Congratulations on your improvements! You are right 33 is nothing to scoff at to begin with, I hope you not in my age group!
I’m actually surprised to hear real world success story coming from this type of training. Usually, I dismiss claims like Marks as being particular to his unbelievably gifted genetic makeup. I seriously doubt I’ll ever be running along at 5:20 in my base
Maybe I am approaching the problem with the wrong mindset. I’d planned to improve my running (previously ~39 off the bike for an oly) over the winter and my goal race is a 20k at the end of the month. The coach has me doing 4 runs/week totaling about 40 miles with one LT hill session, one off the track speed work, one medium distance base run, and a long run (like 17 miles).
I run a LOT of this in the LT zone, even the last half of the long run (if I’m feeling good). During the last couple of months I did a couple of 5k’s as indicators - maybe this is a mistake. I found I’m running slower than in the 5k I did during marathon training last year!
Pretty frustrating considering the time I’ve been putting in. I had lactate testing done to determine my zones, how do you figure what your “high aerobic range” is? A percentage of you max heart rate?
I am only in your age group if you are old. Ok, so 33 is not old, but it still feels really weird sometimes.
I didn’t mention any 10K run improvements, but I did run a 3-mile/14-mile/3-mile duathlon with 16:14/24mph/16:13 splits, so in reality if throw in another .2, I ran a PR 10K at a duathlon. That was in the midst of my biggest mileage of the year. It really worked for me.
I figured out max heart rate by killing myself on the treadmill. A few miles warm up then a mile at 5:50, a mile at 5:24, a half-mile at 5:00, a quarter at 5:00 and 2.5 percent grade, and finally another quarter at 5:00 and 3.5 percent grade. I hit 192 and know I was a wimp at the end, so I figure my max is about 195 or so.
The kind of workouts your coach is giving you is the “institutional baggage” I was talking about. If you want a more detailed explanation of what I am talking about, try this article by a friend of mine:
My new attitude with this kind of training is patience, patience, patience. Test races are fun sometimes, but don’t ever take home to much from a bad day. So many factors go into a good race it is hard to count all of them. Along with patience is a decision to race less than before. The massive aerobic volume is the key. I would guess I will start a limited amount of speed about six weeks out from my key race (of which I will have two per year) and the rest of the time I will run, ride and swim as many miles as I can squeeze in between all my other obligations, all done aerobically.
I look at triathlon as a lifetime sport. I may not be superfast the next race, or the one after, but eventually all the miles will lead to the result I am looking for personally. Hard work, done intelligently, will always come back to you.
Not a hoax. I’ll add my story to cdwaltons’. Note too that our anecdotes don’t count nearly as much as the considerable body of research that supports aerobic training as the basis for any endurance event. A ‘sprint’ triathlon takes an hour even for the good guys, so it is still an endurance event. See, as I always say, Dr Tim Noakes’ book The Lore of Running.
I stagnated at about 38min/10k and 3:10/42k for several years, from age 18 to 23. I trained hard all the time, had resigned myself to never getting better. Then I joined a club which had the Comrades Marathon (50-55miles) as its focus, and started doing long runs with them. Believe me, they were long… I was faster than most of the club, so I was training at a very comfortable pace. After six months of this, I ran a 2:45 marathon in the middle of a 35-mile race (3:48 finish). My 10k dropped steadily over the next few years to 33:40 (run at 6000ft), though I was focused on the ultramarathons, not on 10k. With a bit more concentration on speedwork, I think I could have brought that 10k down too. As it was, it was achieved with mediocre talent and mostly aerobic training…
Do any of you guys have thoughts on how many miles per week someone should be doing with a goal of doing Oly and Sprint tri’s? 50 sounds like a lot to me, given the time needed for biking/swimming, not to mention having some semblance of a life…
It isn’t going to happen overnight. You have to give it time. If you are emphasizing the run more than ever, wait until after your season goals to ask these sorts of questions. Yes, sometimes you will get slower before you get faster. Right now you are adding more “cylinders” to your engine. You’ve been going along with 4 or 6 and your coach is trying to get you to 8 or 10 cylinders. Trouble is, you are building the cylinders right now, but still breathing through the tiny 4 cylinder intake. When your coach adds the speed work later this year and you start to get some racing in, you’ll be building your intake to go along with your larger engine. When you get it all going together, you’ll find you’ll be a lot faster than you ever were before.
