Can somebody explain the "90 minute rule"? (Read 720 times)

DCloafer, what kind of animal is that in your avatar? Is that a beardog? We have a bearcat around here but no beardog.

 

I think that rule is closely linked with the "90 minute rule" that started this thread: Namely, that you'll often get more benefit out of more frequent long running sessions.

 

Say you're running 40 miles a week, split between 6 runs. If your long run is 15 miles, then you'll be left with 5 runs of an average of just 5 miles each to fill out the rest of your week. That's too short for most people to reach that allegedly magical 60-90 minute window where HGH production peaks, mitochondrial growth really ramps up, and other valuable adaptations are spurred.

 

I'm trying to practice this myself right now: I'm doing Daniels' 5-15k plan now, and he says your long run shouldn't be more than 25% of your weekly mileage. For me, it's more like 25-30%. Either way, capping your LR distance as a certain % of your weekly mileage means that you have to run lots of miles in order to reach a decent length for your long run. This means that I'm running a lot more 8- and 9-milers as my bread and butter runs, as opposed to the 6- and 4-milers that have traditionally been my staples.

 

I feel like this has made me tougher both mentally and physically. (Then again, maybe it's just that I'm now simply running a lot more miles than I have in a long time....)

Sounds like you've figured out the secret to me, inasmuch as there is one.

Training is stimulus and response.

The more frequent the stimulus, the more frequent the response (within the limits of the body's capacity to respond.)

The deeper the stimulus, the deeper the response (within the limits of the body's capacity to respond.)

The distance running world has sort of arrived at these ball parks as starting points for ideal frequency and stimulus: daily for frequency  and "an hour easy" for depth of stimulus. If you start there, you should be within your body's capability to respond. From there, you can increase frequency and depth of stimulus according to your body's strengths and weaknesses in terms of physical response to training.

so what happened to the rats

Drawing conclusions from rats to humans in terms of endurance training seems pretty fraught to me. I could go into the reasons why this is a tenuous connection, but I think they are pretty dang obvious. I draw my conclusions -- and most coaches do as well -- from what has worked for humans.

 

Drawing conclusions from rats to humans in terms of endurance training seems pretty fraught to me. I could go into the reasons why this is a tenuous connection, but I think they are pretty dang obvious. I draw my conclusions -- and most coaches do as well -- from what has worked for humans.

Not to mention ostriches....

 

I suppose a person could be fraught with wealth, or a race finish could be fraught with cookies, or "bagels".

But that only works if you consider the wealth or cookies/bagels to be undesirable . . .

I might be exaggerating, I didn't go back and look at my log. Might have been 5 seconds, but it was significant. I never really ran a good race in the 800, I don't think, 2:15 was my best. I wish I'd done some big speedwork after my ½ in '09, I didn't really do much speedwork leading up to that race, and I think there was base there I could have used. Ah well.

 

I really think that one hard interval workout, one tempo run (say 5-6K) and everything else fairly easy is a good formula. Might not max you out, but will get most people faster as long as those workouts are quality and the mileage is good.

 

On the long run to weekly mileage, some weeks my long run was half my mileage - if I got lazy or was busy and didn't train much that week, I didn't feel that should keep me from running the same long run I would have anyway. Ramping your long run up while you don't have supporting runs, or doing that consistently, and I think you'll end up in trouble.

 

 

 

Feel free to pass it on, print it out and leave it behind after practice, or use it to start a conversation after/before practice, something like that. I coached soccer a couple years ago, and I appreciated when people would discuss things with me. When they were sure I was wrong and got belligerent, I didn't enjoy it, but I never had an issue discussing what I was doing and why, and why I was doing it rather than what they proposed as long as the conversation stayed civil. I was a little upset that people would come up and bring things up after the last game of the season instead of after (or even before) the first one - If I agreed, I could have incorporated it if it had been brought up earlier, right?

Vinch,

You have some great points in this email.  The formula of 1 interval, 1 tempo, and 1 long run, IMO, is a pretty darn solid and good way to train. I think if you try to squeeze in more quality days than that, it will work for a while for some runners, but not all. For my son's team, about 3 of the kids out of 7 to 9 competing for varsity improved throughout the season. The rest either went backwards. It seems like the coach was always looking for ways to squeeze in more hard days, at the expense of a distance run, even if it meant doing a hard interval session the day after a long run... or even if it meant 4 hard days out of 5 (not joking...). I get the impression that the HS coaches see how resilient the kids are and the assume they can get away with pounding away with the hard days.

I will take your advice and have discussions with the coach. I've already cracked the door open on a couple of topics and he's been very receptive in the few things I've brought up.

Getting back to the rats...

 

The 10 minute per day exercisers had about 16 per cent more cytochrome c than the resting group of rats, while the 30 minute ones boosted it by 31 per cent, the one hour runners by 38 per cent and the 2 hour runners increased it by 92 per cent. These findings in 1967 were a potent argument for "Run long, run slow, run gently". Holloszy’s work was given more credence when in a run to exhaustion test, the 2 hour trainers kept going at a good pace for 111 minutes, while the 10 minute trainers lasted 22 minutes, the 30 minute ones for 41 minutes, the one hour rats ran strenuously for 50 minutes. The relationship of a high cytochrome c level to better performance had been firmly established."

 

I'm not a scientist, so I have no idea just how much these results would apply to humans. Still, the relationship between cytochrome c and endurance seems to be firmly established.

However, it is obvious this data doesn't support the conclusion that longer runs are necessarily the best way to improve endurance. Looked at closely, the data shatters many long held myths held by the distance running community. For example, the myth that runs under 20-30 minutes long have little value is undercut by the gains made by the 10 minute per day running rats. The data also shows a non-linear relationship between run duration, enzyme production, and performance. 60 minute runs are obviously of less value, per minute run, than 30 minute runs. The rats running 60 minutes only improved their performance by about 20% over the 30 minute runners. Yet the 2 hour runners more than doubled their performance over the 60 minute runners.

Obviously, there are thresholds that must be reached for certain beneficial processes to be triggered. If this data applies to humans, a 60 minute run must fall below the required threshold duration that makes 2 hour runs so much more beneficial.

Interestingly, the data seems to support the idea that frequency, not duration, is more important to trigger adaptations. A double of 30 minute runs seems obviously superior to a single 60 minute run in producing adaptations. Four 30 minute runs also might be more beneficial than a single 2 hour run. If cytochrome c is boosted by 31% after a daily 30 minute run, four 30 minute runs would increase the enzyme by 124%, which compares positively to the 92% increase of a single run of 2 hours. Of course, we don't know how long the rest period between runs needs to be in order for full enzyme production to be triggered.

In practical terms, when factoring in recovery, a runner might actually be better off doing two days of 30 minute doubles, than running two hours one day, and needing to take full rest the day after. I think it should at least be considered a valid option, as a way to vary training stresses, instead of just running the same long run workout week after week, until the body stops adapting to the stimulus.

I went through a stretch between May and October where I rarely did any runs over an hour. I only had one long run in the double digits. During this period, I maintained overall mileage in the 50s. The majority of my runs were between 25-45 minutes long.

One day I felt like going long, and popped out a 14-miler (over 2 hour long) with no undue stress. I returned to my normal running routine the next day. So my own personal experience confirms that the long run is far less important than frequency and overall mileage to maintaining endurance. YMMV.