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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [imswimmer328] [ In reply to ]
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imswimmer328 wrote:
Junk miles are when you spend too much time going too hard, not too easy.

This. More specifically, it's when you spend too much time in the grey area. Going hard enough that you're putting load on yourself but not hard enough for intensity. The result is not a lot of aerobic gain and a worn out body
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [TravelingTri] [ In reply to ]
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TravelingTri wrote:
One of the better threads generated recently with great discussion points. Nice one Winter shade.

I don’t think that adding a 30-45 min spin or a 30 min commute is going to do much for you. Reasons being to detailed to go into posting on an iPhone but it has to do with philosophies regarding training “time limited” athletes vs non-time limited athletes.

Thanks TravelingTri. I agree that many great points have been raised by contributors, so thank you all for that. I'd be curious (when you're not on an iphone) to elaborate on why you don't think a few shorter Z2 rides would be beneficial.

A few folks here have suggested adding some additional run or swim workouts. I think this is the right answer for most time limited athletes who want to build their aerobic base and/or address swimming or running weakness. I'm certain that there can be great benefits from more frequent, shorter, easy session for running and swimming. For swimming, being so technique intensive, I think the benefit is greatest with almost no downside. And for running, I also have no doubt that if your bio-mechanics are sound, a lot can be gained from frequent 4-6 mile easy runs, though there are more overuse injury risks. There are Olympic medals and world records to back this up.

I just wonder, what is the right answer for people like me, whose performance limiter is bike-specific fitness, and even more particularly bike "strength endurance" or the ability to ride at/near my FTP for long periods of time. My legs just turn to jello. I can barely walk at the end of an IM, but I bet I could still crack out a low-mid 20 min 1.5K swim.

So I guess to reiterate my question: is there a training benefit from adding short easy base miles on the bike, like there is with swimming and running? Or, per conventional wisdom, do base mileage workouts on the bike need to be of much longer duration (90+ minutes) for their to be much of a benefit?

If the answer to the above is no, I suppose the follow-up question is, should I add 45 min of sweet-spot interval riding (85-95% of FTP) a couple evenings/week. It most targets my specific weakness. My concern here, knowing myself, is I worry this would materially increase training load, require more recovery, and potentially compromise my other quality sessions. I'm not sure I'd have the time, but I think doing longer 90 min evening rides would be easier for me to recovery from. I know I respond well to high volume, and quickly slip into injury/over-training when I push to far on intensity.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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My pleasure to elaborate, let me add a disclaimer though that I am not a coach, nor have any formal qualifications. Just lots of time reading and experimenting on myself. Got some time here as a vegetate watching the Mets try to flush their season down the toilet during my off-season.

My thoughts are based on assumptions about you. You mentioned researching sub 2:30 merry plans. I suspect you are a very good runner. You said you could swim 1.5 clicks in 22-25 mins even after being fatigued. You are a good swimmer. The recipe ingredients are there to get to the front of a race. The problem is you run like sh** after the bike and haven't been able to capitalize on your ability. It's derailing your plans of grandeur. You mentioned the "end of an IM" I am assuming you are going half and whole.

OK, now that we got that out on the table you are a time limited athlete. Let's be honest that long course racing at high levels takes more time than we all have. I would say 15 hours a week is JUST starting to maybe be enough. Get over 20 and now you are in business. Very few in the AG ranks can pull it off but the folks that can (unless they are gifted) are the ones you are trying to beat or at least get into their wake turbulence during the run.

So because of all the above their are two ways to get your biking up to snuff so you can run to your potential. Get your bike volume legitimately way up OR jack the intensity to include like where you mentioned sweet spot stuff in the evenings. (let me add that I am an adherent to the belief that intensity is NOT a substitute for volume, especially at the IM distance) However you already mentioned you feel you have been injury/illness prone when you start the high intensity stuff (I unfortunately am all too familiar with this as well). So you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. This leads me on to your global stress level....

You mentioned hiking with a 1 year old and family day. I am assuming you are a new or young father juggling many hats. Triathlon adds to your life and helps to create harmony however it is a constant balancing act. And there is a lot of hidden stress there that takes a toll even if we don't admit to feeling it. I have been become a big believer in factoring in global life stress after reading Matt Dixon's most recent book. So this is part of my equation and thought process.

