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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Bioteknik] [ In reply to ]
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I didn't know that. Link? I was under the impression that Seiler advocated for polarised in the sense that you should do all the low intensity below LT1 (which I think most science based coaches agree on today?) but that the high intensity should be in I5(I,e 92-97% of HR max). More like 4x4min etc instead of 15x1000m.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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I found it interesting that Arild Tveiten used a specific example involving his athletes. Something along the line of

"I see other athletes go to the track and do 6x1000 in 2.40... My athletes go to the track and do 15x1000 at 3.05."

Then Blummenfelt and Iden ran something like 3.12/km in Bahrain. I feel this is related both to my own experience of running closed halves slightly slower (but with a bigger discrepancy than the good athletes) than threshold work and to your post.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Bioteknik] [ In reply to ]
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Bioteknik wrote:
Schnellinger wrote:
I do think it is a good way to work out, but not necessarily the best for triathletes, and in particular LC triathletes (only my opinion). I don't think I5 workouts combined with a lot of I1 work is the best way to go, as 1) you need to be pretty fresh in order to get quality into your I5 sessions and 2) the training load att high intensity will be way less than what you can achieve with a lot of workouts in I3. I believe that the muscular adaptations you get from I3 work is what is most important for triathletes as all disciplines are aerobic events, where increasing the lactate threshold is what will benefit you the most.

This is in accordance with Arild Tveiten`s philosophy (if I understand him correctly) and the way Olympiatoppen is heading. The idea is to keep the easy days easy (below 1.0mmol) and the hard days at the right intensity, which means at or below lactic threshold.


One of Seiler's findings is that the athletes stay out of z5, so there is a bit of a misconception that they are doing super hard efforts in the high VO2 max range. Considering the workouts that have been described, the hard days were probably around 105-110% of FTP, targeting around 90% of HR max and not going above 95%

But yes, not to hijack too much, but Seiler is not holding steadfast that athletes need to stay out of the middle zone, since there are many long course athletes where this zone is highly specific to their event. He is holding steadfast that they are doing the majority of their work (~90%) below LT1.

Some people have said junk miles are ones which don't serve a purpose, so the connotation that easy miles are junk could be true.. if someone wasn't doing them with a purpose in mind.. but then they could also be a focused part of ones training plan. Easy miles may not be necessary, but they can definitely serve a purpose if they aren't the only thing one does.

Is this an observation or a recommendation that he makes? Can you point to where this can be found? I've not come across this in his published manuscripts.

I'd also add that performing exercises with improper mechanics could be lumped into "junk miles" (if not worse), using swimming as an example.

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https://connect.garmin.com/modern/profile/domingjm
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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In this podcast https://scientifictriathlon.com/tts177/#tab-con-2 @ 21:00 Seiler talks about Zone 4 vs Zone 5.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Bill] [ In reply to ]
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Bill wrote:
In this podcast https://scientifictriathlon.com/tts177/#tab-con-2 @ 21:00 Seiler talks about Zone 4 vs Zone 5.

This is the interview I was talking about. There are lots of good other ones in the archive but that is a whole other topic. Some of the other topics are somewhat related in that there is a common theme about the quality of lower intensity work and how it helps consistency. As triathletes, consistency can't be stressed enough since we're doing this almost silly juggling act of 3 different sports. Also how to work in intensity is quite a challenge since we're trying to balance them between the three sports.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Bioteknik] [ In reply to ]
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Thanks. Will listen to it today!
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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wintershade wrote:
And/or I could bike commute to work (about 30 min each way) a few times a week. Would there be any training benefit? A waste of time? Or worse, counter productive by detracting from my "key" sessions? If I add these extra base mileage rides, anything else to keep in mind?

I really do not understand why you do not add this commutes. It will probably not cost you any time? I commute on the bike (11 km) and it does not overall cost me more time then the train or the car. Of course if you have to bike 30 km it gets time-consuming.
I log those rides as „regeneration/compensation“ and they seem to have their place in at least conventional training theory.
You will not get a boost from mediocre to very good biker of course from it. But it would certainly be beneficial.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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wintershade wrote:

My typical weekly schedule looks something like this, with key workouts in early morning:
M) Swim: Speed + Technique AM, "Prehab" PT/Strength PM
Tu) Hard run (hills or track)
W) Hard ride, optional brick run off time permitting
Th) Swim focus: Long/endurance swim, optional brick or PM run, time permitting
F) Long run
Sat) Long ride w/ mandatory brick run
Sun) Family day (which usually includes a light-moderate hike with our 1yo son on my back)


So the Sat Long ride is ok.
What do you do on Wednesday? What is your hard ride?
I shaked of my bike-weakness (I really had years of absolute stagnation) after introducing hard 5 minute intervals , e.g. 5*5 with 3 minute breaks. You can do that on the trainer too. And another measure was to do the long ride a bit faster (from middle zone 2 to upper zone 2).
Nowedays you would say „getting you ftp up“ and a lot of people do that today with trainerroad.
It is very important to note that the fast guys on the longer distances are the same as those on the shorter distances.

