quote:<HR>Originally posted by rengle:
Wow! Go to bed early and miss all the excitement.
You have a convoluted way of putting things. A more clear way of saying this is that I think that everyone can benefit from high volume training. But you can put it either way. And while I'd like to make a simple, direct answer, I'm afraid you'll take such an answer and rework or convolute it. So I'll have to be a bit more roundabout.
1. Overwhelmingly, I think that most people running today are not racing as fast as they could because they aren't running enough to reach their full potential.
2. I'm not criticizing those people. For most of them the "rewards" that come from getting their 10k times to 38:30 from 41:30 would not justify taking another three to five hours a week away from the rest of their lives.
3. There are exceptions.
4. One example of such an exception would be people who actually are doing quite a lot of running.
5. Another such example would be people who are doing too much running, or are doing that running too hard and are impeding their performances.
6. A third example would be people who have very little tolerance for running volume.
7. I think that the total number people mentioned in #s 4,5, and 6 is much, much, smaller than the group mentioned in #1 (those who would run faster by running more.)
8. Many, perhaps most people involved with distance running in the US today, and I believe you are solidly in this group, grossly overestimate the size of the group mentioned in six and grossly underestimate the size of the group mentioned in #1.
A big reason for this is that it can take quite a while for someone to adapt to a significantly higher training volume, (i.e. body parts start to hurt, you feel tired,you get sick now and again and think this means that you're overtrained.) Another reason is that it can take quite a bit of time for the benefits of high volume training to show up. Lots of people will have a go at running a lot more for 2-3 months, not see any improvement and decide that the higher volume's not doing any good. For an illustration, let's resurrect our old friend, MaryT and her slow marathons on 40-50 mpw.
If I find someone saying that their marathon time is really slow and I find that they're running 40-50, maybe even 60 mpw, I will just about automatically think that the problem is that their overall volume is too low to run a decent marathon and that the answer is to run a lot more on a pretty much daily basis. Yes, there may be exceptions to this but getting into them would just muddle the point.
On the other hand, if someone complains that they aren't getting the race results they want and I find that they're training 150 miles per week, I'll almost automatically think that the problem is that they're running too much and I'd have them bring their volume down significantly. Again, there may be exceptions but I'll steer clear of them for now.
If someone is running 90-100 mpw and complaining that they aren't getting the results they want I won't know immediately what I think the problem is. I'd need to have a much longer discussion with this person than I would with either the 50 mpw runner or the 150 mpw runner.
I may think this third person needs to run more. I may think they need to run less. I may think they're running as much as they should and that they need to rearrange the way their miles are broken up or that there are other aspects of training that they need to incorporate. I may even think that given the fact that they're training really well and not getting the results they want that their talent is inadequate relative to their ambition.
I don't know if you'll find agreement or disagreement with your statement about my beliefs in all of this.
<HR>
This is probably the most cogent, clear, and common sense post that I've seen in a long time.
Dick, this is the clarity that you should strive for in your writing. So many of your arguments are semantic. You clearly do not have a genetic gift for writing or critically reading. That's at the root of all this. Honestly, this isn't Dick-bashing (I reserve that for times when you are lying and you know it). It's a fundamental flaw in your thought process. I suspect that the same flaw that prevents you from writing or reading clearly prevents you from seeing that problem.
You want to argue with Rengle, but you have yet to advance any concrete disagreement. I remind you of what you wrote earlier: "I advise each person to focusing on finding their personal optimal training load, no matter what weekly mileage that may be. If it's 20 then so be it. If it's 100 then that's great too. The # isn't the important thing - finding your optimal training load is." (I'm using quotes because summarizing -- as you've done with Rengle's post, only leads to problems.) You have also said "It takes hard, consistent work for an extended period of time in order to determine one's level of talent."
Right on man.
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