A lot of assumptions above but... since you are near the front of the race, and time limited I don't think that some Z2 fluff for 30 minutes on the trainer or heading into work is going to do anything. At worst its going to add to global stress. Now if you have the gumption to try the sweet spot stuff then that should have a measurable gain however not without risks that you have already acknowledged.

Posts like these are rambling and probably don't provide the answers or insight we are looking for as forums are a lousy way to communicate, but hope you get a least a small tidbit of benefit or insight through all this fodder.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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wintershade wrote:
I suppose the follow-up question is, should I add 45 min of sweet-spot interval riding (85-95% of FTP) a couple evenings/week. It most targets my specific weakness. My concern here, knowing myself, is I worry this would materially increase training load, require more recovery, and potentially compromise my other quality sessions.

I think the general consensus is going to be yes, 45-60 mins of SS is going to be much more beneficial than Z2. One of the big benefits of SS training is that a 2x20 SS session isn't going to be so stressful on your body that you're out of commission the next day like a big VO2 session or a hard/long running workout.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [FishOutofWater] [ In reply to ]
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I second this, including the fun factor. And from a training standpoint for me, those extra couple of hours per week on the bike have benefited my biking in races.

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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I've recently been squeezing in some 'junk miles' in the afternoon after work and before my son gets off the bus. If traffic is minimal, I can get in three 20 minute runs - 15 minute runs if the traffic isn't that great. Just doing three shorter runs is bumping my mileage up from around 40 mpw to the upper 40's. I feel that for IM training, any training you can squeeze in can have an overall benefit - the same thing would hold true for biking.

I used to do some biking in the evening, but found I had a very hard time falling asleep after an evening workout (after the kids are asleep). I now get up foolishly early to get in longer rides midweek and on the weekend (alarm is set for 2:30 am on Sat to get in 4 hrs on the trainer and a short run before my wife's 7:15 aerobics class).

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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Sean H] [ In reply to ]
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I concur
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [mgreer] [ In reply to ]
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mgreer wrote:
wintershade wrote:
I suppose the follow-up question is, should I add 45 min of sweet-spot interval riding (85-95% of FTP) a couple evenings/week. It most targets my specific weakness. My concern here, knowing myself, is I worry this would materially increase training load, require more recovery, and potentially compromise my other quality sessions.


I think the general consensus is going to be yes, 45-60 mins of SS is going to be much more beneficial than Z2. One of the big benefits of SS training is that a 2x20 SS session isn't going to be so stressful on your body that you're out of commission the next day like a big VO2 session or a hard/long running workout.

Listening to a pretty good recent podcast with Dr Seiler, he mentions that they found (using HRV as the metric) that the medium sessions required just as much recovery as a hard VO2 styles session. You can listen here https://scientifictriathlon.com/tts177/

Everyone is different, but I am noticing that my hard sessions were being negatively impacted by doing middle intensity or SS work. I've since swapped out a middle intensity day for a z2 (by power, it's z1 by HR) ride, that I'm able to get in more consistent training weeks, thus increasing TSS and keep improving fitness. I'm a pretty faithful trainer road user, so this is kind of counter to the regular plans they have but I am also training at a higher total volume than most of their plans, so it makes sense to drop some of the middle intensity work and replace with lower intensity volume.


To answer the OP, I would focus on just adding in a ride, start easy and just see how it helps or not. Adding in SS could throw everything off balance, so it's probably best if you work your way up to that point and keep focused on consistency of training. Any additions should be made so that they don't ruin your consistency as then they would be counter productive. In my personal experience.. adding in an extra ride started with 30 minutes of really low intensity, which then became an hour of pretty low intensity, and I'll cycle through with 1 hour of .65 to .7 IF rides, depending on total workload for that week.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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domingjm wrote:


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.


There are actually a number of mechanisms. The biggest is the capillarization of the specific muscle groups. VO2, threshold, etc are important, the but delivery system is overlooked in discussions like this. Aerobic activity promotes this best. Delivering the fuel and oxygen to the working muscle can be more important that the uptake itself if the O2 is stuck in traffic. There's also a nervous system piece to it. The growth and thickening of the nerves that deliver the impulse is a long and slow process. Working harder doesn't speed this up as far as I've read. It takes time. It takes tons and tons of repetition. The result is a stronger, more precise and more direct impulse the muscle. Sometimes referred to as muscle memory, but it's more than that. The stride of an elite runner or the pull of an elite swimmer is not just more efficient because it's performed correct, it's also not wasting any energy firing 'helper' muscles. It's dialed in and only firing the exact muscles needed. Less noise. There's also a hormonal piece that really starts getting above my head pretty quick. There's other benefits too...


