So how does someone approach training athletes that are “diesel engines” or those that can run for long time and not slow down, where their Half marathon pace and marathon pace are similar vs someone that’s a “Ferrarri” who has a lot of natural speed but cannot carry on as well when the race gets long.
I think we all know that guy who you will beat any day of the week at a 5k and 10k, but when the marathon rolls around in October, he is putting the minutes into you. Or maybe you are that guy. If we talk about triathlon, same idea at sprint and olympic distance maybe some has your number, but at half iron and iron distance he is miles behind.
Some people will immediately start talking about aerobic and anaerobic and I am not exactly sure it is the case here, a 5k and 10k are definitely aerobic events. It’s more a matter of relative % of aerobic potential you can hold. It’s a similar idea to phenotyping in the Coggan charts, where maybe you are relatively higher at 1 hour power than 5 minute power. So, staying with that nomenclature, is there a preferred training method for a given phenotype?
I use fatigue rate for similar purposes actually. Plot out your pace over several distances say 10k. half marathon and marathon. And figure out what % your pace declines every time the distance doubles, the courses should be similar. If you are in the 10% area, I consider that the beginning of the high fatigue rate area, you slow down relatively more than other in shape folks. Down around 3 or 4% I consider the low fatigue area, you don’t slow down very much. Honestly I have much less data on running and cycling than I do swimming, so don’t take these as absolute.
First you need to get at why, because sometimes it isn’t necessarily the way you are built but it is what you are doing.
- The first question is execution, are you slower at longer distance because your pacing, nutrition and hydration are bad? That’s an easy answer in most cases. half marathon for many people is where you just first need to start thinking about getting some calories in and some water, at marathon it pretty important. For slower folks in tri, olympic is where you just start needing to think about it a little, half iron is where you really need to start paying attention to execution - a few really fast folks can kinda fake it, drink a little, get a few calories in. There’s no faking execution at iron distance, you need to have it together to perform well.
Execution errors are usually fixable, you just need to look around at resources and follow them.
- So if it isn’t execution are you just undertrained in one area? Have you just not put in the long miles yet and that’s why you aren’t very good at those distances? Or conversely have you spent a lot of time steady running and never really did threshold or faster intervals to any degree?
If this is you it might be good news, this is the “work on your weakness” thing everyone was talking about. It could be that with 5 weeks of dedicated work your weakness will come around and your performance at goal distance will as well.
- Are you a partial non-responder? Let’s oversimplify the universe of training stress into anaerobic intervals, VO2max intervals, threshold intervals, and long and steady. Have you given all of these a fair shake and you still have that glaring weakness at short stuff or long stuff? You might just be the type of person who doesn’t respond well to a given type of work, they exist.
Thankfully this is reasonably rare, most of us respond to all types of work, maybe relatively more or less but the person for whom a certain type of workout simply doesn’t work is a rare bird. Though I know a handful.
If that is the case, you honestly tried VO2max intervals twice a week for 4 weeks and nothing happened - then you might just be the type of person who doesn’t respond to that type of work. If that is truly the case, then my counsel is to do the opposite of “work on your weakness” you will just continue to bang your head against a wall.
Suppose over the past three years you think back and say to yourself, “man, every time I change my training mix to add threshold intervals my speed increases rapidly but those 30 second intervals with long rest really did nothing for me.” Then you might want to keep the anaerobic intervals to a minimum.
Conversely, if you think that “VO2max and threshold intervals really make me faster quickly but long and steady don’t really do anything for me.” Well first of all you might be mistaking the time course of adaptations to steady vs threshold intervals for lack of improvement. But assuming that is not the case, then you may be better off doing enough long and steady to say you can get through the race, but emphasize threshold work a little more.
Interestingly enough though, being a diesel doesn’t necessarily mean you are a non-responder to any particular type of work. I can think of a couple of them who respond pretty much as we would think to a given type of work, yet remain mostly a diesel. So, a few weeks of VO2max intervals improved his speed at shorter end of work, yet he continued to not slow down very much on the long end - relatively speaking.
So to sum, if your potential as a ferrari or diesel are simply unexplored, then train the weakness. On the other hand if you have genuinely given it a fair shake and some types of training don’t work for you - then cut them back to bare minimum or eliminate them and quit banging your head against a wall.
Figuring out where you stand can be difficult, good luck.
You can see these same themes developed in the book “The Science of Winning,” unfotunately it’s not widely available and not available cheaply for sure. The author of that book, tells the tale through the lens of lactate accumulation. Thoguh he doesn’t address non-responders, that could be derived form the fact that he seems to work mostly with relatively high level athletes, so he doesn’t see true non-responders. At that level a non-responder would have either been weeded out or found other things to do. It’s really an mass participation endurance event phenomena where some of us who don’t respond well to training still go out there and put in our 12ish hours per week to try and get better.
Side note: From personal experience if you are hella slow, like way back of the pack, and your fatigue rates are in the 2% range across sports, you more than anyone are going to earn every minute you pick up through lots of hard work.