15 Mins of 116% versus 90 Mins of 83-94% (Lore of Running)

Triathlon Forum
1

Wow. I have been thoroughly enjoying reading Lore of Running by Noakes. Of the many things I have picked up from the book, I am taking notes, the #1 thing I think really is under stated is the idea expressed in the title of this thread.

Now putting this only in the context of increasing mitochondrial enzyme adaption, and realizing there are MANY other factors to peak performance of which mitochondrial enzyme adaption is only one variable, Noakes states that studies indicate that 15 min a day of high intensity intervals at ~116% VO2max was just as effective at producing as great of an increase in mitochondrial enzyme content as did 90 mins of exercise at 83-94% VO2max.

Given that, why wouldn’t a key component of any elite athletic training program include at least 15 mins/day High-Intensity Intervals? It seems weird that you don’t read about this more often in mags/websites etc… This seems like an easy way to get in quality training of one aspect of performance with a very high ratio of time spent training versus return.

Maybe a daily 15 min Interval Spin on the CT is in order!

2

Flip around for the section on the overload principle. After an athlete adapts to the 15 minutes of 116%, they need to increase the time spent at that intensity in order to continue improving. High intensity work requires recovery because it’s exhausting. It’s impossible to overload without complete recovery days between hard efforts.

3

It tears up some muscle too. High intensity exercise is not an every day thing. As it is I give my subjects at least 1 day off in between their bouts of maximal exercise to recover. You could do about 15 minutes/day of >VO2max running but i’ll give you a week max before you’re cooked

4

It’s not new … the first to state this was, as far as I remember, the japanese Tabata.
You can find more looking around about : Tabata Protocol !

5

I’d suggest doing 100 of these workouts over 100 days. Report your findings here…

I don’t know much about running, but for cycling I certainly find 25-40 minutes @ vo2 intensity to be more effective in increasing threshold power than 90-120 minutes @ tempo. That said, there’s a time and a place for both, since you can only do so much vo2, and it does come with some opportunity costs. I think incorporating some time @ vo2 on the bike most of the year is typically a good idea. How to incorporate that effectively takes some experience, though.

6

“I think incorporating some time @ vo2 on the bike most of the year is typically a good idea. How to incorporate that effectively takes some experience, though”

I agree with Roady. I think why you don’t see it in most running programs is due to the risk of injuring oneself by going hard too frequently in the context of a week…but on the cycling and swimming front, it is a great way to gain fitness as you are not pounding and non weight bearing and can recover fast.

7

Good point on the running for sure, I could see that as being a recipe for injury. Cycling I think could be doable along with swimming for sure. I am not going to risk switching up anything right now, particularly with the 100/100 volume, but maybe after that challenge ends I might try to throw in some 15 min max efforts intervals into my cycling and swimming and cut back a little bit on the overall time spent for some of the “filler” type sessions.

Definitely some great stuff in the book. Wish I would’ve read it a long time ago!

8

Law of dininshing returns

If you have 1hour/day to train do intervals - best bang for the buck

If you have 4hours/day to train do volume (with some intervals mixed in) - biggest, but not most efficient, bang
.

9

It is 3:34 am and I am already going to use up my dumb bunny blonde question for the day…

How do you manage 116% of vo2 max… if vo2 max is your MAXIMUM (ie cannot exceed) aerobic capacity?

  • hey, I’ve got the book - give me a page number so I can read over this part?
10

i’m at the university of cape town, where noakes works, and he’s huge here. a real legend. anyway:
the high speed stuff is 100% where it’s at. i’ll have to dig up the references, but there’s been other, more recent work looking at intervals etc., and it seems that even for distance runners, speed is the way forward. basically as i remember it your aerobic systems contributions peter off around 1500m, so anything longer than that (for intervals) is a waste of time; you can get the same ‘fitness’ benefits, plus all the mechanical benefits of actually running faster, by doing shorter work.

as others have said, though, the crash and burn risk is high with running. in the swimming pool, though, smart coaches and athletes cottoned on to this years ago. speedwork: the new black!!

11

ok! dug up my resources:

  1. fukuba et all 2002 - found that VO2 kinetics are not affected by previous workouts; ie., you can go bonkers doing repeats in the pool in the morning and still have a nice aerobic bike ride in the afternoon.

