LONG STEADY RUNNING only in BASE PREPARATION.

Ok if you want running economy, which I totally agree needs continuous work, its not a either or argument. You can work on running economy by doing strides at the end of long runs, form drills and other such activities to improve form at high speeds without having to do speed sessions.

"Barry, I think that all paces are important for developing race performances. But it's easy to fll into the trap of over-emphasizing a certain pace in the mistaken belief that it is or was more effective in gaining this mythical "aerobic fitness""

A phd ex-phys that I correspond with often has pointed out that training at higher paces will actualy improve "aerobic fitness" better than training the same distance at lower efforts. However, as I have emphasized to a lot of athletes, its not a matter of what results you gain per unit of time/distance of training, but what yields the best results per unit of *what you are capapble of doing on a weekly basis*

By that I mean that person A may do all of their running at V02max pace while person B does all of their running at 80% of max heart rate. Person A will gain better aerobic fitness per unit of time or distance trained, but over the long haul, experience has shown me that person B will simply get faster.

And FWIW, I am defining aerobic fitness as the ability to run for long periods of time. A scientist may define it differently.

"Wouldn't it be true to say that the triathletes you and others work with have benefited from the fast stuff and the steady running?"

Absolutely. One of the things I've been focusing on lately is not a speed vrs. endurance argument, but rather incorporating the right mix of all paces at the appropriate times. As to what that mix is is certainly up for debate, but I tend to like to err on the side of too much endurance running rather than not enough.

"I also want to re-emphasize my point that running lots of 60 second laps is mostly aerobic training for the best distance runners, and so it should be a recipe for thousands of young non-African runners too."

It depends on what you mean by running lots of 60 second laps. As a girls' track and field coach I didn't have many athletes who could run a single 60 second lap. I think its more important to distinguish the effort relative to the ability. Are these repeat laps at mile race pace or 3 mile race pace. El G doing 60 second laps is a hell of a lot different than me doing 60 second laps.

"You are a much better athlete than you think you are."

Thanks. I'll take that as a compliment! ; ^ )

After rereading your post I wanted to add that I agree that one shouldn't over emphasize any type of training. The real debate is exactly where the emphasis should be.

I used to be of the LSD only in the base period school. For distance runners like myself, I'm starting to believe that there is great value to limited intensity...mainly in the form of threshold and 10K paced intervals during the "base" phase is of great value.

In his books AL prescribed doing a 10k time trail once every two weeks and a five k time trail once a week even while in the middle of base training. These where not to be all-out, one was not to sprint at the end, they also where not jogs or fun runs. Time trails are hard efforts that in reality would do a better job to training one at close to VO2 at a given point in the season then a set of x numbers of reps done based on a time ran when someone was in peak form.

The most important thing about training and racing according to AL is that ''there training was balanced between aerobic and anaerobic training''. Now the reason why he did not suggest doing faster rep work or hard racing while in the base phase is due to the fact AL realized that ''It is not the best that win, it is the best prepared. And there is a world of difference between the two''-AL. The goal of his training was simple, produce your peak times at the peak of your seasons.

In his books AL prescribed doing a 10k time trail once every two weeks and a five k time trail once a week even while in the middle of base training. These where not to be all-out, one was not to sprint at the end, they also where not jogs or fun runs. Time trails are hard efforts that in reality would do a better job to training one at close to VO2 at a given point in the season then a set of x numbers of reps done based on a time ran when someone was in peak form.

The most important thing about training and racing according to AL is that ''there training was balanced between aerobic and anaerobic training''. Now the reason why he did not suggest doing faster rep work or hard racing while in the base phase is due to the fact AL realized that ''It is not the best that win, it is the best prepared. And there is a world of difference between the two''-AL. The goal of his training was simple, produce your peak times at the peak of your seasons.

In his books AL prescribed doing a 10k time trail once every two weeks and a five k time trail once a week even while in the middle of base training. These where not to be all-out, one was not to sprint at the end, they also where not jogs or fun runs. Time trails are hard efforts that in reality would do a better job to training one at close to VO2 at a given point in the season then a set of x numbers of reps done based on a time ran when someone was in peak form.

The most important thing about training and racing according to AL is that ''there training was balanced between aerobic and anaerobic training''. Now the reason why he did not suggest doing faster rep work or hard racing while in the base phase is due to the fact AL realized that ''It is not the best that win, it is the best prepared. And there is a world of difference between the two''-AL. The goal of his training was simple, produce your peak times at the peak of your seasons.

In his books AL prescribed doing a 10k time trail once every two weeks and a five k time trail once a week even while in the middle of base training. These where not to be all-out, one was not to sprint at the end, they also where not jogs or fun runs. Time trails are hard efforts that in reality would do a better job to training one at close to VO2 at a given point in the season then a set of x numbers of reps done based on a time ran when someone was in peak form.

