Runtraining and why it is so counter intuitive

Triathlon Forum
1

As many here are aware, runners seem to progress best when lots and lots and lots of easy paced training is accumulated. This is something that many people being introduced to the sport seem to battle with. “How can I get faster by training easier?”

I’ll answer this question at the end of this post, but I will say up front that this, indeed, is a very hard concept to accept if you have any athletic background. I remember hearing those words (“Train easy, get fast?”) from a guy at our local track who had plateaued and was frustrated. Unfortunately, I couldn’t crack him. He took my advice to the group he was training with, and I became the laughing stock of the track group…which I found odd being that I was racing 5Ks at 1-3 minutes faster than the men in their group.

But I think this hits the nail on the head with the issue. The idea of training slower to get faster was so counter intuitive that the absurdity of it caused a group of runners to laugh at someone who had said it despite being a more successful runner, and despite their own failings in their races (another guy in the group trained with more intensity than ever to quailify for Boston, and instead ran the worst marathon of his life).

I can remember when I first started to learn about running in the late 80s. I was on a low performing cross country team coached by a man who played football and basketball growing up, and had previously coached high school basketball for about 10 years. Every piece of every workout we were encouraged (yelled at, in fact) to run as hard as we could. Even the pre stretch warmup was treated as if it was a race. There was no such thing as pacing in a race. As a freshman, I was yelled at if I wasn’t fighting my way for a big lead in the first 400 meters of a 2 mile race. “Get up there and beat that guy!” “But coach, he’s the reigning state champ!” “Its all in your head! You can beat him if you try hard enough!”

And every season his entire team would run their best races in September, and their worst at the championship meets in November.

My weekly spin class at the Y is a similar story. Our instructor is a former Drexel hockey player, and we are encouraged to push ourselves as hard as we possibly can through every part of every workout (he does give us a reasonable warm up and cool down). The class is reminded every week that if we aren’t exhausted at the end of the workout, then we didn’t push ourselves hard enough. I don’t have an issue with this in a spin class, but should running be treated this way?

Lets think about it from this perspective. At what point in a hockey game does a coach ever say, “Okay, we’ve got a long game ahead of us. Stay relaxed and don’t try too hard. If you see the puck and the other team is racing you for it, just let them have it. In fact, lets just let them score a few goals and hope we can catch up later in the game. Oh, and number 13? He’s out of our league. Just let him score at will. We’re not concerned with him.” How about a basketball practice where the coach tells the team that they are not going to have a single hard practice for 6 weeks, and then for another 8 weeks they’ll practice kind of hard for 20 minutes once a week?

Sports like hockey, basketball, football, baseball, soccer, wrestling, etc. all involve putting in 100% effort for just about every apsect of every game when the need arises - diving for a line drive, racing after a puck, trying to sack a quarterback, etc. The practices also tend to reflect this. If you transfer this mentality to running, it would make sense that you push yourself to the limit in every workout and go out in front and try to win every race by building up an early lead.

But it simply doesn’t work that way. Running is a sport of patience. Its the consistent effort over long periods of time that gradualy builds your fitness. We don’t push ourselves 100% today because if we did, we wouldn’t be able to run much at all tomorrow. Running easy, and running every day, is done so that you can run more. This builds fitness, and it builds dudability, to the point where some day you can work a little harder. At some point you might even be able to push yourself pretty hard 2-4 times a week, but even then you’ll be reserving enough so that you can recover for the next workout.

I often tell runners not to think about the workout, but to think about the week.
And then I tell them not to the think about the week, but to think about 10 weeks.
And then I tell them not to think about these 10 weeks, but to think about 10 weeks 4-5 months from now.

i.e. You don’t want a hard 10 mile run, you want a 45 mile week.
But you don’t really want a 45 mile week. You want 10 weeks straight of 35+ miles each week.
But you aren’t in shape to to that, so work at 15-25 miles a week now, and given a little talent and luck, that could be 10 35+ miles weeks leading up to your A race 5 months from now.

