LateRunnerPhil wrote:
tin can man wrote:
The problem with all this long slow running is eventually you need to be able to run FAST. That's why it's fundamentally flawed. It can work for extremely talented athletes that already have great natural speed, such as the ingebritsons or Drew Hunter (though it's still far from optimal). But for most, you will inevitably hit a MASSIVE PLATEAU.
Physiologically the 5k and 10k are MIDDLE DISTANCE events. Bekele didn't get to run 4:03 pace for a 5k (12:37) without doing TONS OF SPEED.
Grant Fisher and Hunter did very limited amounts of speed work (800m pace and faster, and I don't just mean the 4x200m Tinman sometimes does at the end of workouts) and were two of the best HS kids in recent years.
In the end, the athletes at the top all are extremely talented. Give them a training program that keeps them injury-free and progresses them safely over time and boom - you got great performances.
Bekele could have trained 23432 different systems, he would have always been super fast. You don't know how much talent he has, that guy could literally stop running for 5 years and drop a 14 min 5k like it's nothing.
The double threshold makes sense for elite runners on a high level. Would I recommend it to the average HS kid in the 16/17s 5k range? No. Would I recommend it to the weekend 5k warrior running 17-20 min? No. Might it be appropriate for an elite 15 flat girl, like Schneider or the Ingebrigtsens, around 13 flat? Yes, definitely.
I really don't care what you recommend as you again and again make mistakes and fail to acknowledge them. You've got a good grasp of basic training principles, but when it comes to advanced training you clearly have very little experience and insight.