Focus your training on biking, less on swimming and running in which you‘re already good at. You will have to add another bikeride in the week: two is not enough for that.
In base you could have a
-long ride,
- a 5*5 session
-and a HITT session with e.g. 30s intervals.
In build you could have a
-long ride,
- a 5*5 session and
-a race pace session with e.g. 2*50 racepace.

This together with the commutes will not make you slower.

Edit: with 5*5 I mean 5 minutes intervals as fast as you can.
Last edited by: longtrousers: May 13, 19 23:36
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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I say try something for a few weeks, then report back how your body reacted

For me, I don’t see improvements on the bike (or run) unless I’m riding 4-5x / week.

So while the 45 min spin might not increase your aerobic base (maybe it does? Not sure), it does other things . Flushes some of lactate, gives your body more time on the bike and maybe let’s you sweat a bit while reading ST

As a sorta-new dad, I would personally do as little training as possible and play w your wife and kids more :)

But to be stronger cyclist, I’d recommend a bit more intensity, of all different flavors, with some easy rides sprinkled in there too. But will depend how your body reacts to the additional load
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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Last year I was able to increase a few rides by 30 mins to probably tack on an extra 2-3 hrs a week riding. I'm not sure a 45 min ride would help, but I was getting 2 40+ miles rides a week (2.5 hrs) and had one of my best bike splits at IMchoo. A lot of this was made possible by the fact I just rode my road bike out the front door and work from home.

On a separate note, I also have a dog. I usually walked an extra 10-15 miles a week during the summer taking him on walks. I'm curious what this affect had on my marathon which was my best at an IM to date.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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This has been a great thread and i'm going to jump in here with my two cents, since i agree with a lot of the advice people have given but might be able to add a different flavor.

First, the way i think of "junk miles," the question you posed is circular: junk miles are anything that doesn't provide you with a benefit, so if there's a benefit to it, then they're not "junk miles."

Leaving aside the whole debate about what exactly are the physiological adaptations that are maximized by easy training but not harder aerobic training (in other words, why do these observed elite athletes follow what looks like a polarized system), I would think that you could very well have a benefit in doing some evening rides but that you should keep it super easy.

First, even if harder intervals like sweetspot would get more adaptation from you, you're better off not throwing htem in willy nilly. That should be part of a comprehensive overhaul of your whole plan. So, if you did it wrong, it would decrease the quality of your quality sessions, and they would therefore be junk miles.

But, if there are any benefits to going easy, you should do it, and they're not junk. For example, I remember reading once that people who are overall more active recover better and faster. And I also remember reading that active recovery sessions are shown to be helpful: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC5932411/

So adding in some super easy days on the bike could actually increase the quality of your main sessions. That's definitely time well spent in my book!

As a mountain biker, I do a lot of easy riding. Aside from active recovery, plenty of skills days are done easy--you won't be getting much training benefit anyway, so you might as well not dig too deep into the well during the practice.

Moving on to Seiler:

I thought hte takeaway was not that you SST or threshold has no place, but rather that you might be "spending" more on it (physiologically) than you think.

I think one DEFINITE takeaway is that every ride should have a purpose. I'm sure plenty of skills work that those athletes do is at low intensity levels. In other words, just because they are going "easy" in the physiological sense does not mean it is random or aimless.

I am curious to know how those elite athletes distribute their time WITHIN the Z1 bucket. For example, I know that for (what SEiler would call) my Zone 1, low Zone 1 is extremely easy but high Zone 1 would get hard if you went long enough. Do the athletes do their endurance sessions at a "high zone1," but recovery at very low?
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [devolikewhoa83] [ In reply to ]
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devolikewhoa83 wrote:
I am curious to know how those elite athletes distribute their time WITHIN the Z1 bucket. For example, I know that for (what SEiler would call) my Zone 1, low Zone 1 is extremely easy but high Zone 1 would get hard if you went long enough. Do the athletes do their endurance sessions at a "high zone1," but recovery at very low?

https://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=4941484#p4941484
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Bill] [ In reply to ]
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Very helpful

Thank you!
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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domingjm wrote:
[

I comment on these types of questions a lot because my training observations are entirely at odds with the current recommendations. I've been listening to a lot of top coaches discuss volume and intensity, both in podcasts and in youtube videos. Without having hard numbers from which to pull, they usually estimate that their athletes are between 85 and 95% easy (aka, junk) efforts. These are mainly olympic tri distance coaches.