And all of this is done with patience, consistency, and relatively easy paces.

2

Thanks for the reminder Barry! Sometimes I feel dumb just tooling along at my easy pace, while the dudes around me are killing it on every run!

3

As many here are aware, runners seem to progress best when lots and lots and lots of easy paced training is accumulated. This is something that many people being introduced to the sport seem to battle with. “How can I get faster by training easier?”

I’ll answer this question at the end of this post, but I will say up front that this, indeed, is a very hard concept to accept if you have any athletic background. I remember hearing those words (“Train easy, get fast?”) from a guy at our local track who had plateaued and was frustrated. Unfortunately, I couldn’t crack him. He took my advice to the group he was training with, and I became the laughing stock of the track group…which I found odd being that I was racing 5Ks at 1-3 minutes faster than the men in their group.

But I think this hits the nail on the head with the issue. The idea of training slower to get faster was so counter intuitive that the absurdity of it caused a group of runners to laugh at someone who had said it despite being a more successful runner, and despite their own failings in their races (another guy in the group trained with more intensity than ever to quailify for Boston, and instead ran the worst marathon of his life).

I can remember when I first started to learn about running in the late 80s. I was on a low performing cross country team coached by a man who played football and basketball growing up, and had previously coached high school basketball for about 10 years. Every piece of every workout we were encouraged (yelled at, in fact) to run as hard as we could. Even the pre stretch warmup was treated as if it was a race. There was no such thing as pacing in a race. As a freshman, I was yelled at if I wasn’t fighting my way for a big lead in the first 400 meters of a 2 mile race. “Get up there and beat that guy!” “But coach, he’s the reigning state champ!” “Its all in your head! You can beat him if you try hard enough!”

And every season his entire team would run their best races in September, and their worst at the championship meets in November.

My weekly spin class at the Y is a similar story. Our instructor is a former Drexel hockey player, and we are encouraged to push ourselves as hard as we possibly can through every part of every workout (he does give us a reasonable warm up and cool down). The class is reminded every week that if we aren’t exhausted at the end of the workout, then we didn’t push ourselves hard enough. I don’t have an issue with this in a spin class, but should running be treated this way?

Lets think about it from this perspective. At what point in a hockey game does a coach ever say, “Okay, we’ve got a long game ahead of us. Stay relaxed and don’t try too hard. If you see the puck and the other team is racing you for it, just let them have it. In fact, lets just let them score a few goals and hope we can catch up later in the game. Oh, and number 13? He’s out of our league. Just let him score at will. We’re not concerned with him.” How about a basketball practice where the coach tells the team that they are not going to have a single hard practice for 6 weeks, and then for another 8 weeks they’ll practice kind of hard for 20 minutes once a week?

Sports like hockey, basketball, football, baseball, soccer, wrestling, etc. all involve putting in 100% effort for just about every apsect of every game when the need arises - diving for a line drive, racing after a puck, trying to sack a quarterback, etc. The practices also tend to reflect this. If you transfer this mentality to running, it would make sense that you push yourself to the limit in every workout and go out in front and try to win every race by building up an early lead.

But it simply doesn’t work that way. Running is a sport of patience. Its the consistent effort over long periods of time that gradualy builds your fitness. We don’t push ourselves 100% today because if we did, we wouldn’t be able to run much at all tomorrow. Running easy, and running every day, is done so that you can run more. This builds fitness, and it builds dudability, to the point where some day you can work a little harder. At some point you might even be able to push yourself pretty hard 2-4 times a week, but even then you’ll be reserving enough so that you can recover for the next workout.

