Wednesday - Snowing and 33 degrees - ****!

5.02 miles - 43:48 - (8:44)

I really thought we might be done with this **** for the year, but good old New England weather holds true again.

Well as long as it warms up a little for Boston and we don't get snow, rain would be bad enough but this stuff would be really tough to deal with.

------------------
My User Profile[/URL" target="_blank">

"Keep on Running"
Bob

Raider,

Warning--LONG:

It is apparent that you have figured out long ago what makes you tick. Your results are a testimony to that. The best way to measure any approach is by the results it produces. This doesn?t necessarily mean net times either?some runners simply have more natural ability than others. It?s how much a runner gets out of his or her natural ability that counts. For those who haven?t been running for an extremely long time like some of us, the best gauge is improvement. If there is steady improvement, then it?s reasonable to assume that the training is working. For an older runner who has been at it a long time and actual PR?s are impossible, it?s how much success that runner is having at ?slowing the slip? that is the determing factor. Although you, for one, are not crazy about age grading, I can?t think of a better way to measure this slowing of the slip. Some good minds have come up with this system, and a huge amount of data has been used in the process. In my opinion it works.

I just got my copy of Ron Daws? ?Self-Made Olympian? yesterday and came across this in the Foreward. He says:

?A pitfall for too many runners is adopting the training schedule of a world-class athlete without considering that the program which authors world records for one may destroy another.?
?I don?t go an a season, ? Frank Shorter has said. ?I don?t have build ups and cross-country seasons and speed seasons. Maybe it?s my detriment, but is seems I have functioned best when I do it this way?all the time.?

?Frank knows what makes him go. But as lemmings march to the sea, Shorter emulators will follow his approach without considering that, unless they?re pretty much like him, it probably won?t work.

Some years ago, I saw an advertisement offering detailed accounts of Jim Ryun?s workouts. Presumably, if the aspiring high school miler duplicated the runs, he would be on his way down the yellow brick road to the four-minute mile. However, a blind-faith adoption of another runner?s workouts is, at best, risky. Although two runners may be capable of the same times at six miles or a marathon, their training (while based on the same principles) should not necessarily follow the same schedule.?

The keys to your approach that you have outlined above are logical, and at least parts of it would work for many runners, including myself. Actually, the only one that you don?t particular care for that have given me results I?ve been satisfied with has been alternating paces such as the wave runs Ribs has been using, as well as fartleks and intervals. As I review my logs it I can see that these types of workouts have had a hand in most of the periods where I?ve seen the greatest improvement.

The point that you continue to make, #1 about dropping 5k/10k times leading to faster marathon pace, is one that I particularly like. However, judging by most of the responses I?ve gotten when saying pretty much the same thing, it is a very hard sell. Everyone wants to use only 20k?s, 30k?s and half marathons as preps for marathons and I can understand the reasoning. It seems so logical. While there?s certainly nothing wrong with running one or two of those once in a while, I believe that 10k?s, especially, can work just as well and have some advantages. The great majority of runners who can run a fast 10k can run a fast marathon if they put in the miles. One important advantage is that you can run 10k?s more often and they don?t force you to alter your training as much as with longer races and all the tapering and recovering that comes with them. Also, your 10k times can give you a great benchmark as to where you are at with your training. If you are doing your long training runs, 10k times will project out accurately to the marathon. They are great for raising lactic threshold too. Apparently Paula Radciffe and Al Salazar, to name a couple, feel the same way.

I



http://This message has been edited by Jim24315 (edited Apr-04-2007).

Good on both of you, as they say down under. The reason I post on this site, and no longer on the daily is that over here experienced people discuss running, racing and training. So every one of these dialogs is useful. I was going to also reply to SR's post after my run today, but I will do it now.

One point that you have made over and over Sun, and I wish others would heed it, is the distance work needed to run the marathon successfully, the 63 miles or three times the daily average formula. There may be people out there who are anomalies, but for the most part, that one is a winner. It has always worked for me. Run the miles, have a great race. Cheat a bit, and die at the end.

As to speed in workouts, Jim cited the instance Daws commented on about people trying to emulate Shorter or Ryun. Another interesting one is Amby Burfoot. I believe he won Boston in 68, but he was noted for seldom running faster than 8 minutes a mile during his daily runs. That approach seemed to work for him.

I was thinking the other day about the word "speed." Do you all agree with me that no word is more misused or misunderstood than the word "speed?" By this I mean, someone will tell a runner, "you need to do more speed" or someone will say "I went to the track today to do speedwork" but the difficulty is that there is all kinds of speed. We all must incorporate some form of accelerated work in order to develop the CV system "above the line" (the anaerobic threshold) but it has taken me a lifetime to figure out what speeds, what dosages and what durations the word "speed" means to me, and I suspect most runners still don't have it right.