jhc wrote: Do any of you guys have thoughts on how many miles per week someone should be doing with a goal of doing Oly and Sprint tri’s? 50 sounds like a lot to me, given the time needed for biking/swimming, not to mention having some semblance of a life…
WHOA! Wait a minute! NOW you’re talking about having a life, too? HA!
Actually, some people can do it. But, that’s the rare individual. Also, that’s why 1/2 and shorter distances are so popular…you can get by on a lot less volume and time and still race a half. Olympic/International and Sprints can be raced with MUCH less volume…although big volume would probably help you with these short distances more than you might imagine.
I think the main issue with all aerobic training is time. I was swimming/biking/running so my average run week was only 3 hours. After running 3 hours/week for 20 weeks (starting from no running) I felt like my improvement levelled off…and I’ve noticed that in all the examples - people improved a lot when their mileage jumped a lot. I figure if I could run 6-7 hours/week for 20 weeks I’d be a lot faster (no matter how I ran those miles) but I don’t have the time. If you only have 3 hours/week - is all aerobics the way to go? Maybe initially when you are just starting but then you need to add some speed work once you level off. You’ll level off again after another set of weeks - then what? I seriosuly doubt you’ll get any faster by switching back to all aerobic 3 hours/week running. If you want to improve - you need to stress the system - add volume, add speed, add something…i think the volume first then speed then back to volume and cycle makes sense but you probably will have to increase the volume/speed with each cycle or you won’t improve.
Well I did Ironman Brazil last year (1st Ironman) on less than 40 miles a week running (Been doing triathlons since 1988). Finished in 10:43. My two key weekly workouts were a long run of up to 3 hours and a long bike of up to 100 miles. My speed work on the bike consisted of 2 weekly 30-40 mile sessions with the roadies. I didn’t do any real speed work for the run. My swimming consisted of 3-4 days, with 1 day swimming straight up to 2 1/2 miles. Oh and most of my training took place during the winter, so some of my long rides were actually on an indoor trainer. Arrrg.
For an Olympic race you don’t have to have more than 25 miles running IMO. If your plan is to just finish, you could probably do less. If you want to do better then you should do one long run say up to 10-12 miles and then do 3 other runs with one of them being speed work. You should have a long bike up to 50 miles. 3 days of swimming should be just fine.
What has really worked for me is to do a long swim and bike on Saturday and then a long run on Sunday. Some people like to do it reversed, but I feel that doing it my way prepares the body better for a race. On the bike I also like to go out easy and finish the last hour at race pace or faster.
Mileage will always depend on your goals. If you have modest goals then you can get away with modest mileage. I have talked with a number of people who have finished Ironman distance races in the 10:30 to 11:30, male and female, who had a very similar to what TRI described. However, you will eventually reach a point where you will not longer improve. That is where you need to decide if you want to be satisfied with your present level, or try to continue to improve.
Improving is simply going to take more time and commitment and will not show the results that you are hoping for immediately. In nearly three years of triathlon racing I have been chasing the two hour Olympic Distance barrier with no luck yet. The first year off of about (per week) 5K swimming, 70 miles on the bike and 20 miles running I was a 2:20 (hilly course) finisher. The next year I did a little more in each event and dropped to about 2:11 or so. Last year I averaged 6-8K in the pool per week, 90-120 on the bike for a few months and 40 miles a week running. I dropped down to 2:06. This year during the winter I am swimming 8-9K a week, riding the indoor bike for 5-6 hours (there is snow on the ground) and running more than 60 miles a week. All done aerobically.
