RunTraining4: Training Stresses for Different Workouts

Triathlon Forum
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Disclaimer: Every now and then I get flamed by someone who just has a completely different opinion about training, so I unfortunately feel the need to put out this little disclaimer. Everything I write is based on personal opinion from my experience as a coach, former collegiate runner, and the books and articles I’ve read on running an dtriathlon triaining. As always, my number one goal is to simply open a discussion on the topic.

I’ve seen a couple of rules of thumb out there on increasing training load including no more than 10% a week and no more than 10% every three weeks. I think it really depends on where you are in your training and how long you’ve been doing it for. Nevertheless, somewhere in between these two values should work for most people most of the time.

However, there is a big difference between adding 10% to your total running volume and adding a whole bunch of workouts. For example, if you run 40 miles one week of all easy running and then run 44 miles the next with a 40 minute tempo run and 6K of intervals…well, that’s adding quite a bit more than 10% extra running stress.

Jack Daniels has a point system that he uses in his latest book, but I find that it’s a little involved for the non-Phd scientist. So, I’ve taken the liberty of making my own interperetations. I rounded the numbers to make it easy. Keep in mind that it is only a rough estimate and that I am in the early stages of working within this system…in other words, don’t get married to the exact numbers, but do take home the concepts.

A typical “easy” zn1 or zn2 run (65% - 80% of maxHR) will serve as the base line.

Time spent at tempo pace (1 hr race pace, 88% - 92% maxHR) gets multiplied by 3 to equal the stress from an easy run.

Time spent at interval pace (11 minute race pace) gets mulitplied by 5 to equal the stress from an easy run.

Time spent at repetition pace (5 minute race pace) gets multiplied by 7 to equal the stress from an easy run.

In other words, if you wanted to build up your base from 25 miles a week over 2 months at +10% every 2 weeks, the 9 week period would look like this:

25, 25, 28, 28, 30, 30, 33, 33, 37…a total increase of ~50% in two months.

Now lets say that you want to add a 20 minute tempo run and continue increasing by 10% every 2 weeks. For the ease of math, I’ll assume 8 min/mile for easy running and 6:20/mile for tempo runs. So, even though the 20 minute tempo run will be 3 miles, it counts as 60 minutes of running at 8 minutes/mile…or 7.5 miles.

So, if you want to run another 37 mile week, you count the 20 minutes at tempo pace as an 8 mile run (rounding) which leaves you with 29 miles for the rest of the week. So, in reality you will run 29 easy + 3 tempo = 32 miles. So now your 1st 13 weeks looks like this:

25, 25, 28, 28, 30, 30, 33, 33, 37…32, 35, 35, 39…

Now lets say you want to add in 8x 200 at 1 mile race pace over the next 5 weeks. That’s ~5 minutes at rep pace, x 7 = 35 minutes of easy running, or about 4 miles. So, 1 mile of rep training = 4 miles of easy running. So your 39 mile week (that already has a 20 minute tempo in it) needs to be cut back again since the 1 mile of rep training counts as 4 miles of easy running. Hold this for the next 5 weeks and you have:

25, 25, 28, 28, 30, 30, 33, 33, 37,…32, 35, 35, 39…36, 40, 40, 44, 44…

Now turn that rep workout into 5K of intervals @ 5:40/mile. Now you have ~20 minutes of interval running x 5 = 1:40 of easy running, or the equivalent of 12 miles of easy running (the rep workout was worth 4). So increasing 44 by 10% puts you at 48, but 1 of that = 4 easy, so that’s 51…and then 12 of that will equal 3 at interval pace, so now you are at 42 miles:

25, 25, 28, 28, 30, 30, 33, 33, 37, …32, 35, 35, 39…36, 40, 40, 44, 44…42, 42, 46, etc.

OK, some might point out that typically a season won’t end with more total running at the end than you had at the end of the base phase. I did this to try to simplify the math. Typically I’d increase the 200’s to either 8x400 or 16x200 at the end of the 5 weeks. Also, the tempo run gets bumped up to at least 30 minutes. So now your 44 mile week with an additional mile of rep training (equivalent to 4 miles easy) and additional 1.5 miles of tempo (equivalent to 4 miles easy), will actually be cut back to ~39 miles.

As always, use common sense and listen to your body. You should undersatnd that it is unreasonable to add 10% every 2 weeks for ever. It’s meant to be an upper limit. I’ve rarely known a person to continue to increae their training volume in the last two weeks leading up to a 10k race. The above example should show you the MOST you could expect to increase your mileage given the added workouts.

Part of what inspired this was my own dumbass mistakes this winter. I was doing really really well and, in the excitement, increase both my mileage AND my workouts. When I re-examined my logs, I had found that I effectively increased my training stress by 50% in one week (even though it was only a 15% increase in mileage). Two weeks later I had a serious injury that caused me to cancel a few races.

Feel free to ask questions, comment, discuss, and flame away!

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Thanks Barry. You post good stuff which helps me in planning my training. This lates post makes good sense to me. While I have used the 10% rule in the past, I have not adjusted it for different intensities. I will incorporate your suggestion in the future. It fits right in with my number one rule for training - Avoid injury.

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Unfortunately that is often my number 2 goal in training. I’m trying a new approach. This time, I swear it will work ; ^ )

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I like it Barry, I think it is also important for people to take into consideration the stress that they are generating through their riding and swimming, ON TOP of their run stress.