The most important thing about training and racing according to AL is that ''there training was balanced between aerobic and anaerobic training''. Now the reason why he did not suggest doing faster rep work or hard racing while in the base phase is due to the fact AL realized that ''It is not the best that win, it is the best prepared. And there is a world of difference between the two''. The goal of his training was simple, produce your peak times at the peak of your seasons.

If the entire training period could be conceptualised as a wave. It swells and builds to finally crest in a peak.

The way to get the highest and strongest and most enduring peak is to develop as big a swell and you can.

This swell is the aerobic base.

The old concepts of aerobic and anaerobic exercise may be outdated. I really don't know. But there is still a distinction between exercise where you get out of breath and exercise where you don't get out of breath and I think the old terms do very nicely for drawing that distinction.

As to the steady running only question, if you're looking at it from a "Lydiard" perspective there are two ways to think about it.

Arthur only had his runners doing steady runs in the base phase. He thought that if you had any repetition work included the athletes would want to produce faster sessions each time and would end up "going anaerobic" as he would have understood the term. So he kept them to steady runs.

BUT, the steady runs were at times somewhat fast, at other times not that fast. He talked about applying "pressure" to the cardiovascular system so you'd see ten mile runs in 55 minutes or better at times. Or you'd see a ten miler where they'd go "out" in 30 minutes or so and come "back" in 26-27. I think it's also worth noting that many of the runs were done on very hilly courses so some of the slower paces were "worth" something faster.

But if you look at Lydiard from a broader perspective you understand that the base phase was about developing cardiovascular capacity. How you do that is secondary to the actual doing. If you can include interval work and not succumb to the temptation to run the sessions harder each time to get better results and keep the sessions "aerobic" it's fine. Evidently Dick Quax used to do sessiions like 20x400 during his base phase explaining that he was capable of doing those 400s in 60 seconds each or so. He didn't find that the 70 second repeats made him breathless.

Aerobic capacity, six weeks maximum to develop for an athlete who has had a few weeks off, usually much less.

Once you reach your maximum mitochondrial mass, your oxygen uptake has peaked, it won't get any higher. However VO2max values increase if the middle variable (body mass) goes down. For most of us this means losing fat, which can takes many weeks, usually about 20 weeks for me to lose my Winter fat.

Aerobic Power, 4-6 weeks. What is aerobic power? It is the power we can generate specific to the task. For example if I tried to transfer my aerobic capacity to riding a bike, I would be considerably lacking in power compared to a well trained cyclist. It would take me 4-6 weeks to get my cycling power up to scratch. A similar time frame applies to improving my pace from steady running to faster paces.

Economy, another 4-6 weeks. This requires pracising race pace to become more mechanically efficient, so that we become faster for a given amount of effort. You have to train at ambitious paces to optimize this, but without making the session too hard.

wellnow, for a young distance runner 16-18 years of age what pace would you reccomend them getting economical at? From one of your previous posts I recall you saying most runners should train to get their 800 down to 2:00 before concentrating on longer distances. Would it be wise to have one workout a week at 60 second quarter pace the entire year (except the end of season break) in order to get economical at that pace?

How is a runner to bring there body to a peak, if they are training at race pace and faster all year? How do you deal with the issue of being at peak when it matters most? In my mind AL was spot on when he noted that it is not what a run has run in the past that matters. But what they are ready to run on a given day.

Also with month upon month of hard running how are runners to stay healthy? For most of us the faster and harder we run, the greater the amount of stress we put then tends bones and ligamits under. This is why guys who train for ultras at 8 to 10 min a mile can run 175 miles a day and stay healthy while sprinters training for the 100m and doing 20 to 35 miles a week get stress fractures pulled tendens and torn ligamites.

I would note that Roger Bannister stated that he did 20 miles a week all hard 5K pace in the winter, mile pace spring. He stayed healthy did get better and did train for quite some time. So Hard training year round CAN be done. But he also was not an olimpic cham, while being the world record holder, and likly having a much higher pain theshold then then most people can dream of having. In my mind AL was spot on when he noted that it is not what a run has run in the past that matters but what they are ready to run on a given day.

Also with month upon month of hard running how are runners to stay healthy? For most of us the faster and harder we run, the greater the amount of stress we put then tends bones and ligaments under. This is why guys who train for ultras at 8 to 10 min a mile can run 175 miles a day and stay healthy while sprinters training for the 100m and doing 20 to 35 miles a week get stress fractures pulled tendons and torn ligaments.

I would note that Roger Bannister stated that he did 20 miles a week all hard 5K pace in the winter, mile pace spring. He stayed healthy did get better and did train for quite some time. So Hard training year round CAN be done. But he also was not an Olympic champ, while being the world record holder and likely having a much high pain threshold then most other people can dream of having.

ok, can we get into the meat and bones of this?