I often tell runners not to think about the workout, but to think about the week.
And then I tell them not to the think about the week, but to think about 10 weeks.
And then I tell them not to think about these 10 weeks, but to think about 10 weeks 4-5 months from now.

i.e. You don’t want a hard 10 mile run, you want a 45 mile week.
But you don’t really want a 45 mile week. You want 10 weeks straight of 35+ miles each week.
But you aren’t in shape to to that, so work at 15-25 miles a week now, and given a little talent and luck, that could be 10 35+ miles weeks leading up to your A race 5 months from now.

And all of this is done with patience, consistency, and relatively easy paces.

Great post and good reminder…I preach this all the time…telling myself often that it is all about sustainability…Of course it usually is followed by a little voice who likes to lie to me and tell me that what I am doing is easy:)

4

This reminded me of “The Thrilla in Manilla”. Ali figured he couldn’t outfit Forman so he outlasted him. Took all the hits, waited patiently and then went to work. “Rope a Dope” was an interesting strategy at the time.

5

That’s a great way of looking at it. I often say, “Turtle wins the race!”

6

it builds dudability

Alright, alright, alright!

7

actually you should have an issue with that in spin class unless that’s the one session per week those people are hitting it. Spin classes and masters swimming are like adult athlete day care. They keep your mind preoccupied for awhile while doing nothing for overall long term fitness improvement and you feel like you did something at the end.

8

actually you should have an issue with that in spin class unless that’s the one session per week those people are hitting it. Spin classes and masters swimming are like adult athlete day care. They keep your mind preoccupied for awhile while doing nothing for overall long term fitness improvement and you feel like you did something at the end.

Full disclosure: I don’t compete anymore and don’t care to.

I do spin class pretty much for the reason you cited. I do it one day a week until the weather gets better, and then I ride outside 2-4 days a week. I have a giant hill leaving my neighborhood, so the sole purpose of the class is to not be in a lot of pain when I get to the top of that hill in April, and the last two years that has worked.

I agree with you, though, in that the spin class I think targets the 1-3 time a week people at the gym who hope to get in and out in 45 minutes.

9

I don’t agree about masters swim, though I may just have a very good one. Swimming has done more for my overall fitness in the last 3-4 months than I would have ever expected.

Good thread, Barry. My biggest improvement ever came from following your 3-2-1 plan and I wound up injured when I did too many hard workouts before my body was really ready.

10

Is it really counter intuitive or do folks just ignore the obvious signals their bodies are giving them? There’s lots of noise in modern life that causes folks to ignore their intuition.

11

I am 60 and run marathons in 3:30 (8 min pace). I regularly & easily BQ. I like to run. For decades prior to ever running a marathon I ran 5 to 8 miles a day. Every day. I was running 50+ miles per week and not training for anything. It was because it was my solace.

I can run at pace. But I prefer ‘stamina runs’ … where I run at 8:30 to 9:15 pace. They build my lungs and my legs. On the weekends I normally run 15 to 20 miles, often times hills, at my stamina pace. But, the last mile or two I always run below Marathon Pace … usually 7:30ish. I like to finish strong. I do mix in some 6 or 8 mile runs at MP also … but they aren’t near as enjoyable.

I don’t feel you need to train fast to race fast. They are different. You need to build the stamina to hold pace. I can endure pain during a race that I have no desire to endure on a training run. I want to chat. I want to enjoy.

12

Good post. It took me a long time to figure this out.

Do people use this approach for swimming too? I’m a newbie swimmer, and I don’t see much about just slogging through a few slow sets in the pool. The work prescribed in the texts I read seem to be a bit more intense even when different pace tests get done.

13

actually you should have an issue with that in spin class unless that’s the one session per week those people are hitting it. Spin classes and masters swimming are like adult athlete day care. They keep your mind preoccupied for awhile while doing nothing for overall long term fitness improvement and you feel like you did something at the end.

I don’t how an hour long high HR workout that uses all the lower half muscle groups does nothing for your “overall long term health” If spinning is useless so is all of cycling in general.

14

npage…markyv just likes to give the impression that he has all the answers. doing spin classes is certainly better than doing nothing. as is masters.

