Some of you ST guys, especially Barry P, are F

Triathlon Forum
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Some of you ST guys, especially Barry P, are freak’n brilliant!

Some background. I have been running for 27 of the last 30 years. I always had the idea that I had to include very long runs and speed work to improve. So, as I have aged, my weekly running schedule resulted in two medium distance (one speed work) and a long run. The other 4 days were spent recovering. I took the last 3 years off from running (medical reasons) and started back in January with two Olys scheduled. My bike and swim progressed great, but I could make almost no progress on the run. After 6 months, I still struggled to run further than 4 miles @ 9:30mm. My 8 miles runs damn near killed me. I was always tired and my calves were giving me problems. I was seriously thinking about sticking to biking and forgetting about tris.

This is where you geniuses come in. I started reading several recommendations for running daily, week in, week out, month after month… Five weeks ago, I read BarryP’s “run training” posts (http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485
). Hell, what I was doing sure wasn’t working, so I immediately started following your suggestions.

Last weeks runs were (in minutes) 60 - off - 17 - 36 - 18 - 35 - 18. Last Sunday I ran 6.5 miles, 100% up-hill @ 2-3% grade and felt fantastic. Ran 37 minutes this morning at a 8:20 pace and felt fantastic, could have gone another 30 minutes. I have no more calf pains/tightness, I’m full of energy…damn near feel like I’m in my 20’s again!! OK, a slight exaggeration. Nothing else in my training has changes.

I want to sincerely say, THANK YOU.

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Yea, learned late in life that doing many short runs was better on the body than a few long ones. Seems like once I get up to 6 days a week running, the body stops complaining as much and the legs actually feel better on a day to day basis. Easy 2-3-4 milers are better than taking the day off from running.

JJ

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I am a convert as well on the importance of run frequency vs. distance, particularly during a ramp-up in overall training volume. And ESPECIALLY for older athletes or anyone coming back from injury.

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I’m 100% sold on run frequency. Best of all, as a time constrained age grouper, I use my big blocks of time for swim and bike training. Run training can be squeezed in “wherever” by manufacturing blocks of 20-40 minutes, which to some extent is always possible if a priority is placed on making it happen.

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I’m 100% sold on run frequency. Best of all, as a time constrained age grouper, I use my big blocks of time for swim and bike training. Run training can be squeezed in “wherever” by manufacturing blocks of 20-40 minutes, which to some extent is always possible if a priority is placed on making it happen.
Agreed. I am a huge fan of the 60 minute run because it’s a solid 15-16k, and I can get back home with minimal disruption to life in general. I’m not so big on the 20-30 minute runs (unless it’s a brick run), but that said, I’m really not a fan of the >2.5 hour run. At that point, I may as well register and run a marathon. Frequency saves legs … speed wins races.

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Some of you ST guys, especially Barry P, are freak'n brilliant!

You are welcome. Along with Barry, I have been advocating this sort of program for years myself. It;s actually one of the few direct cause and effect training protocols that you can really rely on working as it should.** **It’s not that complicated. Run as often as you can!

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Can I ask how fast you run a 10K or half marathon if your frequent 60 minute runs are 15-16K? I hope you are a 32.xx minute 10K guy if all your runs are that fast.

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Would love to read the post but getting 404 when clicking on your link
.

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Here is the correct link:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1612485
.

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Can I ask how fast you run a 10K or half marathon if your frequent 60 minute runs are 15-16K? I hope you are a 32.xx minute 10K guy if all your runs are that fast.
Sadly, the shortest race I’ve run in the last 5 years is an annual 15k. My PR is 56 minutes over that course, which is pretty fair (about 400ft of elevation). My half mary PR is a shade over 1:22, but 1:25 is typical. Not sure why, but I can never talk myself into running 10k races. That’s stupid considering that there are like 100 of them within easy driving distance each year, and only a handful of races longer than 10k. Right now my pace is around 16:00/mile, an unfortunate byproduct of bike crashing.

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Hey, thanks for the props. ST has actually been a pretty good resource for me. Desert Dude, in particular, has helped me to be able to organize a lot of these concepts. In the running community, we just take for granted that you need to run every day. It wasn’t until I got involved in triathlon that I really thought about the tradeoffs between a few hard workouts every week versus several shorter ones.