I have finally learned to have admiration and respect for those super-athlete runners who can get on the track and hammer out 20 x 400 at some blazing speed. I know I can't do it. I would be injured right there on the track! But what has helped me is finding this happy place where I can run "within myself" and get some form of quality work, without pretending to be the runner I am not. Finally, I see that I don't have to go to the track and have gut-wrenching workouts, but by the same token, I can put lots more quality effort into my runs and I am having fun. (Also, I really am improving, and if I can stay injury-free, I expect a very good year in '07.)

In saying all this, I am not challenging anything that Jim or Sun Raider have said. I simply wanted to add my own perceptions about the subject, as this kind of dialog is a help to all in my opinion. Thanks both of you. Spareribs

Well said indeed. Everyone is different.

Talking about speed and how some people can get really manic about it, there is a funny story in one of Lydiard's books in which one of his runners is doing a track workout and a reporter asks Lydiard, "What pace is he doing right now?" Lydiard said, "I don't know." So the reporter said, "Well, how many repeats is he doing?" Lydiard said, "I have no idea. You would have to ask him." So the reporter waited until the runner was finished and asked, "What speed were you doing?" And the runner said, "I don't know. I don't wear a watch." Exasperated, the reporter asked, "Well, how many of them did you do?" and the runner said, "I don't know. I just did them until I got tired."

Wouldn't it be neat if we could all work like that?

Thursday: Was apprehensive about today's run as I ran long yesterday, but did 5.6 mile recovery run on packed dirt, first mile slow then the rest at a nice pace. Feel super. Spareribs

Even though I have run high mileage, I am biased towards speed.

Watching the Hansons guys doing tough interval workouts in January,
February and March, was an eye opener.

quote:<HR>Originally posted by fredurie:
Even though I have run high mileage, I am biased towards speed.

Watching the Hansons guys doing tough interval workouts in January, February and March, was an eye opener.<HR>

Fred,

I am biased toward speedwork, too, and I enjoy speedwork more than I enjoy long runs, but I get injured quickly from speedwork.

In his pamphlet Long Slow Distance, Henderson says LSD may not take elite runners to their ultimate potential, but for the rest of us, it's the best way to maximize our potential while minimizing our injury risk.

I overdid LSD a couple of weeks ago, by doing two long runs--long for me--too close together, but I believe that was the fault of my execution, not of the LSD concept itself. I was trying to gear up for a marathon here on base, which I'm not adequately trained for. I knew I wasn't adequately trained for it, so I tried to increase my mileage faster than I should, to play catch-up. It all comes of trying to do what other people want me to do, rather than what I should do. Now I can't shuffle a mile faster than about 9:40--if I weren't injured, I could probably run a mile in the mid-5's.

Over the last few months, my regular routine was running 3 x 10 miles per week, relatively slowly. Once in a while I got nervous, fearing that slow running was making me slow, and I would try a little fast running. I don't think I lost a bit of speed: the LSD just made me stronger.

Dark Horse

------------------
I'm a dark horse, running on a dark race course

quote:<HR>Originally posted by euphoric:


I ran more than scheduled this week. All miles, except for the long run and hills, were just under 9 minutes and felt easy.

This Tuesday I'm scheduled to do "3 x Mile at 5K-10K pace".
I mentioned to the "Pro" that my pace seems to be almost the same regardless of distance. This week will be a new challenge and I assume I need to run each mile harder and have a short recovery period between them. There is no hill work on this week's schedule. Should I incorporate some into the other runs?

<HR>

Euphoric, you are doing very well and there has been significant improvement in your pace, your mileage buildup and in your overall health, absence of injury.

It is too bad that these fixed programs do not provide you with more detail on what to do. They do tend to leave people in the dark about pace, recovery etc. Here are some thoughts and I hope other wiser folks will join in.

First, you know that you are running your daily runs a bit faster now as you say above, so you should first determine a reasonable fiveK to tenK pace for you that would be achievable; a pace that has a bit more energy in it but that you could hold. Does 8:30 per mile seem about right? You decide.

Second, don't assume that you do each mile faster. In a workout like this you just want to achieve the target pace. Beating the pace does not make it a better workout. You are just training now. So run each mile at the same target pace. If you could do this workout on a local track it will give you a big advantage in feedback regarding pace and distance because it is exact.

Third, you want to consider the type and duration of your recovery. My suggestion is an easy jog of one lap around the track between each, say 400 meters. Try that out for starters. Poor would be just standing around between each, and I think 200 meters might not be enough. Certainly if you could do them with a 200 jog recovery that would be a good thing to work up to, but for a mile session, 400 should be okay for you.

Fourth, if there are no hills scheduled in your week, there is probably a reason. Perhaps there is other hard work in that week or it's a cutback week. I don't know without seeing your plan, but I will say that on any day where you are feeling fresh and you want to incorporate some running up hills it is remarkably good for your development. Look to see why you think there are no hills this week. What else is going on?

And finally, you mentioned the Pro gave you some feedback here. He is as competent to do this as anyone I know, so if you want his comments here as well I will go fetch him for you now. He is having a busy day at work he tells me, but I assume he will post by tomorrow. Spareribs