  2. spencer and gastin 2001 - aerobic systems make much bigger contributions during even 400 or 800m (running) intervals, beginning within the first 30 seconds! after 1500m there’s no further increase in aerobic contribution. so, you’re wasting both speed and aerobic contributions by doing longer, slower intervals.

  3. Millet and Vleck 2000 - do all sorts of applied physiology on triathlon - really cool stuff! they argue that doing high-speed transition workouts from high-intensity cycling to high-intensity running are absolutely key.

there are a handful of others that escape me now, but one or two in particular that were about taking a group of distance runners and getting some to add a component of very short, very high-intensity work to the training program, and the other group doing business as usual. the group doing intensity got faster and more efficient over longer distances. . .

-mike

12

I know some guys who are training with a lot of intensity. Ok, they are not elite athletes, but they do train often and lots of speed work, really impressive to see them hammering intensity sets. Big sweating and looking really tired afterwards. I always wonder where they are in races. It is often a long time waiting at the finish line to see them showing up. I don’t know any intensity trained person that can show me consistent good racing results. Maybe the measurable quantity called “VO2 max” is not a good predictor for race results in long distance racing?

13

How do you manage 116% of vo2 max… if vo2 max is your MAXIMUM (ie cannot exceed) aerobic capacity?

Not a dumb question - it hasn’t been made clear in the discussion.

The intensity is more accurately described as 116% of velocity or power at VO2max (for example “vV02max” for running). While your O2 consumption at this speed would not be 116% of max, you can certainly achieve power outputs (velocity, watts, etc) in excess of what you can achieve at VO2 max, for short periods.

As a general guideline, maximal efforts lasting 6-10 mins elicit V02max, depending on fitness and the mode of exercise. For decent swimmers, an 800free fits in that range, and for decent (male) runners, 3000m works. The distance isn’t important, the effort (max) and the time (roughly 6-10) is what matters.

If you consider your 800free pace, or your 3k pace, it’s easy to see how you could swim or run shorter intervals faster than that pace - you probably do it all the time.

BTW, VO2max is better described as max aerobic power, not capacity. Power is a rate (ie. per unit time), capacity is a volume. VO2max is a descriptor of the rate of 02 consumption.

14

Good point on the running for sure, I could see that as being a recipe for injury. Cycling I think could be doable along with swimming for sure. I am not going to risk switching up anything right now, particularly with the 100/100 volume, but maybe after that challenge ends I might try to throw in some 15 min max efforts intervals into my cycling and swimming…

Jecey get’s it right - the intervals would have to be short (tabata) or medium length (3-4mins) with equal rest or more. You could try to hold your ~10min max power or pace for 15min, but it won’t work out very well. Even doing one all out 15min effort will end up looking a lot like ~92-97% of VO2max. Doing “a few” will drop you into the territory of ~85-90%…or a lot like the classic FTP 2x20 workout, and right in line with the 83-94% VO2max group you mention from Noakes’ book.

Jason also gets it right - there’s a reason no one does that type of work every day.

15

Good discussion and an important subject to think about.

I always wonder where they are in races. It is often a long time waiting at the finish line to see them showing up. I don’t know any intensity trained person that can show me consistent good racing results.

What people often fail to realize is that it isn’t a “one or the other” type situation. If all you do is train short and hard, you can expect to get better at that and maybe not improve impressively in other areas. It is important to develop fatigue resistance through long, directed training. It is also important to “raise the roof” through interval work. Year round, my athletes are doing distance work, threshold training, and also some VO2max and speed work. The art of training is in deciding on the balancing act you must do at any one point in the season.

Maybe the measurable quantity called “VO2 max” is not a good predictor for race results in long distance racing?

In one sense, you are exactly correct. In a large, mixed population. VO2max may be a pretty good descriptor. However, once you narrow it down to, say, a group of elite athletes, VO2max becomes far less useful. There have been great champions with relatively low VO2max values (at least with respect to their competition). This is why doing these types of tests seem to be falling out of favor at elite training centers, and doing simple performance tests seems to be more useful.

Phil

16

doing simple performance tests seems to be more useful.

