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

Great thread. I don't think anyone with much sense throws out the VO2 max, threshold or race pace work but it is more a case of the emphasis they place on it.

You often speak to people who say they think X or Y is the most important part of their training but when you look at what they do it actually has a lot of A, B and C in there. Eg someone says V02 is the most important thing but when you break down what you do there's also everything else you'd expect to see - a lot of steady running, faster work and fast run throughs too.

Often when people talk about their training they focus on what they see as the differences in what they do compared to the person they are speaking to. If you look on it from the outside there are huge similarities.

Most coaches will tailor what they do to what different athletes can tolerate/respond best to. Eg, I do far less faster running and track work than I used to as it wrecks my Achilles. My/my coaches beliefs on what training would be ideal hasn't changed but the practicalities have.

Anyways. Some stuff about other, far wiser people which is relevant to different points raised:

Craig Mottram:

http://www.sports-fitness.com/article/sf/uk/read/125

Nic Bideau:

http://www.sports-fitness.com/article/sf/uk/read/108

Paul Tergat:

http://www.sports-fitness.com/article/sf/uk/read/117

Clyde Hart:

http://www.sports-fitness.com/article/sf/uk/read/78

The trouble with training at strict paces- "200s at 800 PACE" etc, is that for most people, what "800 pace" is changes over the course of a season. The younger you are, the more drastic this change is.

For a pro, race pace doesn't change all that much, year in and year out. Even a pro doing mile repeats at 10k pace only has to adjust his workout a few seconds per mile if he improves ten or twenty seconds in a season.

A young xc runner, however, could conceivably take off more than a minute from his 5k pr over the course of a season. For a runner like that, 1000 repeats at 5k pace wouldn't be particularly beneficial if he's taking huge chunks off his pr every week. It'd be more important to explain what an LT run is and have him do that kind of work by feel.

Also, I think this was touched on earlier, but the reason East Africans can do so much fast stuff is because they have ridiculous high-end aerobic bases (and, consequently, very highly trained LTs)

Skuj wrote:

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?

Stated above, your question has become, basically, "if you'd trained faster, don't you think you would have raced faster"?

As we all know, it doesn't always work that way. Injury and overtraining are constant threats in this sport. As long as he is healthy and continuing to improve, sounds to me like he stick with what has worked before.

There have been some good and interesting comments made here and many are correct in my mind, even when some are in disagreement with each other. As someone who tries to rely on research in support of much of what I think and suggest about training, I often get confused as to what is “the right way to do things.”

It is very hard to separate the physiological from the psychological side of training. Would Ryun have done better had some of those prolonged sessions been toned down; or would Lindgren have achieved even great performances with a little less mileage? Who knows? You can’t project much about training based on a research project that involved one subject. I think both of these great runners did what provided the best results for them because I don’t know of a study that took these same two bodies and tried a different approach.

When, back in the 1970s, we sent a questionnaire to all the teams that made it to D1 nationals in cross country, a vast majority indicated that the single most important training they felt they did was 5 or 6 times a mile at what is now better known as VO2max pace (whatever that was relative to their 5k or 10k pace – I think it was expressed as 5 or 6 times a hard mile with about equal recovery jogs, and, of course, over a cross-country course the actual pace becomes relatively irrelevant, so we are back to running by feel).

I seem to remember Bowerman using both date pace and goal pace in the Oregon training. One question here obviously is, how many achieved “goal” pace, or did they actually surpass goal pace? I have had considerable success with milers training slower than “goal” race pace, as have I had success with training at current race pace (which often is the same as those who trained slower than goal pace). It is tough to try to follow what research has suggested is the best approach to developing a particular physiological system, and along with that do what some runners have had great success with doing.

Obviously an additional concern is how a particular pace feels in training as opposed to how it feels in a race that has been rested and psyched up for. Probably everyone feels that in marathons – “Man, I thought I was going a lot slower than I actually was and it sure caught up with me.”

Sorry if I haven’t clarified my opinion on this matter, but I do enjoy talking about training and only wish there was more time.

