More of a radio show… but good. I listen to them while working.
I have a HUGE library of essential mixes… close to 15Gb worth I’m guessing.
Plus a few Tiesto albums.
Last night on the treadmill: Armin Van Buuren and Judge Jules - Trance Energy 2006
I was crushing my intervals. 
Moving from the general to the specific. That’s what I subscribe to.
Dude, it is called “*reverse *periodization”! Get with the program would ya 
“We are in agreement on the running thing. Durability comes first! That is a given. I would not advocate any sort of intensity before that is firmly established”
i’m glad to hear that. it sounds like we’re coming together.
“Does not MA hold the record for the Carlsbad 5k by a triathlete? Did he not then race the USTS tri series throughout the summer… only once that was completed did he up the volume (and decrease the intensity of the program) to get ready for IM Kona?”
i think i explained this a bit in the very article that started off this discussion. if not, it was in an article just prior to that (i don’t remember). in the old days – this would’ve been before your balls dropped – the world was a different place. the sahara was tropical, great glaciers covered europe, the celts were colonizing sicily, a great land bridge enabled migration to north america, and the racing season was much different than it now is.
there were two seasons, you might say. everything led up to zofingen. that was the other big enchilada, and it took place in may. there was no boulder. there couldn’t be a boulder, because january and february were big base months. for the germans, that didn’t start until february. doing base work does not mean you’re training yourself to be slow. at least not in running and cycling. if you’ve been fast afoot, base will bring your old footspeed back. that’s why mark was able to run 14:35 after a couple of months of base. additional speed training will take you to a new level.
plus, sifted in there were tempo runs. it wasn’t all 7 minute miles for two or three consecutive months. we used to do the “tuesday run” back then, and you could count on a fast 12 mile tempo run with 200 of your closest friends; but even mark took those runs carefully (he rarely “won” them in the early season, tho he always could’ve).
kenny glah, scott tinley, ray browning, and a few others, had to get fit even earlier, to go to IMNZ. but you did that race entirely off base. the rest of the world prepped for zofingen, and it wasn’t until 6 or 8 weeks out from that race that you really had to do any speed. after zofingen some folks tried as best they could to maintain fitness and recover from that beast of a race to do nice, which the was in june. most hunkered down until IM germany (roth at the time) in july, or even later.
in august, the preparation for kona started again, with more base, but less than was required after a winter of taking it relatively easy, because in august you were still already very fit.
now, this winter san diego environment was not necessarily good for everyone. mark knew, for example, when and how to throttle back during the tuesday run, and the wednesday ride, and so forth, because it was going to be a long season. others, like jeff devlin, i think this enclave environment got him too fit too fast. so after a year or two he stopped wintering in san diego. and you could see, back then, certain athletes – brad kearns and andrew macnaughton – lighting it up in the early season, but they weren’t there in the late season, when mark was there.
and this is my answer to speedwork on the bike. you’re right, you’re less likely to be injured on the bike than on the run, tho i think you might be minimizing the risk of damage to patellar tendons, IT bands, hamstring insertions. but that aside, i think it would be instructive to inquire of the best athletes of that era. about periodization; how time off helps accrue additional ability from year to year; how to keep the flame burning hot instead of out; and to burn hot at the right time; and how not to overtrain, and to stave off long-term endemic overtraining. i think it would be instructive to ask welchie, huddle and tinley about how an athlete should use the tool of intensity. speedwork is like a chainsaw. it’s powerful, it’s going to cut someone, you might be that someone, and it runs out of gas quick.
“Did he not then race the USTS tri series throughout the summer”
yes. and he never won the race he wanted to win most until he stopped doing that.
That’s all very well, but the real question is who’s your favourite trance dj?
“That’s all very well, but the real question is who’s your favourite trance dj?”
willy nelson
.
It is 7:36 AM PST…don’t you need an espresso and then head out with your dogs for a maximum aerobic effort run…go build that base old guy!!!
“It is 7:36 AM PST…don’t you need an espresso and then head out with your dogs for a maximum aerobic effort run…go build that base old guy!”
you betcha. i’ll be out on the bike today, but it’s sort of a business meeting on wheels with a major component manufacturer. i’ll be building base. he’ll probably think he’s wasting his time.
Quit posting on ST and go train…you’re eating into training time!!!
“you’re eating into training time!!!”
no, i’m reading about training during eating time.
oatmeal. then the big dog walk with monty and the 8 bad behavors. then horse feeding and horse poop pickup (which the dogs help with). then training time.
You wrote:
*Generally speaking, the structure of periodization for endurance athletes has started to change a great deal. I wish I could recall the article, but if someone has a link, that’d be super. It talks about Kenyan marathoners, and the reorganization of the classical “pyramid” periodization plan with the “strength” phase coming earlier in the year. I think a common misconception is that strength and speed are the same thing when it comes to training. *
**
Maybe not the correct link, but I think you will find this article interesting.