So it's not a huge surprise that all the good guys train a ton of volume. Intensity has it's place, but it's much more limited in it's benefits when you're dealing with athletes with few time constraints.

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


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.


There are actually a number of mechanisms. The biggest is the capillarization of the specific muscle groups. VO2, threshold, etc are important, the but delivery system is overlooked in discussions like this. Aerobic activity promotes this best. Delivering the fuel and oxygen to the working muscle can be more important that the uptake itself if the O2 is stuck in traffic. There's also a nervous system piece to it. The growth and thickening of the nerves that deliver the impulse is a long and slow process. Working harder doesn't speed this up as far as I've read. It takes time. It takes tons and tons of repetition. The result is a stronger, more precise and more direct impulse the muscle. Sometimes referred to as muscle memory, but it's more than that. The stride of an elite runner or the pull of an elite swimmer is not just more efficient because it's performed correct, it's also not wasting any energy firing 'helper' muscles. It's dialed in and only firing the exact muscles needed. Less noise. There's also a hormonal piece that really starts getting above my head pretty quick. There's other benefits too...


So it's not a huge surprise that all the good guys train a ton of volume. Intensity has it's place, but it's much more limited in it's benefits when you're dealing with athletes with few time constraints.


Edit: Sorry, in advance, if I come across as pedantic or terse. I was just trying to be concise.

Sure, in addition to enhanced hyperemia, increased capillary density is important and contributes to the percent of VO2 max that an athlete can maintain. But again, this chronic acclimation is thought to be highly related to the acute release of nitric oxide from the vascular endothelium, which is induced by shear stress. The absolute quantity of NO released is determined by both the duration and magnitude of the stimulus (for how long blood flow is elevated through the arterioles). By the transitive property, higher cardiac output (thus elevated blood flow through arterioles of exercising muscle) should generate a greater stimulus for angiogenesis than lower cardiac output. I don't know if those comparisons have been made empirically, but it’s quite safe to assume that the inverse relation is not true (i.e., lower cardiac output providing a greater angiogenic stimulus).

I'm not quite sure what you mean about O2 being stuck in traffic, but for clarity, O2 delivery (in healthy humans) to muscle during submaximal exercise (i.e., not at VO2 max) does not limit performance. For example, oxygen saturation from venous samples during submaximal exercise is in the range of 30 to 50%, whereas venous samples from very high intensity exercise are closer to 10%. If blood flow or capillary density limits submaximal exercise performance, it's likely due to insufficient removal of the metabolites of contraction.


Change in nerve diameter is not a training acclimation. And the strength of a single impulse from the alpha motor neuron to its innervated muscle fiber is related neither to increased strength of contraction nor improved mechanics. These are all-or-none impulses, which either reach voltage required for depolarization or they don't. End plate potential. There’s some data to suggest that the thresholds can be modulated, such that they require less of an impulse from the motor neuron in order to depolarize, but that’s far from conclusive as a training acclimation at this point.


And about efficiency and improved motor unit recruitment....if we train at 8:00 pace but want to race at 6:30 pace, how is our training positively contributing to the precise motor unit recruitment patterns that we're going to require at 6:30 pace? Biomechanically, these two speeds look quite different when performed by the same individual. If we're trying to optimize efficiency and motor unit recruitment patterns, and if repetition accomplishes that, why would we not want to run the bulk of our miles at 6:30? Maybe someone else can chime in on this. Maybe they're close enough; I'm certainly not a biomechanics expert.

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Last edited by: domingjm: May 10, 19 21:52
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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For me running & "junk miles" is all about building the "chassis", not the "engine". For most athletes - if not grown up somewhere on the high planes of Kenya and having run the entire life - the locomotor system is a key limiter. The high injury rate among runners is a testament to this: too fast, too long, to often.

"junk miles" help building the locomotor system.

The situation is different with cycling, developing the tendons & co is not that important. With the exception of active recovery rides I don't really see a lot of value in "junk miles". Most non-pros are time limited so there is probably better use of valuable training time. For cycling I'd say "junk miles" have to be "long miles" in order to be of value. There it's more about building the engine and not so much the chassis. And for the engine you have to go long.