Tup

i think this deserves another bump.

leg twitcher wrote:

i think this deserves another bump.

Why?

I often thought that you had to train at goal pace in order to hit it in a race; however, I've seen too many examples where it wasn't the case.

1) My son was preparing for track season, but he wasn't doing anything faster than some mile repeats at about 5:25 pace. His PR for the mile was 4:50. He went into the first race of the season and ran a 4:37 while doing no training that approach that speed. He then went back to traditional goal-pace running and improved 1 second the rest of the year.

Using the approach that netted him the 4:37 mile, he ran that fall's state XC meet (held on the same course w/ similar weather conditions) over 2 minutes faster than he had the year before.

2) Another young man that I worked with ran a 5:04 mile while doing nothing faster than 5:40 pace.

3) I ran my best mile, 4:19, while my speed sessions consisted of 5 * 1000m @ 3:00, and I was running about 80 mpw.

4) I helped a guy who wanted to qualify for Boston. He had a marathon PR of 3:32, and he was 42 years old. We found that the traditional training using repeats literally made him sick. We strapped a HRM on him and held him to 80-85% MHR for his runs. That worked out to about 7:30 pace for him. We extended the workouts as he got fitter. He then ran his marathon and was able to hold that pace all the way to the finish for a 3:15.

I think that the LT running pushes up the ability to handle a faster pace for a longer period of time. I've always operated under the philosophy that you have x amount of speed; let's train the person to carry that speed over a longer distance. At that point, strength is more important, and the LT workouts help with that.

Why?

Well, I like the study that Marius and humbug were referencing on page 3. Seems to say that maximizing aerobic utilization in the actual muscles is the key, and that it was Paula's high volume of training that did it. IOW run as much as you can and as fast as you can. Not an earth shattering conlcusion but good to see scientific confirmation of what Renato et al. say and have been saying.

To Jack Daniels. First of all, thanks for weighing in on this quality discussion. Your participation raises the quality even higher.

Now, about a year ago you mentioned a study of elite Spanish distance runners who had been broken into control groups doing aerobic running at different levels of effort. The group that ran at the easiest pace made the greatest improvement. Do you recall that study and would you care to comment on what it says about the value of running at the low end of the aerobic zone in developing mitochondria, increasing capillary density, etc? Many thanks!

Thanks jtupper et al. Dr Daniels, I think you HAVE made yourself very clear with your wonderful book.

I just want to add that I had mono one Fall, took a month off, did absolutely nothing except for jogging for 2 months, 7min per mile max, 1hr max, then raced 8km in 25:20, and 15km in 49:04.

Does that go against or for my argument? :) Kind of "Ed-Lite" training, hahaha....

Does an 800m runner need "VO2max sessions"? ie An 800m guy who also likes 400m, like Gary Reed or Juantorina? What about LT sessions for that kind of runner.

If all I ever did every day was 5k jog + 4x400m + 5k jog, with the 400s at any pace from 3000m to 800m, with plenty of recovery, would my VO2 max or LT suffer greatly?

Skuj, I think what you MEANT to ask :-) was:

Skuj wrote: If all I ever did every day was 5k jog + 4x400m + 5k jog, with the 400s at any pace from 3000m to 800m, with plenty of recovery, would my RACING at distances xx and xx suffer greatly?

Right?

I mean really, who gives a crap about VO2max and LT at the end of the day?

If Jack (or others) answers the question, I wonder if he might qualify it based on the type of runner (referring back to my earlier question).

Oops, sorry for yelling.... I shouldn't really try to fart around with html...

Are you mad at me, Pete? :)I'm not saying that is good training. I'm making an inquiry with a strange kind of illustration.

Pete wrote:

Skuj, I think what you MEANT to ask :-) was:

Skuj wrote: If all I ever did every day was 5k jog + 4x400m + 5k jog, with the 400s at any pace from 3000m to 800m, with plenty of recovery, would my RACING at distances xx and xx suffer greatly?

Right?

I mean really, who gives a crap about VO2max and LT at the end of the day?

If Jack (or others) answers the question, I wonder if he might qualify it based on the type of runner (referring back to my earlier question).

