Isn't "Event Specificity" More Important Than "VO2max" And "LT" Zones And All That?

No I don't know know of any other studies. Would have been interesting collecting data across from top elites that have been tested from young age.

But I have the exact same results like I mention and a few years ago I saw the results of Ingrid Kristiansen which showed the same kind of Vo2 flattening, LT increase+performance.

Which in reality means that if you take the top 10-11 all-time 5000 meter runners in Europe on mens/womens side you have 3 out of 3 of them with the exact same clear tendency.

Marius

Marius wrote:

the far and greatest factor is a high LT, and without it you can have all the sprinting speed in the world, middle distance speed and still not perform well. And it is often overlooked by doing TOO MUCH pace specific work year around.

Marius

Who said TOO MUCH pace specific work and who said year round ?

Too much of whatever the pace is wrong rather be miles, specific pace or simply LT training also indeed. To much is too much point. The issue of this thread that´s not the risk of too much use of specific pace .

If you base your argument in the fact that someone does too much of specifics i also i can argue that some runners they don´t perform well because they do too much LT training. Isnt that right ?

Marius are you sure you agree with Canova?

read this:

But what is important to remember, is that every distance needs a specific Aerobic Support, that is not the real AnT. For example, in the case of 3000 SC/5000, we can create a MAX LASS (Maximum Lactate Steady State) of 6/8 min at a level of 11-13 mmol of lactate, and the AnT that we need is the speed at a level of 8 mmol about. So, don`t pay attention at the CONVENTIONAL THRESHOLD of 4 mmol,because is something for physiologists, but really in many case doesn´t mean anything.

My Questions would be, How does this workout prepare you for the race? and If it was a "hard" training session how do you expect to be able to run that pace for 4000 more meters with no rest at all?

wellnow wrote:

Skuj, this talk about the contributions of so called anaerobic/aerobic energy is the biggest load of pseudo-scientific bullshit in physiology.

At vo2max most of the energy comes from oxidation of lactate. So how would you quantify that in terms of the old defintions?

You can't because the old definitions are wrong.

That's cool! I'm here to be enlightened.

Coach Mook wrote:

My Questions would be, How does this workout prepare you for the race? and If it was a "hard" training session how do you expect to be able to run that pace for 4000 more meters with no rest at all?

Good question! :) (Wow! I'm just consuming my wake-up coffee and trying to take this all in....thanks everyone for this wonderful discussion. We will have disagreements and all, but lets keep it happy. jtupper is here too. Sheesh, will Antonio Cabral come out of "letsrun retirement" soon? :)

Well, last night I did 6km worth of Goal Pace, in two large chunks. Maybe a 4x2000m at the same pace is coming up soon. I don't know. I think 6000m worth in training could be a good indicator of 10000m all at once when not recovering from a recent 90min run, 2 night shifts, etc etc etc. Perhaps 2x3000m in 10:30 will feel really good in a few weeks.

It's true that I have taken "Event Specificity" rather literally in this discussion. There must be long easy runs, and tempos, and faster efforts too....some of these things will fall into classic definitions of "LT" and "VO2max" work (I like using quotations), but for me, that will be by accident, because the CENTRAL session for me must be the Event Specific session...but, 2x3000m or 4x2000m isn't the same as 1x10000m, is it? :) Something SIMILAR, but obviously a TRAINING session, vice a RACE. For the Marathon, I would think of long runs that contain 14-28km of MP. (A third to two-thirds makes sense in my mind.) For the 800m, I would think of 4x400m or 2x600m at 800m pace.

Of course, these sessions won't be done all year. But in the original inquiry, I'm asking if thee sessions should be the MAIN FOCUS of training, and all other training SURROUNDS these central sessions.

I don't know if I'm making sense. You will tell me. :)

Quick question for Marius (or anyone else familiar with Kenyan training).

First off I'd like to say your site is great at examining the different training strategies of various successful countries. Anyway, with the question:

You say that Kenyans do lots of training just below their LT. Does that mean for someone with an LT at, say, 5:00, they run at 5:05 to 5:15, or rather around 5:00 to 5:30?

It'd be great if you could answer this!

Thanks

Leg Twitcher

Skuj,

IMHO I'd say that you might be better off doing something like 8 by 1000m w/1min rest or 5 by 1600m w/2min at a little faster than 10k pace.

By only doing 2 by 3k you aren't doing as much work, you are going slower, and it is harder and more likely to tire you out and the training effect is at best the same as those above. Also, given you ran the second rep slower than the first I have the idea that it was maybe a bit too hard of a workout.

If your 10k pace is say 75sec/400m, I don't think you really need to do much work at 75 sec/400m. You could just do "V02max" work at 72sec/400m, and "LT work" at 80sec/400m....and when race day rolls around you'd be fine at 75 sec/400m...because those systems have both been trained optimally.

Again though, it may depend on what type of runner you are...perhaps long intervals at 10k pace work for you.

I did 10:34 and 10:27. Typo in that post. I'd like to soon do 3x2000m in 6:40, which IS faster than 10k pace. I guess that goes a little against my "specific" argument, doesn't it, hahaha....?I want to run a sub35min 10k in October. I'm 45yrs old. PR31:09 when Bush Senior was in office. Sure...I like those 8x1000m or 5x1600m suggestions. Maybe I'd even like 25x400m in 80sec, on 2min. If I was a Marathoner, I think my Most Imortant Sessions would be 10x3000m or 6x5000m, at goal MP, with jogging inbetween.I want to do things which are 1 or 2 degrees away from the race. What I do must be "sensible training". Only the race can be the race.Sure....as a 10k guy, I would also try and do Half Marathon Paced stuff, which just happens to be LT, and 5k paced stuff, which just happens to be VO2 max. But if I was Marathoner, VO2 max work would go out the window, in favour of MP work, and also Half MP work. Tell me how utterly wrong that would be, and why, please.

bump

citius99 wrote:

bump

Bumping is rude, especially less than 2 hours after the last post. Who are you to determine that this thread is better than anything else above it? Stop the bumping!