Just my 2 cents.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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You can debate the science all day but the bottom line is what the top athletes actually do. Almost all top endurance athletes, regardless of sport, have trained, and train today, with relatively high mileage/yardage programs. Sure, maybe some programs emphasize quality over quantity but they're still doing a lot. To take but one example, in the '08 Oly each day in addition to his roughly 22 prelim, semi, and final swims, Phelps swam several warm-up and cool-down swims each day totaling 7500-8000 m per day. He could consider this a "light workload" b/c he was used to going around 16,000-18,000 m/day during heavy training, plus dry-land and weight training. The greatest swimmer to date certainly was not just skating by on just "low volume, high quality" workouts.

To go back the OP's question, I don't think there is any such thing as junk miles or yards. Every single 100 you swim makes you a better swimmer, every single mile you run or bike makes you a better runner or cyclist. Sure, swimming, biking, and running big volume wears you out but it makes you much stronger. You train hard and long for months, then taper, then BOOM, you're going faster. :)


"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."
Last edited by: ericmulk: May 12, 19 9:15
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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My N=1: Don't train the 3 sports the same.

In running you need miles in the legs to cope with the pounding. Running takes a high toll on you, so by necessity a lot of those miles need to be easy miles. My best running performances have always come when I'm doing the highest mileage, almost regardless of intensity. My half marathon PR actually came at a B race at a time when my run training was 100% easy and I was just focused on running 6 days/week and getting the miles up. If you could go do an extra 30-45 minute easy run every day I think this would have huge benefits to your performance.

In contrast, I find in cycling that what drives my performances is the quality, not quantity of the work. It's the amount of time spent at or above 90% of threshold that really makes the difference. I get a lot of easy miles in, but they're warming up, cooling down, or recovering between intervals. I get little to no benefit from a ride done completely at easy pace, unless it's a long ride (>4 hours) to build endurance. If I'm training for a triathlon I don't really have any easy rides, since my time would be more productively spent swimming or running. If I'm doing pure bike training then I'll have some easy recovery rides because you can't go hard every day, and I find that active recovery is better for me then total rest.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [ericmulk] [ In reply to ]
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ericmulk wrote:
You can debate the science all day but the bottom line is what the top athletes actually do. Almost all top endurance athletes, regardless of sport, have trained, and train today, with relatively high mileage/yardage programs. Sure, maybe some programs emphasize quality over quantity but they're still doing a lot. To take but one example, in the '08 Oly each day in addition to his roughly 22 prelim, semi, and final swims, Phelps swam several warm-up and cool-down swims each day totaling 7500-8000 m per day. He could consider this a "light workload" b/c he was used to going around 16,000-18,000 m/day during heavy training, plus dry-land and weight training. The greatest swimmer to date certainly was not just skating by on just "low volume, high quality" workouts.

To go back the OP's question, I don't think there are any such thing as junk miles or yards. Every single 100 you swim makes you a better swimmer, every single mile you run or bike makes you a better runner or cyclist. Sure, swimming, biking, and running big volume wears you out but it makes you much stronger. You train hard and long for months, then taper, then BOOM, you're going faster. :)

Absolutely. That's not debatable. I've mostly rationalized away my hangup by a couple of observations, with sustainability being probably the most dominant. Despite being a more robust stimulus for training acclimation, a large volume of high-intensity work would emotionally and immunologically cripple even the hardest and most driven athlete. So what's the next best alternative? I guess a large volume of easy training. But even making that compromise, using elite pro athletes as an example, and using the 90/10 ratio at 35 hours, they're still training 3.5 HOURS per week at high intensity. That's really quite a lot. Using one of my favorite cycling workouts to illustrate: 15min warmup, 15 x 1min intervals with 1min recovery, 5min cooldown. That's a fucking hard workout, but as quantified by Seiler, that would be 70/30 and only 15min of high intensity. If 3.5 hours represents some sort of optimal threshold for high intensity training, I have really a long way to go.

I apologize if I always seem contrary about training methodology, but I come from a research background and while observations are great and are an absolutely necessary catalyst for seminal research, there eventually needs to be some solid mechanistic support. Otherwise, how do you know which variables to manipulate in order to optimize your outcome?

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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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Why would you use Seiler`s research for triathlon training when it`s mainly conducted on our XC skiers? The way of racing is totally different. Why don't you take a look on how #triatlonslaget is doing things instead?
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Schnellinger] [ In reply to ]
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Schnellinger wrote:
Why would you use Seiler`s research for triathlon training when it`s mainly conducted on our XC skiers? The way of racing is totally different. Why don't you take a look on how #triatlonslaget is doing things instead?