The Kenyan secret comes from years of training at the right intensity – and a few years with harder track work. Most Europeans and Americans tend to start in the other end. At very low (and slow !) mileage they do these hard track sessions that simply kill the little endurance they have from the beginning of. The result is 15 minute 5000 m. runners training 14 sessions a week. My dramatic improvement from running 3.48 in the 1500 m/8.13 in the 3000 m. to 7.47 in the 3000/13.22 in the 5000 m. over under a year came from this LT training. I copied the Kenyan way of training, using lactic acid meters to monitor it closely in the beginning (see seperate article on “practical guide to training the Kenyan way”), and the results started to come after only 4 months of this LT training. Before that, I was still working very hard, but just focusing on the wrong things, such as killing track-workouts and no real LT endurance base. Now I balance both LT work and track sessions (that are comfortably hard). Just like the Kenyans and the Moroccans.
*http://www.mariusbakken.com/index.php?parent=13&groupid=15 *
**
*More on Kenyan and Moroccans training here *
http://www.mariusbakken.com/index.php?parent=0&groupid=11
Too many posts to reply to, so I’ll go for this one since it was directed at what I wrote.
In general, we are talking about slowtwitch, and I believe that most on this site can agree that it is far from the lowest common denominator or that it might be the ‘hard-asses’ as you say and are generally not your typical triathlete. In talking about the ‘average triathlete’ I am talking more about the lower common denominator than your typical slowtwitch poster.
Time nor patience. For swimming, no I’m not willing to leave it there. I told another local pro here in Austin that the reason I thought that some of the faster pro swimmers in triathlon tanked on the run (IM) is because they were able to swam fast on low yardage. So, you can easily apply that to your ‘average triathlete’ and tell them that they need to swim more to run faster. And bike more to run faster. More being, as rappstar said in his post, more load and there are 2 ways to go about that…harder or longer. I am not disagreeing with you, especially on the running aspect. I would rather see an athlete maintain their swim and bike in the off-season, train like they are going to run a marathon if running is their weakness, but not actually run the dang thing. The problem with triathletes is that they do end up running the marathon and then are shot for a month. The program might not be an every day run like the challenge, but the would go from 3 runs a week to 5 runs a week. The difficultly is in convincing said athlete that this is what they need. Of course, if they are paying you, then the convincing ‘should’ be easier.
Cycling example. I was thinking about this after posting what I posted, and I remembered the article about effort and cadence. I think that it went something like if your best 1 hour effort is 95rpm and your 1/2 IM effort is 90% of that, then you should ride about 86rpm, and if your IM effort is 75% of that, then you should ride about 72rpm or so. Or at least something to that effect. But, this is something that a lot of ‘coaches’, especially those with higher degrees seem to have a problem with or those who are steeped in cycling lore without too much triathlon specific experience be it coaching or racing. If you need to somehow find a 1000+ watt spring at the end of 5 hours, it helps to have your legs turning at 95+rpm rather than 70.
So, in general we are more on the same page. But, I think that it’s the bike where most who ‘disagree’ with your position tend to disagree. There seems to be a fair amount of back pedaling going on here. If you’ve got 30 hours to do it in, running slow and biking slow can make sense, especially when looking long term be it a season or 20 seasons. If you’ve only got 8-12, then running more frequency and volume at a slower pace AND biking a little bit harder than you might normally is a good way to kind of kill 2 birds with one stone. You are building durability on the run, hidden speed on the run b/c as you say it won’t take much to bring it out, and maintaining or gaining fitness on the bike. And either way you look at it, I doubt that many will disagree that a cooling down period of 2-8 weeks of light training or conditioning between seasons is a good thing.
Andy,
Just last night I was doing some looking and didn’t find any longitudinal studies showing that % fat burning at the same relative intensity is trainable in men. I DID find some cross sectional studies of athletes and non-athletes showing lower RER in athletes at the same %vo2peak, lots of evidence of lower RER at a given absolute intensity, and even a nice point - counterpoint on glucose marker infusion with Coggan and Friedlander.
From the lack of evidence in longitudinal studies I was pretty much ready to call that over and done with, RER at a given relative % vo2 is not trainable in men with aerobic exercise.
So as a serious question, did I miss something?
Apparently.
I reviewed the evidence that training reduces carbohydrate oxidation and increases fat oxidation even at the same relative intensity in my criticism of Brooks’ “crossover concept” (which I’m happy to note seems to have faded from the scene as quickly as it appeared, which as it should be):
Of course, that was a few years ago, and a few more studies have appeared since, e.g.:
(Yeah, the P was only <0.10 and not <0.05, but then again, the subjects only trained for 4 wk.)
Even if the above were not true, however, why would it matter, at least re. my statement? It is, after all, an absolute world, and an unchanged RER at the same percentage of VO2max after vs. before training indicates that the rate of fat oxidation is higher after training (since VO2max, and hence submaximal VO2, is higher).