Is this worth it for those six short minutes of improvement? Maybe not to everyone, but it is to me. Lest you think I have all the time in the world, let me tell you that I start at 5:30 a.m. for a couple hours of workouts before work and then run through my lunch hour. My wife gives up Saturday morning so I can train and then I’m done for the weekend. I love to compete, so eventually all the work will be worth it.
First, I think the folks who have the best luck with ‘long, slow distance’ are probably those who come from an athletic background and have already developed or have been blessed with a high running velocity at VO2max. It’s the hard, fast, lower volume training that those who swear by LSD did in the past that allows them to see the gains they see when they slow it down and increase their mileage. In order to race long, you have to train long. The long mileage doesn’t develop aerobic capacity as much as it trains the skeletal muscles to be able to last for a long period of time without fatigue. The gains come as your muscles adapt.
Second, the only thing ‘magical’ about lower intensity, LSD training is simply that it allows the athlete to build training volume and mileage. As you build mileage to higher and higher levels, the low intensity, slower paced work is simply easier to recover from during periods of high training volume. Put in the high mileage necessary to race long at higher intensity and the athlete simply can’t recover from his/her own training. It’s all about making tradeoffs within a finite capacity for volume, duration, and intensity.
I will preface my comments here by saying that in 20 years of high level running and triathlon training I never used a HRM.
It must be kept in mind that a HRM is a training tool. It alone, will not make you a better runner. It can be part of the solution.
If performance is your goal, over the course of time you need to start to become focussed on pace ie. What is the pace that I need to run at to achieve my 10K goal time, or what ever? The HR information you get from a HRM is an important part of how you achieve that goal, but it’s not essential. This is not the best example, but I will note that hundreds of great Kenyan runners over the years have never worn a HRM - their focus is pace training.
For newcomers, I believe that the HRM can be important in establishing the various key intensities that are required for successful improvement: What is easy? What is tempo pace? etc . . Note that HR measuring for efforts less than 4 - 5 minutes are not that accurate. Thus the best application, is for longer efforts in particular keeping HR down on longer runs and keeping it at just the right point for tempo type of efforts.
Late in my triathlon career I won a HRM at a race. I started playing around with it a bit. What I found interseting was that my HR corresponded exactly with the percantages of my max for the various paces/intensities that I have been training at for years ie. My long run HR was right where it should have been. My HR at roughly my LT was right where it should have been, and so on.
Note that HR measuring for efforts less than 4 - 5 minutes are not that accurate.
I think what folks forget is that HR is essentially an approximate indication of AEROBIC intensity. It’s essentially useless for measuring intensity during non-sustainable, anaerobic efforts.
I think that Long Slow Distance is a misnomer that doesn’t really apply to what aerobic training is going to accomplish. Most of my miles are run between 6:30-7:10 mpm and that not slow at all. When someone’s aerobic capacity has increased, speeds that were previously anaerobic become aerobic.
This isn’t just a training philosophy either, its really just biology. The same thing that makes the Kenyans and any other fast runner fast is the incredible number of miles they do, combined with their genetic talent (they don’t have two or three generations of couch potatoes as grandparents). For Paul Tergat who ran his marathon in 2:05, then a 5:45 is still an aerobic pace and that is the where he will do the primary percentage of his 160 miles a week that he ran before the Berlin Marathon.
The problem with nearly all speedwork is that it trains your anaerobic system to be more efficient. Ultimately, this is going to be very limited, because that system is very inefficient. Your aerobic system on the other hand has the potential to be very efficient, even at higher speeds, but you must train it aerobically. This applies to all distance from the mile up to the marathon. Steve Ovett, a British former world record holder in the mile used to run 135 miles a week. Why? because even the mile is an event that is about a 50/50 mix of aerobic and anaerobic work and so he made his aerobic systems as efficient as possible to stave of fatigue as long as possible.