Seiler's research started with XC skiers, but he's tried to do observational studies across other sports. He's still quite naive to triathlon itself, but in a couple of recent podcasts I've listened to, both Joel Filliol and Dan Lorang use a similar distribution of intensity to what he found in the elite athletes. Depending on the time of year, 10% might actually be a peak distribution of intensity, and I don't think any of their athletes are doing many weeks above the 25-30 hour range, but are more going for consistency. Dan wasn't quite as forthcoming as Joel with the specifics of his training schedules, but the difference between the short course athletes and the long course athletes is that more of the intensity as the competition gets closer will be race specific middle intensity work for Dan's LC guys, while Joel's guys are mainly doing their intensity at just below race pace and similar workouts throughout the season to maintain a high level of fitness through a long season.

The main goal it seems for both of them is that the intense sessions should not be so hard or long as to compromise the next planned workout. Always leaving something in the tank for the next workout was a common theme.

I've admittedly drank the low intensity kool aid this year and have had a really good offseason. I mainly focus on xterra, so the bike is all about short power, thus doing hardly any middle intensity is still quite specific for my event. For the run though I did no intensity from October through Jan and just ran easy, seeing my avg HR drop at the same pace until I got to where my HR did not drift on the long runs. Seiler has mentioned that having low drift is more about staying below LT1 than a gain in fitness which does match up with some of my historical training logs. I train 10-11 hours with 10-15% by time duration as intensity with most of that focused on VO2 or AC repeats that stress both AC and VO2 because of short recoveries. In my experience, the shorter low intensity workouts between the intense and longer sessions are all about maintaining your fitness you gained from the higher intensity and longer sessions. It's like it's more of a linear progression from week to week, while if there are skipped workouts, I feel it takes a bit more in the next workout to start feeling really strong. For my schedule, that is 4 bike, 3 runs, 3 swims.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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domingjm wrote:
ericmulk wrote:
You can debate the science all day but the bottom line is what the top athletes actually do. Almost all top endurance athletes, regardless of sport, have trained, and train today, with relatively high mileage/yardage programs. Sure, maybe some programs emphasize quality over quantity but they're still doing a lot. To take but one example, in the '08 Oly each day in addition to his roughly 22 prelim, semi, and final swims, Phelps swam several warm-up and cool-down swims each day totaling 7500-8000 m per day. He could consider this a "light workload" b/c he was used to going around 16,000-18,000 m/day during heavy training, plus dry-land and weight training. The greatest swimmer to date certainly was not just skating by on just "low volume, high quality" workouts.
To go back the OP's question, I don't think there are any such thing as junk miles or yards. Every single 100 you swim makes you a better swimmer, every single mile you run or bike makes you a better runner or cyclist. Sure, swimming, biking, and running big volume wears you out but it makes you much stronger. You train hard and long for months, then taper, then BOOM, you're going faster. :)

Absolutely. That's not debatable. I've mostly rationalized away my hangup by a couple of observations, with sustainability being probably the most dominant. Despite being a more robust stimulus for training acclimation, a large volume of high-intensity work would emotionally and immunologically cripple even the hardest and most driven athlete. So what's the next best alternative? I guess a large volume of easy training. But even making that compromise, using elite pro athletes as an example, and using the 90/10 ratio at 35 hours, they're still training 3.5 HOURS per week at high intensity. That's really quite a lot. Using one of my favorite cycling workouts to illustrate: 15min warmup, 15 x 1min intervals with 1min recovery, 5min cooldown. That's a fucking hard workout, but as quantified by Seiler, that would be 70/30 and only 15min of high intensity. If 3.5 hours represents some sort of optimal threshold for high intensity training, I have really a long way to go.
I apologize if I always seem contrary about training methodology, but I come from a research background and while observations are great and are an absolutely necessary catalyst for seminal research, there eventually needs to be some solid mechanistic support. Otherwise, how do you know which variables to manipulate in order to optimize your outcome?

Understand the research thing but I think science, at least exercise science, is always a bit behind what happening in the real world of sport where coaches and athletes figure out what works best simply by trial and error. When I read that story about Phelps, i was pretty frigging amazed, but Bowman and Phelps had figured out what worked best, and Michael went on to be the most dominant swimmer to date.


"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Schnellinger] [ In reply to ]
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Schnellinger wrote:
Why would you use Seiler`s research for triathlon training when it`s mainly conducted on our XC skiers? The way of racing is totally different. Why don't you take a look on how #triatlonslaget is doing things instead?