Skuj:

Two examples of guys at both ends of the spectrum (speed and age) who don't do that much race pace stuff as far as I know:

Ed Whitlock seems to have basically one session: run easy for 2 hours, significantly slower than marathon pace, yet he kicks butt at the marathon and other distances in his age group.

Jeremy Wariner does lots of stuff like 8 x 200 in 28, 6 x 200 in 26, 2 x 350 in 42. All slower than race pace. He is the Olympic and World champion in the 400. By the way, many people don't believe that these are the actual workouts that Wariner and his group do, and that they must be doing faster stuff.

I think that you are right Skuj, but I think that these two things youre talking about are really one. I think people have just become more knowledgable and that is why they refer to workouts by the physiology rather than the race pace. For instance your VO2 max can be sustained for 8-10 minutes depneding. So it is basically anyones 3k race pace. The multi-pace training system that Horwill and later Coe and others used to such great effect calls for training at multiple paces of races. Also, long tempos are often described as a cut down from Marathon to 10k pace. So, train at 3k pace (VO2max), 10k and Marathon pace (tempo), 1500 and 800 pace (speed endurance/lactic tolerance), and 5k pace is essentially just longer VO2 max intervals after your body has adapted more to a 3k pace. So I don't think that they are really different theories.

Does Ed run 2-3hrs a lot, Pete? I've talked about specificity wrt pace so far. How far removed from a 3hr Marathon is a 2-3hr run at an easy pace? What % slower than MP are these runs done at? I actually thought about Ed a lot when I thought about "specificity". Unfortunately for my argument, I've made the case only for pace so far. I can assure you that the Wariner stuff you mentioned is "endurance" type stuff for him. Does Wariner do VO2max or LT? :)

Peter wrote:

Skuj:

Two examples of guys at both ends of the spectrum (speed and age) who don't do that much race pace stuff as far as I know:

Ed Whitlock seems to have basically one session: run easy for 2 hours, significantly slower than marathon pace, yet he kicks butt at the marathon and other distances in his age group.

Jeremy Wariner does lots of stuff like 8 x 200 in 28, 6 x 200 in 26, 2 x 350 in 42. All slower than race pace. He is the Olympic and World champion in the 400. By the way, many people don't believe that these are the actual workouts that Wariner and his group do, and that they must be doing faster stuff.

Pete, I'm not saying that people shouldn't do slower than race pace stuff. I think 2hrs easy is a good Marathon Training session. As is 20km easy for the 10km. I'm talking about The Most Important Sessions, the "fulcrum" around which all other sessions should be based.

If a typical session for Ed is 2-3hrs at 10-15% slower than MP, I'd say he supports my argument.

IMO the single most important "workout" for the marathon is the long run. A long run of about 2 hours to 2.5 hours that is run at a steady effort (ie about 30-45sec/mile slower than Marathon goal race pace) for the first hour, and then the second hour or last 8-10 miles is gradually picked up to marathon race pace.

So in a nutshell, this is a pretty long (ie 18-23 miles) run that gets down to marathon pace, and it simulates running out of glycogen.

I think the ability to use glycogen effectively is the most specific demand of the marathon race and therefore I think the long run is the most important.

Most people have plenty of "speed" to run a decent marathon...the problem is their endurance is undertrained.

Total weekly mileage is also a very important component of that.

Personally, I would not scrape V02max workouts from a marathon training build-up. Pfitzinger's plan uses them quite a bit, and it makes sense to get the legs turning over at a more decent clip every now and then. At the very least some 10k paced work (ie 1600m repeats) about 3 weeks out from race day helps marathon race pace feel more comfortable.

I agree with a lot of what you say Mr Canaday. Yes, long runs are important for the Marathon, and why not kill 2 birds with one stone and do some MP too? How we can arrange this MP deserves another thread or two! :)

Mr Cabral told me that anything faster than 10% faster than Goal Race Pace is unnecessary. So a guy training for a 1:44 800m need never bust 47sec 400m pace. ie 23sec 200, etc. Or a guy training for a 35min 10k need never bust 75sec 400m pace. A 3hr Marathoner need never bust 3:50km pace.

Skuj,

just to be clear, that was some other "Peter" you were chatting with, not "Pete" (me).

I'll leave the guts of this discussion for you other fellas, but will observe that running right at race pace, for me, seems to be much less important than having a good balance of work at other paces. This would genereally include some work faster than race pace, and a whole lot more work slower than race pace, but my 800 PR was run without ever having run that pace in training, and this year after a 5 month injury layoff I got back fairly close to 5k PR form without having exceeded (or approached, really) 5k race pace in training in the prior 6-7 months (I was avoiding the faster work in my early buildup back to fitness).

Hey Peter The Second. :)

Balance is important YES! Mulipace training is very important imho. Where we center it all is what I'm trying to get at in this discussion.

Of course, most work should be slower than race pace for ANY runner. Even sprinters.

But Pete, are you absolutely sure that training AT 800m pace would not have been even more beneficial to your 800m? Or 5k pace for your 5k? Can you say, without any hesitation at all, that these kinds of sessions would not have been useful?

I'm not trying to be a smart-ass.