Aerobic capacity is what we are talking about. You are saying if a runner has a few weeks off after a peak it takes 6 weeks to maximise aerobic capacity? What if a runner has has never developed their aerobic capacity, how long does it take then? What about if they have developed it for one year, or two?

Can you provide a reputed study that isn't contradicted that has shown this? Agreed there are other factors that tend to increase fitness in the generic sense. If we are looking at just intra-cellular changes then would you also include enzymatic changes? If we are looking systemically then increases in capilliarisation and then the subsequent increased mitochondrial mass in those newly capilliarised areas might count for something. What do you say?

Wellnow, Now i see what you have done. You have noticed the 4-6 week plateau that most commonly occurs during the learning curve.

You see that within 4-6 weeks any of the factors you are including in your analysis these factors plateau, if trained roughly correctly.

The only problem is that you are looking at the micro-cosm and not the macro at all. You see the initiation of the activity - then the S curve improvement rise- finally the trail off to the plateau. You can imagine this curve yes?

Well step back and check out the same micro-curve over a year. It has repeated over 8 times. It makes a continuous wave like curve yes? This is what can occur with the well planned progressive training. It is actually fundamental to the principles of periodisation.

Pete

yungin wrote:

wellnow, for a young distance runner 16-18 years of age what pace would you reccomend them getting economical at? From one of your previous posts I recall you saying most runners should train to get their 800 down to 2:00 before concentrating on longer distances. Would it be wise to have one workout a week at 60 second quarter pace the entire year (except the end of season break) in order to get economical at that pace?

We are all different. There are huge variations in ability at any age, but yes a lot of males aged 16-18 could train at 30 second 200m pace during base training and gradually increase the repetitions to 400's in 60 with 60-90 seconds recovery, you have to believe that your better runners can do this pace without too much stress, because if they don't train too hard during the other days, this pace should be considered normal, not freakishly fast or hard for many young runners.

The slowest pace for track training that I would reccomend for such runners is 10k pace or about 2.30 per 800m any slower than that and they might as well train tempo on road or trail.

There is nothing special about so called lactate threshold training in my opinion. To me the insistence by many athletes and coaches that so called LT gives optimum aerobic conditioning is pseudo-intellectual. There is no such thing as an ideal pace for aerobic conditioning, all paces slower than all out sprints are equally relevant for this purpose.

I don't believe in doing a certain pace every week, because there are so many different sessions you can do at different paces, that you might want to spread them out over one month or do several different paces in one session.

The fastest distance runners in the world all have superior running economy and they only aquired this talent by practice.

We all have to learn to back off when we are tired. I do a lot of easy running in between the hard stuff. I just listen to my body, some people can't do this, they punish themselves unnecessarily.

Pete, I don't have a problem seeing the big picture at all. I practice what I preach and it's working very well thanks. But when the days get shorter than the nights in early October I accumulate body fat until December. So I'm not as quick until the situation is reversed. That is my first Macro cycle. My second is in the Summer, when my track speed is honed. In between are many micro-cycles of doing road races then track races, with faster sessions in between.

Comprende?

I will give you that a person with a keen sense of there body likely train hard without getting hurt.

Isn't this basically how Mottram is trained? If I remember right, he said he's almost always 2-3 weeks away from being able to run really fast (in a race). I know there's a link to his coach's philosophy that was posted on here awhile back. Anyone have it?

Hi Wellnow, a few things.

Ok so what are these paces for one and secondly ,is there a limit to how large they can grow or how densely they can be found within a cell? Again have studies been done?

You say relative plateau. What does this mean? Also, in your theory, how long after this 4-6wk plateau has been reached before a new improvement can then occur.

I would say the motivation can grow and develop like every other part of their training. Also no need to add fear where there is none, the coach can take care of the common sense side once the athlete has found a good one.

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The main thing is do you have a study on mitochondrial mass plateauing after 4-6 weeks of aerobic capacity training training. One study?

Also i asked a couple of specific questions in that bit above which you didn't answer. Thanks for the basic theory lesson though although i don't know if that was for me, it certainly wasn't addressing my questions. Could you answer them?

And one more thing, i would not imagine that VO2 max 9or aerobic capacity) would change much during a season. It is off-season where these things change as they are developed. In season is for getting ready to race and racing. That's just basic periodisation again though.

Do i comprehend that your first macro-cycle is about putting on weight and the second is about honing track speed? I joke but i think a basic theory lesson on periodisation is in order after that paragraph of yours.

A micro-cycle is the shortest cycle other than a single day in periodisation theory. It is usually a week but some prefer 10 days. A macro-cycle is a longer cycle that comprises a small number of micro-cycles (usually 3 or 4). This makes a macro-cycle 3 weeks to a month long.

Wellnow, what you are talking about is a meso-cycle or phase and this is a number of macro-cycles grouped together, usually 3 or 4. This makes a phase 9 weeks to 3 months usually. I'm not sure what you have going on in-between your phases though. Could you explain? I hope the theory helps.

Pete