BB

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Barry,
Why would you do any type of faster than aerobic running when your goal is to try and build up your volume? I never get injured anymore, mostly because I only do about 4-8 of hard (speed)workouts a year and the rest is just plain running. And my hard workouts are mostly races and bike/run time trials in the weeks preceding those races.
Of course, if I lived anywhere close to a location with a nice running race series I might race more than five or six times a year.
Chad

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when your goal is to try and build up your volume?

The goal for most people is to get faster at a certain distance. That requires training at higher speeds.

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Jack Daniels has a point system that he uses in his latest book, but I find that it’s a little involved for the non-Phd scientist.
I read up on this before giving a recent talk, and I thought it was quite straightforward: you get X points per min of running, with the constant X varying with speed/taken from a ‘lookup’ table. The only thing I didn’t like about it is that he didn’t explain how he came up with the values in the table.

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<Why would you do any type of faster than aerobic running when your goal is to try and build up your volume? >

  • the goal is to build up training_load, which can be done in a variety of ways including but not limited to increasing volume.
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The goal for most people is to get faster at a certain distance. That requires training at higher speeds.
**
Granted, but won’t more volume/aerobic efficiency make you faster at every distance? I’m speaking in a multi-sport sense here, where the minimum race time is usually at least an hour. I have found that to be the case from sprint to half-IM distance, duathlon or triathlon. In fact, as a runner going from low-volume, high intensit to high-volume low-intensity, I went faster for all distances down to 5K where it was a wash. No speedwork required.
Chad

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I just got Daniels book 3 weeks ago. Of course I was inspired to run much harder than I am used to. My previous workouts were all the same. I would run my 4 miler at 80-85% hrm 3-5 times a week. Of course I wasnt getting any faster. I have been doing the strides for two weeks 20sec hard 20sec easy, 30 sec h 30 e etc. I have also slowed down my easy runs(which feels great.)
I wish I had read this post because I AM SORE. MY hip hurts bad! I am on the verge of an injury. I increased my mileage 10% AND added speedwork. Your info helps me to understand why I am in such bad shape.
I have a 10k in 2 weeks, any suggestions?

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The best performance typically come off of the best balance of the different training zones. It’s not all about volume, though volume is 90% of the solution.

Just as you saw great improvements by increasing volume, many athletes find dramatic improvements by adding just one speed session to a previously all LSD program.

When I coached high school, I knew pleanty of other coaches who were basically winging it (due to no running background). The ALL distance guys were never competetive and the ALL speed guys did well early in the season but would hardly make a dent when the championship meets came around.

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When I coached high school, I knew pleanty of other coaches who were basically winging it (due to no running background). The ALL distance guys were never competetive and the ALL speed guys did well early in the season but would hardly make a dent when the championship meets came around.
**
Unfortunately, I had a couple of those “winging it” coaches in high school and never learned the value of more volume in training until a few years ago. Or rather, I never learned why you do the things you do in training. My current higher volume approach has been going for about three years now and reflects my change in attitute. I prefer to save the hard efforts for races and occasional time trials and just enjoy myself for the rest of the training. I might eek out that last five percent with a coach and a more stuctured plan, but it would come at the expense of my enjoyment of the activities.

Chad

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Any chance of posting that talk on your site for us to read? I, and am sure several others, would love to have a gander . . .

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Any chance of posting that talk on your site for us to read? I, and am sure several others, would love to have a gander . . .
I’ve requested permission from UK Sport (http://www.uksport.gov.uk/), but have yet to hear back from them on this issue.

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Thanks for doing that–please do let us know if it becomes available!

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Barry-

Someone posted, last week, a comment that one’s long run shouldn’t be more than 25% of your weekly training volume. Although perhaps I’m opening a can of worms and setting myself up for a lot of math, does this sound right? If that’s true, then when I’m doing my build-period long runs of 18-20 miles, I should be running 75-80 miles per week, which sounds crazy! Thoughts?

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That’s correct…for the most part.

Jack Daniels came up with that number. One of the assumptions that many runners believe you have to make when reading Daniels’ Formula is that the target audience of his book are is the fairly serious runner.

The caveat you run into is what to do if you only run 2-4 times a week. I don’t think there is a magic formula for a triathlete because it all depends on how many workouts a week he is doing.

If you use the 25% rule and apply it to a person who runs every day, you get a long run that is about double of a standard daily run. (ie…10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 20 = 80…80x.25 = 20). That seemse pretty reasonable, though you have to keep in mind that 20 is the MOST the long run will be. This same person could be fine with a 15 - 18 mile long run, especially if they are training for 5K - 10k races.

For the triathlete who runs 4 days a week (lets assume base build), they may run a long run, a second long run, an easy run, and a transition run off the bike. It may look like this - 14, 10, 7, 3 = 34 miles in 4 runs. I’d expct this person to be able to run 7 miles a day if only training for runing, which gives them a long run of 14 miles using the 25% rule.

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I read up on this before giving a recent talk, and I thought it was quite straightforward: you get X points per min of running, with the constant X varying with speed/taken from a ‘lookup’ table. The only thing I didn’t like about it is that he didn’t explain how he came up with the values in the table.

That would have been nice to know. Even if the values were nothing more than “coach’s intuition”…as long as we know where they came from.

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Thanks for the clarification!