This is utterly baffling to me. First, my ~10 years of garmin data robustly confirms that when I start chasing distance or time-spent as a metric for prescribing my sessions, my performance plummets, both in the run and on the bike (swimming, not so sure). I can give hard numbers as examples, for context if anyone is interested, but suffice it to say, I'm not back or middle of the pack. Second, endurance performance is bounded by two primary variables: VO2 max and the percent of VO2 max that you can maintain for the duration of the effort. It's not disputable that higher intensity training produces more robust stimuli for both of those factors. In other words, run for 30min easy or hard; the hard effort will product the greatest stimulus for acclimation. So what is the mechanism whereby easy efforts contribute to enhanced performance? It's not enhanced fat metabolism; our capacity for peripheral lipolysis already exceeds our capacity to deliver it to the muscles. My best guess (and what seems to be suggested by these coaches) is that it's a compromise: predominantly high intensity efforts are largely unsustainable from a psychological and physiological platform. And if you have burned-out or sick athletes, those are non-exercising athletes. So the next best thing is to pile on tons of volume, sprinkle in some intensity, and keep everyone healthy and exercising. There's plenty of published observational data to suggest that this approach works, but to my knowledge, no one has even proposed a mechanism attempting to explain the direct superiority of easy vs hard.

Honestly, every time I get sucked back into focusing on miles and time (like I am now), my FTP and 10k just absolutely crash. It's so demoralizing. My best run performances have come from less than 10 training miles per week and my highest FTP has come from doing nothing but 1- and 3-min intervals a few times per week, which ends up being the equivalent of less than 25 miles and maybe two hours of riding. I don't know. Volume doesn't work for me, but here I am, trying it again.

I think there is a simple explanation to your experience. The aerobic base you develop with all the easy work takes a long time to develop, and change is slow. When you step off your hard efforts you lose your peaking, but that part is the easiest to bring back in the latter parts of a training cycle. But spend a while to keep building your aerobic base and that peak will eventually increase.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [runethechamp] [ In reply to ]
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runethechamp wrote:
domingjm wrote:
[

I comment on these types of questions a lot because my training observations are entirely at odds with the current recommendations. I've been listening to a lot of top coaches discuss volume and intensity, both in podcasts and in youtube videos. Without having hard numbers from which to pull, they usually estimate that their athletes are between 85 and 95% easy (aka, junk) efforts. These are mainly olympic tri distance coaches.

This is utterly baffling to me. First, my ~10 years of garmin data robustly confirms that when I start chasing distance or time-spent as a metric for prescribing my sessions, my performance plummets, both in the run and on the bike (swimming, not so sure). I can give hard numbers as examples, for context if anyone is interested, but suffice it to say, I'm not back or middle of the pack. Second, endurance performance is bounded by two primary variables: VO2 max and the percent of VO2 max that you can maintain for the duration of the effort. It's not disputable that higher intensity training produces more robust stimuli for both of those factors. In other words, run for 30min easy or hard; the hard effort will product the greatest stimulus for acclimation. So what is the mechanism whereby easy efforts contribute to enhanced performance? It's not enhanced fat metabolism; our capacity for peripheral lipolysis already exceeds our capacity to deliver it to the muscles. My best guess (and what seems to be suggested by these coaches) is that it's a compromise: predominantly high intensity efforts are largely unsustainable from a psychological and physiological platform. And if you have burned-out or sick athletes, those are non-exercising athletes. So the next best thing is to pile on tons of volume, sprinkle in some intensity, and keep everyone healthy and exercising. There's plenty of published observational data to suggest that this approach works, but to my knowledge, no one has even proposed a mechanism attempting to explain the direct superiority of easy vs hard.

Honestly, every time I get sucked back into focusing on miles and time (like I am now), my FTP and 10k just absolutely crash. It's so demoralizing. My best run performances have come from less than 10 training miles per week and my highest FTP has come from doing nothing but 1- and 3-min intervals a few times per week, which ends up being the equivalent of less than 25 miles and maybe two hours of riding. I don't know. Volume doesn't work for me, but here I am, trying it again.