15

I’ve been implementing this approach, mostly the 6 day 3-2-1 approach (only my 2nd year in the sport, have no background in endurance sports), but I have a questions:

How appropriate is this for short course athletes? I’m building a base to start entering 70.3 distance races, but this season will be limited to sprint/oly. Will my short course races this season suffer as a result? Or will I still improve my 5k/10k splits implementing a slower/bigger volume?

16

I’ll answer that question, but I want to give a bit of perspective first:

In track and field the “long distance” events are the 3K - 10K. Road racing is 5K - 42K. In track we also have the mid “distance” events which are 800m - 1600m.

A solid collegiate 10K specialist will run between 60 and 90 miles a week. For the 5K this drops down just a bit to maybe 50 - 80 miles per week. The 800m and 1600m runners will still run between 40 and 60 miles a week.

At the professional level, some 1600m specialists will run 80-100 miles a week.

The reason why I bring this up is that people are often thrown by terms like “short course” or “sprint triathlon.” A 5K run after a bike and swim is VERY much an endurance event which I believe requires the kind of fitness of a 10K distance runner (the longest event in track and field).

If you click on the link in my sig line, I talk about how to adjust training for different distances in my 3 part plan. In general, there’s not much difference between sprint triathlon training and the HIM. Build a sold base of easy running for several weeks to a few months, and add a period of time where you add an additional threshold run every week (done at roughly Oly 10K pace). The biggest different is when you prepare specifically for the race distance in the 8-12 weeks leading up to your A race. For the sprint you’ll likely want to do two workouts a week in addition to your 4 other easy runs. One will still be at around Oly 10K pace, while the other one would target more of a sprint 5K race pace or a little bit faster.

So the answer is yes, its very appropriate.

17

Just remember:
We’re training energy systems, not running speeds.
Too much time spent at medium speed makes you a mediocre athlete.

18

I agree with you Barry, and my running has (mostly) been going great since I switched a couple of years ago to a run regime that is based on 3-2-1. I recently destroyed my lifetime half marathon PR at age 46.

But as far as I can tell your post doesn’t address why run training at steady paces is so very effective. I have thoughts on that, but I’d be interested to know yours. I’ve tried asking this to others in many ways, and almost never get anything satisfactory.

19

Funny you mention the basketball coach and going all out. I came from basketball when I first started running cross and track and, of course, always had my best placings in September and march. In track, it wasn’t even my best placings, it was my best times too! Really wish I could have seen what kind of half-mile time I could have produced combining even a fraction of the aerobic strength I have now with the speed and anaerobic power I had then.

20

But as far as I can tell your post doesn’t address why run training at steady paces is so very effective. I have thoughts on that, but I’d be interested to know yours. I’ve tried asking this to others in many ways, and almost never get anything satisfactory.

Honestly, all I can give you is a bit of conjecture (its likely that’s all anyone can give, really). There’s been science done of the subject, and the science has been misunderstood, and sometimes they just plain got it wrong. What we do know, however, is if we look at all the different combinations of running plans out there, this seems to be one of the most effective ways to get faster.

As to my beliefs on the subject, I think you have to strike a balance between what you can get out of individual workouts, and what you can recover from. I’m pretty sure the science had shown that running hard and fast with rest intervals was actually more productive than running easy. I believe it even showed steady progress over 8-16 weeks when compared to running easy. What coaches and experienced runner seemed to have found is that performance tends to plateau after that, and those that spend the bulk of their year doing high volumes of easy running tend to be able to build a bigger “foundation” from which to build off of from season to season.

What I guess is happening is that slower running allows you to train more consistently and with higher volumes. Its the tradeoff between building fitness and breaking the body down. The higher intensity running gives you great performance gains, but at the expense of breaking the body down. It really is a matter of the tortoise and the hare. The hard goes out hard and then naps, while the tortoise moseys along steadily, but surely.