I don't personally do anything similar to Seiler's observations. But both short and long course triathlon coaches, in addition to a wide range of other endurance coaches and "gurus", discuss Seiler's observations positively as it relates to their methodology. Do you disagree? And how does #triatlonslaget differ?

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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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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.
Last edited by: Schnellinger: May 12, 19 11:58
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Schnellinger] [ In reply to ]
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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.


Yeah, so that is very different from subscribers to Seiler's observations, which basically attempt to eliminate middle intensities (in terms of HR zones, that appears to be from high zone 2 to low zone 4). One of the misconceptions of Seiler's observations and of his interpretations is that endurance athletes should mitigate or eliminate the high zone 4 and zone 5 work. In fact, he specifically states of 5,000 meter runners "These results provide experimental evidence supporting the value of a relatively large percentage of low-intensity training....provided that the contribution of high-intensity training remains sufficient".

Personally, I agree with you and think that middle intensities are pretty important in order to challenge acidosis and metabolite clearance mechanisms, which is the primary factor limiting the percent of VO2 max that an athlete can maintain. Seiler's contention is that low and middle intensities provide similar training acclimations but that middle intensities are nearly as difficult to recover from as high intensities. I've not seen literature that supports his former contention.

And sorry to the OP, this has definitely become a total hijack of your post (albeit a potentially informative one). So to answer your question from my $0.02 perspective, if you are so motivated and have the time, any extra pedal strokes should improve fitness as long as they don't compromise your key sessions.

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Last edited by: domingjm: May 12, 19 13:06
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [domingjm] [ In reply to ]
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Interesting. I didn't know the name of the process. Thanks for educating me:) I find it hard to believe that the recovery time is equal for I3 and I5 though. I normally aim for 60-90min at threshold during my double threshold days. If I were to do 60-90 min of I5 work a few times a week I would burnout like a candle in a storm.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Schnellinger] [ In reply to ]
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Schnellinger wrote:
Interesting. I didn't know the name of the process. Thanks for educating me:) I find it hard to believe that the recovery time is equal for I3 and I5 though. I normally aim for 60-90min at threshold during my double threshold days. If I were to do 60-90 min of I5 work a few times a week I would burnout like a candle in a storm.

And those middle intensities tend to be right around race pace, which isn't surprising given that the physiological processes at those intensities are likely the primary limiters of race pace. For elite athletes anyway. Interestingly enough, Joel Filliol claims to have his athletes perform very little race pace effort training. It's all very interesting but very confusing (and a little frustrating) when you try to make sense of it from the available literature.

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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [Schnellinger] [ In reply to ]
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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.
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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I've had success building most of my base miles around a 50min commute to work. Depending on your commute, you could do them at whatever intensity you need to accomplish that day (I do a lot of low intensity, with the odd higher intensity day sprinkled in).

If you have a young family, I don't see why you couldn't add this most days. It's such a huge time saver, never mind the training benefit (I'd need to make up those workouts elsewhere)

The other benefit is that your runs are "off the bike" - not immediately, but having 6 or 8 bike workouts through the week means that you also train your legs to run off the bike in the general sense. I've been able to pull my HIM run to within 10 mins of my standalone PB for a HM.
Last edited by: timbasile: May 12, 19 13:35
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Re: "Junk miles" -- Any benefit? [wintershade] [ In reply to ]
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This has been a very interesting thread. My situation is similar to yours. Biking is the weakest (and least enjoyable activity). Unlike you, however, I'm not a good swimmer, although always looking to improve. Here's what I'm doing - In my own situation, I only do short-course (age is late 40s, in case that factors in).

I've noticed over the years, that increasing run mileage and frequency improves not only run, but also biking. But trying to balance things (e.g. increase cycling and directly try to improve it) only helps improve bike marginally and then running suffers. Incidentally, swimming has a positive impact on everything in general.

This season I'm going back to what has worked for me in the past. Cycling 2-3 times (intensity and one longer). Increase run - in my case that's 40-50mpw with lots of 30 mins, almost daily (frequency is key) and some threshold/speed type of work - and swim 3-4 times, lots of quality. I also so some lifting and mobility work.

A couple of things to consider in your case: perhaps add some quality to the Sat. long ride. And then with the extra 30min chunks you have, instead of cycling add some very easy runs.

I'd be curious to hear if there are other similar experiences.
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