri that ends with a 5 mile run). In the 12 weeks leading up to the race (I call this the racing phase) my table shows 0.45% of your total training should be "speed" or rep training. For someone running 30 miles a week, that's about 200 meters a week.
Now this can be handled many different ways. Jack Daniels would package that into the first 3 weeks. Doing the quick math, thats 800 meters a week for three weeks, or 3 sessions of 4x200 meters. He might even have you do that as a mix workout where its mixed in with another workout.
Pete Pfitzinger would instead have you do one workout session about every 3 weeks of 8x100m.
IMO, this volume of speed is so small and its so insignificant that I just recommend doing 3-4 50 meter striders at the end of 2 or 3 of your short runs every week.
Now one might ask, why does Daniels seem to focus so much on it. The feeling that I get from the running community (and my own personal opinion) is that Jack's target audience is a little higher level than most triathletes and most road racers. Take a mid level college runner training for a 10K. He'll be running 65 miles a week and finishing the 10K in the mid to low 30s, or a pace in the low 5min/mile range. This requires a little more neuro muscular response than racing at 8 minutes a mile. These guys will have to make a move to breakaway or catch someone in the last lap, moving to a quick kick at the finish. Going back to my formula, they'll want 1% of their mileage to be "speed work." 1% of 65 is 1,000m a week....quite a bit more than .45% of 30. And.....as you might guess, when I was in college, we did about 1,000m a week of speed during XC season.
I like to think of speed work like hitting the heavy bag for a boxer. You are training your foot to "punch" the ground and recoil as fast as possible. A mile race for an elite guy is like a lightweight boxer who needs to unleash a flurry of punches on his opponent. A 4:00 marathon is like a wrestling match (no punching). A 10K you might think of like kick boxing or MMA. You will need to throw punches, but you've got to work on other aspects of your fighting as well and you have a limited amount of training time. so you can only do so much punching.
I always remind people that every minute of running you do in one training zone might be several minutes of training that you are not doing in a slower training zone.
-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485
Anyway, I have copied my response to another thread below (enjoy):
I don't focus on that too much on ST as reps are, IMO, overrated for the type of racing that we do here. They are most beneficial for 5K and shorter races (a sprint tri requires 10K speed, not 5K speed). I once looked through all the sources I have and combined it with my personal experience and a couple college programs that I am aware of and put together a formula.......that apparently only I can understand ; ^ ) BUT, its still a good resource for me to use.
Anyway, lets consider a 10 mile standalone race (or a tri that ends with a 5 mile run). In the 12 weeks leading up to the race (I call this the racing phase) my table shows 0.45% of your total training should be "speed" or rep training. For someone running 30 miles a week, that's about 200 meters a week.
Now this can be handled many different ways. Jack Daniels would package that into the first 3 weeks. Doing the quick math, thats 800 meters a week for three weeks, or 3 sessions of 4x200 meters. He might even have you do that as a mix workout where its mixed in with another workout.
Pete Pfitzinger would instead have you do one workout session about every 3 weeks of 8x100m.
IMO, this volume of speed is so small and its so insignificant that I just recommend doing 3-4 50 meter striders at the end of 2 or 3 of your short runs every week.
Now one might ask, why does Daniels seem to focus so much on it. The feeling that I get from the running community (and my own personal opinion) is that Jack's target audience is a little higher level than most triathletes and most road racers. Take a mid level college runner training for a 10K. He'll be running 65 miles a week and finishing the 10K in the mid to low 30s, or a pace in the low 5min/mile range. This requires a little more neuro muscular response than racing at 8 minutes a mile. These guys will have to make a move to breakaway or catch someone in the last lap, moving to a quick kick at the finish. Going back to my formula, they'll want 1% of their mileage to be "speed work." 1% of 65 is 1,000m a week....quite a bit more than .45% of 30. And.....as you might guess, when I was in college, we did about 1,000m a week of speed during XC season.
I like to think of speed work like hitting the heavy bag for a boxer. You are training your foot to "punch" the ground and recoil as fast as possible. A mile race for an elite guy is like a lightweight boxer who needs to unleash a flurry of punches on his opponent. A 4:00 marathon is like a wrestling match (no punching). A 10K you might think of like kick boxing or MMA. You will need to throw punches, but you've got to work on other aspects of your fighting as well and you have a limited amount of training time. so you can only do so much punching.
I always remind people that every minute of running you do in one training zone might be several minutes of training that you are not doing in a slower training zone.
-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485