I think there is a simple explanation to your experience. The aerobic base you develop with all the easy work takes a long time to develop, and change is slow. When you step off your hard efforts you lose your peaking, but that part is the easiest to bring back in the latter parts of a training cycle. But spend a while to keep building your aerobic base and that peak will eventually increase.

What are these training acclimations that take a long time to develop and what makes you think they take longer to develop than those training acclimations that occur in response to high intensity training?

---------------------------------------------------------------

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/profile/domingjm
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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domingjm wrote:
runethechamp wrote:
domingjm wrote:
[

I comment on these types of questions a lot because my training observations are entirely at odds with the current recommendations. I've been listening to a lot of top coaches discuss volume and intensity, both in podcasts and in youtube videos. Without having hard numbers from which to pull, they usually estimate that their athletes are between 85 and 95% easy (aka, junk) efforts. These are mainly olympic tri distance coaches.

This is utterly baffling to me. First, my ~10 years of garmin data robustly confirms that when I start chasing distance or time-spent as a metric for prescribing my sessions, my performance plummets, both in the run and on the bike (swimming, not so sure). I can give hard numbers as examples, for context if anyone is interested, but suffice it to say, I'm not back or middle of the pack. Second, endurance performance is bounded by two primary variables: VO2 max and the percent of VO2 max that you can maintain for the duration of the effort. It's not disputable that higher intensity training produces more robust stimuli for both of those factors. In other words, run for 30min easy or hard; the hard effort will product the greatest stimulus for acclimation. So what is the mechanism whereby easy efforts contribute to enhanced performance? It's not enhanced fat metabolism; our capacity for peripheral lipolysis already exceeds our capacity to deliver it to the muscles. My best guess (and what seems to be suggested by these coaches) is that it's a compromise: predominantly high intensity efforts are largely unsustainable from a psychological and physiological platform. And if you have burned-out or sick athletes, those are non-exercising athletes. So the next best thing is to pile on tons of volume, sprinkle in some intensity, and keep everyone healthy and exercising. There's plenty of published observational data to suggest that this approach works, but to my knowledge, no one has even proposed a mechanism attempting to explain the direct superiority of easy vs hard.

Honestly, every time I get sucked back into focusing on miles and time (like I am now), my FTP and 10k just absolutely crash. It's so demoralizing. My best run performances have come from less than 10 training miles per week and my highest FTP has come from doing nothing but 1- and 3-min intervals a few times per week, which ends up being the equivalent of less than 25 miles and maybe two hours of riding. I don't know. Volume doesn't work for me, but here I am, trying it again.


I think there is a simple explanation to your experience. The aerobic base you develop with all the easy work takes a long time to develop, and change is slow. When you step off your hard efforts you lose your peaking, but that part is the easiest to bring back in the latter parts of a training cycle. But spend a while to keep building your aerobic base and that peak will eventually increase.


What are these training acclimations that take a long time to develop and what makes you think they take longer to develop than those training acclimations that occur in response to high intensity training?

Alternative theory: maybe we're not approaching this correctly. Maybe the key isn't the Zone 1 (in a three zone system) but rather the Zone 3. Maybe it's that sustained time at the Zone 3 intensity elicits better "intensive aerobic" type adaptations than your standard tempo/sst/threshold workout, and the Zone 1 endurance and active recovery is simply the hardest intensity that elicits at least SOME additional response while still allowing you to recover enough to fit in the Zone 3?

In other words, rather than comparing easy endurance to tempo/sst/threshold, we should be comparing easy endurance > total rest, and Seiler's Zone 3 > tempo/sst/threshold
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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The linked thread above has some really good discussion on the topic. A lot of the physiological reasons why training below LT1 is beneficial. There are some good links with data as well.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [devolikewhoa83] [ In reply to ]
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i mention this because the idea that spending too much time at LT (for whatever reason) is not new. I remember reading studies about this in my running days in the mid-2000s. But, the study i was reading never really differentiated whether it was because it was too taxing on the athlete or rather it was because, relatedly, it was crowding out other trainings.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Bioteknik] [ In reply to ]
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i've been reading that in parallel but maybe haven't gotten far enough yet :)
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [devolikewhoa83] [ In reply to ]
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Quick summary: training above lt1 is associated with increased lactate levels at all intensities. While training below promotes a flatter lactate curve and lt1 is at a higher percent of vo2 max. Then theres some bickering and i haven't gotten much past that.
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