Too Much Mileage (Read 2475 times)

Scout - I kind of see what you are saying. For me it is not about going longer to be "good" at something. It is about going longer because that is what I enjoy. And as for "never learning how to push the effort"? Come and see the effort on my face at the end of a 12hr track ultra.

I don't want to speak for Scout, but I suspect that despite his usage of the word "you", he wasn't specifically attributing "never learning how to push the effort" to, uhhh.... you.

Good discussion, folks.

 

All right, I'll bite.  I guess I just find this hard to believe.  I'm guessing the reason you guys are saying this is because the workouts (intervals?) are harder and that there are more of them.  

How often do you throw up during marathon training?

 

How often do you throw up during marathon training?

Have you seen his shoes?

 

That's because you still think of marathon training as being very different in terms of volume from 5k training, which it's really not.

Maybe that's true but I've learned enough to know that it's not true in the way that most people think.  You are telling me that you are still going to be laying down a bunch of consecutive 75+ mile weeks with more intensity this Spring? I would have thought it to be closer to high 50s to high 60s.

Have you seen his shoes?

1 pair and done.  Those suck.

Scout - I kind of see what you are saying. For me it is not about going longer to be "good" at something. It is about going longer because that is what I enjoy. And as for "never learning how to push the effort"? Come and see the effort on my face at the end of a 12hr track ultra.

I was not pointing at you specifically.  I already know that you are not doing longer distances just to do longer distances, and that you are an animal when it comes to pushing effort.  I know that you are as into improving your times and efforts as much as anyone around here, regardless of the distance.

My comment was more directed at other posts and other people, I just got lazy and lumped my response into one post rather than splitting it out.

But I think the discussion here is that training for different distances is somehow inherently different, and like some are saying, it's really not.  The details may change, but the underlying training is still the same.

 

Maybe they don't like running shorter distances? After all - we run because we like it right? Why start with the 5k Jeff? Wouldn't it be better to start with some 800m/1500m work - then move up to the 5k, that would make a better 5k runner. Only then should they move up to the 10k right? And then to the 1/2M right? Yawn.

Well, first off all my post was intended to be a suggestion, not the a laying down of the law from on high about what every runner should do. I know it's not as exciting to read posts that way on the internet (generally it makes them harder to refute), but hey.

Secondly, actually, this is more or less what I did. I was an 800/1600 guy in high school. In college for my first two years, I concentrated on the 1500. The last two years the 5k. Before I raced the marathon, I spent a year racing the half. And then wonder of wonders I won my marathon debut. Later, I would go on to do very well in trail ultras.

So, I am speaking from my own path, which has been good to me.

I personally believe that concentrating on the 5k makes you a more complete runner in the way that focusing on the marathon early in your career does not. A lot of it is because of the reasons that Scout and mikey have already mentioned. You can practice racing the 5k every week (for the first 8 years of my running life, at times I would race 3-4 times a week at a variety of distances.) Also, the race distance is manageable. From the outset, the question is not can I finish without falling apart, but how well can I finish. The marathon is so damn complicated, it is really hard to figure out what went wrong when something goes wrong. The 5k distance allows you to really learn about yourself.

Finally, if you want to run to your potential in the marathon, at some point you are going to have to learn how to run fast. (Ha, now it sounds like I am lying down a law of training!) The marathon is still short enough that speed counts. People talk about how Wanjiru went to the marathon early--well, he also ran a 13:12 5k at age 17. He learned how to race the 5k at a world class level before moving up. Now, obviously copying the elites is not always the right way to go. But why is it that the fastest folks where I live that I compete against at every distance--every single one of them--raced in high school and college? Is it just pure coincidence? Or is it because they learned how to run fast at a young age, then were able to extend that speed as they grew older.

All of this is less true as you move up in distance beyond 50k and get on more rugged trails. There, experience mountaineering and being in those specific conditions is more important than leg speed.

 

Maybe not 75's but 70's for sure, the difference coming almost entirely from less emphasis on the long run. Is that a whole lot less than what I was running in peak marathon training last August and September? When I look at the 6 weeks leading up to my best 5k last summer they were: 80, 70, 66, 73, 74, 70. The 6 weeks leading up to my 2nd best 5k, which was the week before Baystate, were 80, 72, 82, 83, 73, 66.

 

I don't think the formula to improve on that is to drop mileage to the 50's and 60's for an extended period of time. I've never run a good 5k off of anything less than 70 mpw. So I think the formula that will work for me is about 95% of the mileage I normally run in marathon training, with much more intense workouts.

 

You just ran a massive 5k PR off of the residual base from your own marathon training, which was all about running the highest mileage you've ever run in your life and no 5k specific workouts. How is it that you don't make the connection?

 

By the way, everyone can see how this pans out (and point and laugh if I fail miserably) sometime in the late spring/early summer of this year. Reserve your seats now at the Red Hook brewery for the opening of my 5k season on Memorial Day weekend--have D park the car right along the finishing straight so you guys can tailgate and heckle me as I rig up.

Lots of stuff here. 

First, the calendar is reserved and we will all be there to witness history.  Maybe some grainy video footage. 

I'm not at all arguing about how marathon training (volume) making the largest difference in 5K times.  Like you say, I'm sort of a poster child for that.  What struck me in the original post was the part about training for a 5K being more difficult than for a marathon.  I get how racing a 5K can be more painful.  I really was under the impression for 5K training that volume was cut by more than 5% (I would have said 10%-20%), and that this would offset the difference in teh intensity. 

Re: my bolded part above.  You've said (if I'm not wrong) that for most of us, the simplest way to improve our 5K times is off of good marathon training (since most of us need to up our mileage).  But really, if you are just talking about cutting 5% of mileage and adding intensity, wouldn't it be just as or more accurate to say that the best way to train for a marathon is to train for a 5K?  For someone with a base the 5% cut in volume would be more than offset by the increased intensity.