I have been reading a lot about the great distance runners of the past. When I read about their training one thing stands out. Insane, dangerous painful workouts. Which got me thinking.
These days where someone talks about doing a work out that is beyond hard. 7 hour bike/3 hour run bricks, 10x1 mile repeats at 10k pace, 30 mile long runs,etc. Everyone freaks out and says how stuid they are but is that what it takes to be great? Are we too candy ass now days? Are we so busy worrying about a life long racing career that we go too easy? Are the truly fast times for those who worry about the next race not the race 2 years from now?
Really hard and long workouts can help you achieve remarkable things, but they are also a really good way to get hurt and to mess up your workouts for a while afterwards. Also, insanely hard workouts do wonderful things for you mentally, but they really aren’t the best way to train. As a simple example, doing 25 x 500 yard freestyles will make a single 500 seem easy, but only doing 25 x 500 isn’t a really good way to train. Instead, you will get a lot faster if you regularly do 4 x 500 at a faster pace and also do lots of sets of 10 x 100 in single workout.