On a side note, every now and then I run into someone who says that they can’t for whatever reason…age, or that they just think the body needs to recover after a workout. To them I ask, “what’s a workout?” They might say, “a 5 mile run.” Then I ask, “How do you feel 3 miles into that run?” “Pretty good.” “Okay…well, if you simply stooped running at 3 miles, you will have finished a workout feeling pretty good and, guess what?..you will recover in 24 hours instead of 48!”

Hope the training keeps going well. I am coming off of a layoff, now, and am forcing myself to practice what I preach. Just now I feel like I’m about to get over the hump where running feel good rather than like a chore. Last week was 15, 30, 15, 30, 15, 15, 45minute runs. Two weeks before that was 10 and 20 minute runs with a 30 minute long run.

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LSD training is great. I don’t use it, but it sure is fun to pass the people that do.

I saw your quote at the bottom and, no offense, but at 1:25 for a halfmary, there’s a lot of “LSD” (I prefer the term “aerobic”) runners that you aren’t passing. Any good D1 college team isn’t going to have a runner on the roster that can’t run at least a sub 1:20, and any good D1 college team isn’t going to have a runner who isn’t doing at least 50 - 70 miles/wk with 60-85% of it aerobic running.

Having said that, your long run is what I’d actually call a long tempo run, a long LT workout, a long threshold run, or a steady state run. It is a very good workout and recommend that people do something similar 30-40 weeks out of the year, but its not a long run. Most of the people you pass in a race you are passing not because they run a lot of LSD, but because they don’t do this key work out.

If you are short on time, then yes…you are getting the biggest bang for your buck out of your training. If you want to break 1:20, the element you are missing is quite simply a large base of aerobic running.

Oh…and, no, you don’t need a 2 1/2 hour long run. 1:30-1:45 would probably be plenty for you.

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Try 5ks. More fun than 10s.

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Thanks for the input. Take the sig line as a tongue-in-cheek statement designed to field the kind of response that you provided. Like everyone else here, I train as time and circumstances permit. The 60-minute runs seem to give me the best balance of speed and distance, while preserving my overall run fitness (which includes limiting injury). In other words, during tri season (most of the year), I’m not focused on becoming a better runner, so going sub-1:20 is not really a goal of mine. If it happens, then I will attribute it to a better overall fitness regimen, of which cycling is a large part.

Your points on other runners are well taken. I can guarantee that most - if not all - of the people that I don’t catch have put in more aerobic work than me. I’ve always interpreted LSD workouts as “long slow distance,” in which the effort is minimally aerobic and long in duration (i.e. running for the sake of being on your feet). The suggested pace is anywhere from 1.5-2 minutes slower than your intended race pace. I don’t believe that’s the same thing you are describing. Semantics aside, would you agree that training fast will help you go long, but training long won’t necessarily help you go fast?

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56 minutes for 15K and then 1:22 for half?..seems like you are slowing down way too much.

Anyway for what its worth, since my current half marathon times are around 1:22 also, I’ll let you know that my average run pace rarely exceeds 4:30 per K pace. The only time I run faster is if I am running intervals and even in those workouts, the average pace ends up being in the 4:30 to 5 min per K pace.

I think you’re overcooking your day in day out runs if they are all faster than your half marathon race pace. Use your matches more wisely and you’ll likely recover for your next workout faster and be able to do better quality when it is time for quality (instead of attempting to run race pace in every run). Seriously, if your half marathon “usual time” of 1:25 is identical to your 1 hour training run pace (15K), then you’re doing something wrong either in training or racing. Likely both.

Dev

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To qualify the situation (which is a fancy way of making excuses), my half mary PR came in April of this year, and my 15k PR came in July when my running was in peak form. I’ve never run an all-out half, but I’m confident that my running condition this summer would have gotten me into the 1:19:xx range. I think that the biggest reason that my training runs and open races are so comparable in pace is that I’m always buffering during races, treating them as training runs so as not to “overdo it” ahead of A and B races. To me, it’s like a training day with spectators and a party at the end. The last run that I did without inhibition was the Philly marathon last November, where I ran a personal worst (7:46 pace if I remember correctly), and had to throw in the towel at the half mark. I was exhausted, overworked, and undertrained … so my matches burned by the book rather than one-by-one.