The unanswered question in that study you are referring to is this --was it the higher percentage of easy running each week that made the difference or was it having less of the higher intensity work each week? In other words, is there an amount of faster work that takes away from progress, regardless of how much easy running you are doing. I would think one could easily do too much high intensity running, which would limit the amount of recovery time available (that all important time when the benfits of the higher-intensity stress is leading to better operating systems).

I think what you describe is not that unusual. I sure have seen it happen a lot. Probably improvement at some levels comes as the result of just running -- any running. No question when someone has never run, just getting out there and running some will produce dramatic improvments. I am not saying your son is not better than a beginner, because getting down to the times he has run is certainly getting quite good. I guess my point here is that what benefits runners who are early in a career may not be what is best for them when reaching elite status. I remember Juaquim Cruz, when training for his Gold Medal 800 in LA Olympics, would sometimes do 3 X 600 in about 1:17, which is right around 800 race pace for him. Maybe that kind of fast training is necessary when you know you have to go 3 or 4 rounds in not too many days time. If your body is not used to that pace it may do really well in a single race, but may have trouble repeating a fast pace several times in a matter of days.

Thank you, Jack. As I recall from your description of that study a year ago, there was no high intensity running done by any of the control groups. I thought the comparison was between control groups doing moderate and easy running.

If there's any validity to the notion that anaerobic efforts actually "erode" aerobic fitness, could it be that slower aerobic running is more effective because it is farther removed from the corrosive effect of intense anaerobic training than moderate aerobic running is?

Coe always made a clear distinction between training for a 4-rounder Championship, and training for a non-Championship year "one off blinder".

Remember Jim Peters, anyone? He was GREAT, unfortunately remembered for certain bad days. But I believe all he ever wanted to do in training was MP. Sometimes he'd go 17 miles, other times 10...just get out and do MP.

Test. Sorry, I've had technical problems today. :)

Of course what you describe here is a return to racing by someone who has raced previously and spent some time training then had training interrupted. Some of the physiological benefits stay with you quite well, even with a fair break in quality training -- women who go through pregnancy are a good example of this, and I am a firm believer that great performances by women after going through pregnancy, may be mostly due to them getting a break from stressful training and taking special care of their bodies so their baby will have the best possible start in lfe.

Maybe it's a little like altitude training, regardless of any physiological benefits, you learn to hurt more than usual, and that new level of discomfort when applied to a race leads to better performance. I ran my best times at altitude (7500 feet) during one of our research projects in the middle 60s. Then moved to Peru (sea level city of Lima), got hurt on a run over cobble stones, didn't run 2 weeks then did minimal running for another 4 weeks, followed by a trip to Quito (altitude about 9600'), where I ran within 4 seconds of my altitude PR mile. I always figured the track was short, but when I returned to sea level I also ran within 4 seconds of my sea level PR (following no real training for 6 weeks?).

I tested a group of 12 year olds (every 6 months) until they were 18. They ran during that time (one 12 year old actually did 6 weeks of 100 a week) and VO2max was the exact same thing (about 62ml/kg) over the 6 year time. However they improved 2mile time by a considerable amount (and tests also showed significant improvments in running economy. These guys doubled their body mass in those 6 years and so did VO2max double, which meant no change in O2/kg. Unfortunately we did not get to test these runners until they had been training for a couple years so that no-change in max was probably not descriptive of where they started out. I also imagine they would have further improvments in max once they stopped growing and really got into their new bodies. I'd hate to think you can just test 12 year olds and decide who has it and who doesn't.

Anyway I have for many years felt improving max is not something that goes on for along time, whereas improvements in economy and threshold probably do go on much longer. In testing swimmers (compared age-group kids with collegiate national champions) we found no difference in VO2max, but massive differeneces in economy. Obviously economy is a much bigger deal in swimming because of the importance of technique.

I also published a paper on tests I did on Jim Ryun during his year off and then return to training -- can't remember all the changes, but VO2max per kg deteriorated the most because he gained 25 pounds during the year off. Gotta go.