I reviewed the evidence that training reduces carbohydrate oxidation and increases fat oxidation even at the same relative intensity in my criticism of Brooks’ “crossover concept” (which I’m happy to note seems to have faded from the scene as quickly as it appeared, which as it should be):
Dr A,
So this whole concept of manipulating and modulating substrate utilization through diet and lower intensitry training, like you would turn dials on a stero, ala Maffetone et al, is once and for all bogus.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re saying that at one time Zofingen was on par with Kona in terms of attracting a top pro field? Wow, I had no idea! I knew that a lot of great pros had done the race over the years, but not that it attracted them in big numbers.
I did the race a couple of years ago and while there were a few very fast pros there, the depth of the pro field was nowhere near what you get at Kona. It seems like it’s almost exclusively a race for specialist duathletes these days. That said, the year I raced Koen Maris set a course record and Benny Vansteelant DNF’d trying to keep up with him. Erika Csomor has dominated the women’s race for a number of years. It seems a shame that the race isn’t what it was. What happened?
I think people are being too one sided here. Either long and slow or short and fast.
Just a little perspective on the running side of this debate:
Arthur Lydiard is the man who, in the running world, is credited with truly showing the benefits of a base-building approach with periodization. Some would say he invented it. (I personally think most modern coaching theory is just footnotes to Lydiard.) As many of you know, he produced world record holders and Olympic Champions in distances down to 800 meters by having his athletes periodize with a long base-building period. Peter Snell is the prime example.
Anyway what many of you might NOT know is that Lydiard used to always bristle at the notion that his system involved anything resembling “LSD”. He hated that term. Joe Henderson – who truly did popularize the notion of LSD and mistakenly interpreted Lydiard as advocating it – tells a funny story of meeting Lydiard one time and getting chewed out by him as a result. As Lydiard put it (practically spitting out the words in contempt)
“My athletes do NOT run slow. They go as fast as they can without going into oxygen debt. And they do NOT run long all the time, but only during the endurance-building phase that lasts less than three months”
Can you tell me in one sentence what goes from general to specific in MarkyV’s training methodology?
General = training threshold, V02max – shorter, harder workouts. Specific (for Ironman) would be longer workouts with a lot of time in the “sweet spot” (at, and/or just above race intensity) and lower amounts of threshold/V02max work. Specificity includes the type of work (swim, bike, run), the intensity and the duration.
Sorry, more than one sentence.
So this whole concept of manipulating and modulating substrate utilization through diet and lower intensitry training, like you would turn dials on a stero, ala Maffetone et al, is once and for all bogus.
Well, you do burn what you eat, and Maffetone isn’t the only one to believe that training longer and slower is better than training shorter and faster. The notion, though, you can/should use diet and training intensity to specifically “dial up” fat oxidation so as to improve performance is certainly incorrect. Rather, you should train in such a manner so as to optimize performance (which requires eating a sufficient amount of carbohydrates), and the increase in fat oxidation follows from that…
Best post in this thread so far.
i think it’s worth noting a couple of things. first, did you not find that a run where you start slow, gradually building to just below LT, and staying there for the duration of the run, was a pretty easy run? the typical kenyan 5k/10/half-mary runner is typically running 2 and usually 3 times a day, 130 to 160 miles a week, and as you’re building to, and maintaining, that mileage, even a “kenyan” can’t have many of his runs be much harder than that.
the problem most triathletes have is that they just can’t or won’t or don’t know how to run more than 10 or 15 miles a week. now, maybe that’s a function of available time. but my experience is that most of the time invested in a run or a ride is in the time just before and after the workout. the getting ready, the getting back from. the incremental time it takes to run 9 miles instead of 5 miles is not that impactful on my schedule.
how do you get a triathlete from 5 mile runs to 9 mile runs? or from 9 to 15? esp if it’s a 45 year old triathlete? i think there’s fairly good anecdotal evidence, from kenyans and moroccans, to the best american runners over recent history, that quantity at below LT is a critical component. steve scott is not only the second fastest, but the most durable, u.s. miler in history, and he was routinely an 85 and 95 a week runner (a lot for a miler).
training just below LT, as easy is that may seem to certain runners, still might not be easy enough if you’re trying to go from a 10m/wk runner to a 30m/wk runner. especially when we’re talking about those who’re carrying an extra 15 pounds, and who, unlike kenyan runners, must apportion energy to non-athletic activities.
in general, i think kenyan training principles fit elegantly inside the paradigm of base-building pursuant to further future intensity.
What happened?
It’s Duathlon.
Their was a brief time back about 15+ or so years ago when Duathlon looked like it was going to break-out - this was when Kenny Souza was at his peak. Zofingen was a significant race on the calendar. It was a big show down between Souza and the other Duathlon specialists, and some of the very best long distance triathletes as well( who at the time where also the best short course triathletes).
However, Duathlon has remained a poor second cousin to Triathlon and it never really did break out.