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Your points on other runners are well taken. I can guarantee that most - if not all - of the people that I don’t catch have put in more aerobic work than me. I’ve always interpreted LSD workouts as “long slow distance,” in which the effort is minimally aerobic and long in duration (i.e. running for the sake of being on your feet). The suggested pace is anywhere from 1.5-2 minutes slower than your intended race pace. I don’t believe that’s the same thing you are describing. Semantics aside, would you agree that training fast will help you go long, but training long won’t necessarily help you go fast?

Talk like this is all relative. Let’s look at specifics. You want to break 1:20 for a half- marathon? That means you need to run close to 6:00 min/mile for 13.1 miles. Full stop. However, you do it you need to get to the point that running those 6:00 min miles is relatively easy for about an hour and then it’s a bit of a push for the final 20 minutes - that’s what you need to do. One way of doing this is spending a good amount of time in your training running at . . . . you guessed it . . . . 6:00 min/mile. You need to be come used to, comfortable, and efficient at running at this pace. For many, and I don’t know why this is, this sort of pace or intensity falls into that no-go-zone, the specificity principal of training is such that you need to spend a good amount of time running at that pace!

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The suggested pace is anywhere from 1.5-2 minutes slower than your intended race pace. I don’t believe that’s the same thing you are describing. Semantics aside, would you agree that training fast will help you go long, but training long won’t necessarily help you go fast?

1.5 - 2.5 minuites slower than 5K race pace is what I call the aerobic training zone, often referred to as zone 2 in Tri-speak, and for someone trying to run as fast as possible, most training should be done at this pace.

There’s a good calculator here:

http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/mcmillanrunningcalculator.htm

Recovery, long, and easy runs are in this zone (recovery runs are a little slower). For you, running a half at 1:25, your pace would be 7:20 - 8:20 a mile (4:35-5:10 per K).

For every race distance you need to train long and fast, but its the actual balance of your workouts that’s important and that depends largely on teh race distance. I cover it in this thread:

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1600721;search_string=runtraining11;#1600721

http://i5.tinypic.com/6wmsjms.jpg

As for training long not making you go fast - that’s not really how I’d put it, and would even say that you are wrong depending on exactly what you mean. Training fast and/or long and racing fast and/or long are all related.

People often forget that this is an endurance sport. Any running event lasting more than 2 minutes relies very very heavily on aerobic conditioning. Training long won’t make you sprint 100m any faster, but it sure will make your mile time faster. A good example of this is when Mark Wetmore too over Colorado’s distance program and had a struggling Alan Culpepper (now a former Olympian). Mark’s major addition to their training was to throw in a 15 mile run every week…to train for 1-3 mile races.

Many coaches, runners, and scientists argue over the benefits of long runs and how it benefits shorter races. The debate, however, is over whether 22 milers is sufficient for the marathon, or do they need 28? Should a miler run 15-18 or is he good with just 10? You’ll find very few coaches, however, who think that there are no benefits to running longer and slower shorter races. Even a teenage male half miler should be running at least 25-30 miles a week.

…speaking of which, I just remembered that my friend Marc took almost two seconds off of his half mile time going from 1:54 as a junior to 1:52 as a senior. Can you guess what he did? 75 miles a week over the summer time.

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Actually, steve, I think he has that part down. He does 60 minute runs at close to that pace. It seemed, however, that he was questioning teh benefits of running 100 minutes in zone 2, which is beneficial as well.

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Actually, steve, I think he has that part down. He does 60 minute runs at close to that pace. It seemed, however, that he was questioning teh benefits of running 100 minutes in zone 2, which is beneficial as well.

Barry,

Yes - agreed.

I was saying that for the benefit of others who have probably been told, that running like that is “too hard” and that they will “wreck their fitness”. I am not sure how these people expect to start to bolt those sorts of mile paces together for 5, and 10 plus miles in a race if they have rarely if ever run them in training.