If the ultimate performance test is race day than those pure intensity trained athletes fail most of the time.

Year round, my athletes are doing distance work, threshold training, and also some VO2max and speed work. The art of training is in deciding on the balancing act you must do at any one point in the season.

That is a good understanding of training.

17

Theres a running coach in austin who has taken this fact and really ‘run’ with it, starting a running club with the intent of training athletes to make it to the olympics.

Looking at their website logs though, none of them have gotten even as fast as they were in highschool.

The thing you are missing here is that there is more to running fast than mitochondrial enzymes.

As a runner you are basically spending units of effort and you only get so many before you are injured. If we assume that the two options here (15 min all out, 90 mins medium effort) have similar total injury risk

then with the 90 minute effort you get the mitochondrial enzyme response, and increased running efficiency, and cardiovascular adaptation and so on. There are 100 adaptations that occur to make you faster at running, not just ONE

that said, it IS part of almost any runners program to do some hard interval work so…but not every day!

Wow. I have been thoroughly enjoying reading Lore of Running by Noakes. Of the many things I have picked up from the book, I am taking notes, the #1 thing I think really is under stated is the idea expressed in the title of this thread.

Now putting this only in the context of increasing mitochondrial enzyme adaption, and realizing there are MANY other factors to peak performance of which mitochondrial enzyme adaption is only one variable, Noakes states that studies indicate that 15 min a day of high intensity intervals at ~116% VO2max was just as effective at producing as great of an increase in mitochondrial enzyme content as did 90 mins of exercise at 83-94% VO2max.

Given that, why wouldn’t a key component of any elite athletic training program include at least 15 mins/day High-Intensity Intervals? It seems weird that you don’t read about this more often in mags/websites etc… This seems like an easy way to get in quality training of one aspect of performance with a very high ratio of time spent training versus return.

Maybe a daily 15 min Interval Spin on the CT is in order!

18

I was contemplating trying for a BQ time after my most recent marathon; decided instead to skip it this year and try for it next year. In any case, I was researching some marathon training plans and found several plans that seem to incorporate this “fast before far” mentality of training at high intensities several times per week in conjunction with some tempo work and some LSD work.

I gathered that the theory is that most folks who are ready to try for something like that have sufficient aerobic base; now they just need to work on holding FASTER longer.

There seems to be a movement afoot in the tri coaching community to move towards this direction as well; using the philosophy of faster then farther.

I for one am glad to work a reduced volume but increased intensity. As someone who is unwilling to devote 20-25 hours a week towards training, I find that I can get in plenty of training in about 12-15 hrs a week with the same TSS. 1 hr tempo run = about 2.5 hrs of LSD (in terms of TSS) and like one of the previous posters said, much better bang for your buck.

Last year while training for my first IM, I never exceeded 17 hrs and only did 1 100 mile bike ride. Top 33% of all finishers at the IM so can’t be too far off track. My time was nothing to brag about, so that’s why I’m looking to improve my training by training SMARTER instead of just MORE LSD VOLUME.

19

I think it is funny if someone is telling me they are training with lots of intensity for “only” 12-15 hours a week. Try to explain someone not in this IM sport that you are doing an intensity week because you only have 13 hours this week to train…

Intensity here might be a bit used in a wrong way. A strong aerobic pace that you can do for 10+ hours a week or so is in my eyes completely different as intensity. Intensity is what 800 m runners are supposed to do. Watch these athlese during an intensity track session. That is intensity. That is also why most of them are always injured and why they have to train so very very easy the day after these sessions. We triathletes have to go long and relative “fast”, so we have to train this. We should train as we race. A true intensity training (800 meters running style) would make a long and fast training impossible for a few days so often the return on a long term approach is not so big with pure intensity.

20

At least twice a week even during high volume phase, I do 10 to 20 times 20 to 30 second sprints. For the 20 second sprints I cruise 40 seconds in between, for 30 second sprints 60 seconds…basically on for 33%, cruise for 67% of the time. Just did that workout this morning and then added on 6x60 second sprints. So I ended up with around 12 minutes of intensity running. Even on long runs, I try to end the last 10 minutes with 10 minutes with 20 second hard and 40 second cruise. This ends up being high value with minimal recovery penalty.

Dev