Interesting observation (Read 1024 times)

Run lots. Mostly easy. Sometimes hard. We always talk about it. We observe that in the end you'll be faster. And your chance for injury is lower. But there will always be runners who follow one of the canned programs that have you doing pace specific work 80% of the time. I have 3 friends who do programs similar to the FIRST program or who "gotta do more speedwork so I can speed up". What I have also noticed in common with the 3 of them in addition to rarely making their time goals. When they crash and burn in a race they CRASH AND BURN. Some of them are more experienced racers than me so I dont think it is merely a difference in pacing strategy. But if I go out too hot, or am having an off day I might get to the tail of a race and slow down 10-15 seconds, maybe 30 on a really bad HOT day (not counting marathon bonk). I'm not talking about going out way too hot and racing stupid. I'm talking I legitimately have a reason to expect I can run something near this pace but today I just cant. Usually I am still within a couple minutes of what I wanted overall. When they fall off their pace, and again for the first 2/3 of the race they are holding the pace they expected to run, not going out super fast. They die. 1, 2 3 minutes or more off their pace. Kablooie.

I'm normally one of the speedwork guys, and I have done some serious blowing up in races (came in slower than my easy pace in a half once.... of course, it was -27, into the wind, and they had ultima at the water stops. Kind of a perfect storm). I still think that speed has its place, even in easy phases of training, but that very fast stuff on the track actually has more place earlier in a program rather than tempos. I don't know why, but that's how I have to set up a program to do best, tempo first and then faster stuff just doesn't do it for me. Maybe it's that I find them much easier to recover from. I actually ran a huge half PB after doing no speedwork at all through the summer because of a hip injury (no tempos for most of the summer either.... just long runs on the weekends and runs when I could fit them in) Of course, after a month of bad training (something about 22 hour days in the woods) I did a bunch of pace-specific work in the last 3 weeks, including a 10K that I'd been planning on running at my planned half pace, ran a minute and fifteen seconds faster, and then ran that pace for the half. Who knew? Anyway, the pace stuff can come later in a program, the distance is what makes you improve, in my experience.

I've been amazed at how much my times have dropped in races just from getting to a consistent 25 mpw level in my training. Mostly easy. Some pace and tempo and interval, but mostly easy. I'm a believer.

Its hard to know the true correlation of your 3 friends. Maybe they set goals to high and no matter what plan they would follow they would die in the race. I think the main point to training is to keep an open mind and continually experiment. I have tried a few things, failed, then tried again later and had success. It depends of fast / slow / long you are talking about. I like 3 harder workouts per week. These are usually 16-22 miles with either Vo2 max intervals, CV intervals, LAT paced miles, Long tempo, MP paced miles or a combination of LAT & MP miles. But in reality a good speed week = 5x5 minutes @ Vo2 Max = 4 miles 5x2 @ LAT = 10 miles 11 mile tempo total = 25 miles out of 100-120 = 20-25% fast, maybe a few striders and a fast finish mile or 2, but I doubt I ever get > 30% ... Unless I screw he pooch and only run 50-60 miles in the week then I could get 40-50% fast. But I also know people that run 50-60 MPW - 30-40% speed related and kick my butt. The majority of the people will fit into the category of this tread, but keep an open mind.

You go to most high school track/XC team and ask them what kind of training they do. I will bet still majority of them do quite a bit of interval training. If you're a high school coach and get a bunch of young kids, not in the beginning of the summer, but in September; and you'll need to get them in a racing shape in 2 weeks... The best approach would be to give them lots of interval training. Their times will come down quite dramatically. It's a crash training. On the other hand, if you go nice and easy and long, there's be lots of changes in your body; your body's ability to assimilate, transport and utilize oxygen will gradually improve and, as it improves, you'll be able to now run further at faster pace....in about 3 months time! So what happens? Some "physiologists" or "grad students" would get together and bring in some college students or novice runners and conduct a 2-week long study; one group would do intervals and the other long slow running. After 2-weeks, which group "perform" better? Ah! Now we have "the answer"... To me, it's a typical American quick-fix approach. Everbody knows that, if we build the foundation wider and bigger and sturdier, we can build a much better house on the top. No, but when it comes to "training", let's forget about the foundation and go straight to building extravaganza (spelling?) house... Sure, it stands...for a while. But what will happen to a castle built on sand? Probably what happens to those "run less, run faster" guys is...: Our body gets used to what we give them to perform. You run fast in training, you'll run fast in races. If you ONLY do long and slow, you'll only run long and slow in races. You'll have a heck of a time running fast, or get moving fast. Those speed-demons, they probably are so used to running faster; they'll go above their head in the first half of the race. They hadn't built their stamina to begin with so they'll crash even harder when that happens. I think we pretty much know everything there is to know about training; how to be a better runner. It's when we try to reason too much, poking here and poking there...things get too complicated. To me, more than half of the time, it's preached by those who just don't want to do the homework and they spread out all those "researches" to justify what they don't want to do--lots of work. Interestingly, though, those people mostly completely ingore real-life examples; they'd rather stick with "reseraches". I think we had one here on this very forum recently.... ;o)

I have 3 friends who do programs similar to the FIRST program or who "gotta do more speedwork so I can speed up". What I have also noticed in common with the 3 of them in addition to rarely making their time goals...

That's an interesting observation about your 3 friends. It would be very interesting to hear their comments on their own training and performance. FIRST has conducted 3 marathon training studies and about 75% of the experienced marathoners participating in those studies either set a PR or beat their most recent marathon time by an average of nearly 20 minutes. Perhaps your 3 friends would have been in the 25% who didn't get faster as a result of the FIRST program.

The great thing about the FIRST studies is that there were "real life". The runners in those studies trained for and ran a competitive marathon (i.e. trained for and ran in order to finish as quickly as possible). FIRST is not the first or the only "real life" study; physiologists have been doing real life studies for a long time. Interestingly, though, how many of the "real life" advocates quickly try to dismiss the real life results of studies like these, presumably because the results contradict dearly held training or physiological beliefs.

One training cycle is hardly real life. I don't just train for one marathon and quit.

One training cycle is hardly real life.

Perfect example.