This type of running applies to everyone. Most of us don’t reach our potential because we don’t have time to train like a world class athlete. Steve Ovett could have probably run very fast (maybe 90-95 percent of his talent) off of 60 miles a week. He was a professional and needed that extra 5 percent to set him apart from his peers. Most of us are not, so we have to be satisfied with the 90 percent solution.
Words such as " long", “short”, and “sprint” are relative in the context of triathlon - it’s all 99%+ aerobic work that is required.
You are right that people often ascend the ladder to the longer events - going up the ladder much to quickly I find. And what happens is that they keep adding more and more training volume at slower and slower paces over the course of time, and yes they actually become “slower”. What, I often suggest is that after a few years of Ironman training, if improving perfoirmance is key, they take 6 months or a year and try a for an absolute 10K or 1/2 Marathon PB or an absolute 40K ITT PB - train exclusivly for higher performance in these “shorter” more intense, isolated events. What they will find is that when they return to the “longer” training, they will have gone to a new level of fitness, by NOT going longer, but by actually going shorter, and their IM times will drop significantly in following years.
Hmmmm, interesting point. It had crossed my mind that cdw and of course Mark Allen are already pretty highly trained already and this is somewhat different than trying to increase speed at VO2max. When I read “Running with the Buffalos” I pretty much dismissed the passage about the one day Wetmore broke out HR monitors. The BPM’s were ridiculously low for the speeds they were running (145 at a god awful pace? I can’t remember exactly). I figured Lear was just using a bit of poetic license to make them look all the more magnificent.
Based on that pace, most of the incredibly high volume they run is probably deep in their aerobic zones, with a few exceptions (races and a couple of track workouts). But I’m sure they all did a lot of speedwork in high school, and of course who knows what is left out of the book. Are they going to give up all the secrets?
I can’t speak for Mark Allen, but what I have learned over the past few months of experience was that I was not well trained. In fact, at performances beyond a mile, my predicted times fell off dramatically because my aerobic capacity was limited by my limited miles.
I don’t think you can effectively train your Lactate threshold at speeds that go beyond your aerobic capacity. Only after your aerobic capacity has been increased (volume or base if you will) does it do any good to run hard in training. It is kind of like putting a sharp edge on a sword. If you have a big base then you have a big sword. When you finally sharpen it after it is complete, it will be a very dangerous weapon. If you start to sharpen it too soon then the size remains where it is when you put the edge on. It will still be sharp, but it won’t have any reach or heft to it when you are battering on the other guys armor.
I have never read “Running with the Buffalos”, but I assume it refers to the University of Colorado distance runners. I saw them run at District VII meets (that they won as a team) and they are elite runners. They probably did a lot of miles in high school and were likely doing upwards of 90-100 miles a week in college. It is very likely they could run a nearly unbelievable pace and still be at 145 bpm. After eight solid weeks of consistent 50-60 miles a week, I can now run at 6:40 at 145 bpm. That used to be closer to 7:30 or 8 minutes per mile when I was a 20 miles a week-er. I think the only secret the Buffs had was that they were elite college athletes who went to school and ran. that’s all. They had a big budget and their runners had all the advantages stacked in their favor. It is amazing how many miles you can put in when you can take an afternoon nap. I read that a lot of elite runners do it between their morning and afternoon workouts.
This should be encouragement for the rest of us, regardless our level. We can apply the same principles and see comparatively (to our talent level) similar results.
Desert Dude has a saying on his posts that I find completely true. There is no such thing as a junk mile. (Unless it leads to injury.)
Happy training. It actually broke the freezing mark here today.
Like the links says it’s from beginnertriathlete. It’s a beginner friendly site, and I hope no one takes liberties at mocking any of the beginner achievement posts. I doubt that will happne, but I have seen that occur at different websites.
