Every time I see an interval workout, or other fast, anaerobic work, I always pipe up with a question: "Why did you do that?" "What was that workout for?" "Where are you in your training?" As some of you know, I believe in periodization of training, that you take quite a long time (not 16-18 weeks like today's marathon plans) but more like most of a year to start with, and about six months once in shape, to peak for goal races, following Arthur Lydiard's teaching. Lydiard was the "father" of modern running teaching and coaching, and many great coaches such as Bowerman and Daws followed his principles. Although others have come along to refine his teaching and create rules and write other books, no one has disproved his theories. One question I always ask about is why runners will do hard anaerobic work other than late in a training program? I asked Busiman about his workout yesterday. As all of you know, we are not talking about a jogger here. Busiman broke 3 at Hartford last year and has hovered around that time for years. He is a very fine runner. Runners who are in great shape, like he is, can do anaerobic work any time they want. They have a big aerobic base, and can maintain their peak for quite some time, provided they continue this kind of work. At some point they have to rebuild but they generally can tell when that is. When jdmom was marathon fit, or PBJ, Mainerunnah, Ksrunnr (from Kick) jjchaney and that group are running their best, I expect to see them doing a lot of anaerobic work and generally they use good judgment in what they do. They also know when it's time to rebuild and they do. To help us all see how anaerobic work fits into a program, here are a few quotes from Lydiard himself. One area that always puzzles me is how the runner knows what the workout should be, and as you recall, I asked SLO HAND about this. Busiman also explained today the workout he did on Tuesday. He was running with a group, and if you do this there are two things to consider: one is that you will work harder; group work is excellent for focus as no one wants to drop back, and two is that you are going to probably run at the desired speeds and repetitions of the faster few in the group. All of you who have done a group workout know that this is so. Here is what Lydiard says about anaerobic work and how much to do: "You have to remember that the day you start doing anaerobic training, you’ve got to keep doing it. So if you start doing it too early in the season, you are going to get the imbalance in training (by keep doing anaerobic training) and you are trying to develop ability above what the human being can stand. Also the day you start doing anaerobic training and stop your (aerobic) conditioning, your performance level (for that season) has been determined. You’ve got to also realize that there is no one in the world who can determine exactly what anyone should do in anaerobic training. You can’t train to the hypothetical figures. Too often I see coaches take their athletes down the track, for argument's sake, they’ll say, “I want you to run 15 times 400 meters in, say, 65 seconds with such-and-such of an interval,” without the athletes having any say in how many they should do. The coaches usually set their athletes a round figure like 10 or 15 or 20 repetitions. Now if the athletes went to the coach and said, “Coach, why do I have to do fifteen 400-meter reps? Why not 12 or 13 or 17,” the coach wouldn’t be able to tell him. He just wrote down 15. So the athlete would get to, say, 12, and he’s had enough; he is going to have to do three more. Why? Because the coach wrote down 15." (Back to me again.) What can we learn from this as average runners? If the book, or the group, says today we are doing such and such, don't get sucked into running that number of repetitions because it's a number. That's how you get hurt. You should feel on your last one that if you had to, you could run one more. When you get to that point, stop. Here is a quote from "Running with Lydiard" that Bill will enjoy as I kidded him today about needing his "data."" Before the 1974 Commonwealth games, Lydiard was training Richard Tayler, and gave him a heavy load of anaerobic work. They were working at a college campus and one day a group of students stopped to watch Tayler run. “What’s he doing?,” one asked. “Repetitions,” I explained. They knew all about those. “How many is he going to do?” “I don’t know.” “What times is he running?” “I’m not timing him.” They exchanged looks of disbelief. Was I supposed to be coaching one of New Zealand’s best runners? Then I asked them, “How far around is this track anyway?” They knew then that I didn’t know what I was talking about. When Dick finished and joined us, they asked him, “How many did you do?” “I didn’t count them,” Dick said. “What times were you running? “I didn’t time them.” I decided it was time to explain to these boys, before they ran off laughing, that times and numbers were unimportant. What mattered was the effect on Tayler of what he was doing; and he knew better than I did what he wanted to do and when he had had enough. Anaerobic training is something we have to do if we intend to race well but, at the same time, we must always keep in mind that if we overdo it we lose our most essential asset, the very thing we have been building, our good condition, which determines your performance level. So all the time you are building your capacity to exercise anaerobically, jealously guard your good condition or the whole purpose of the program is defeated." (Back to me again. Bill, I bet he didn't have a Garmin either!) How often do you read posts here from people who agonized through the final repetition, or who always post about how they hate doing intervals? Lydiard seldom let his athletes work on the track, preferring hills or open country to train on, just to eliminate this precision of time and distance and wanting the athlete to become more engaged in the exercise. You also will note that I question why people run so fast when they do their interval work. This came up with Maine the other day. I like to see longer distances on the track, 800's to 1200's and at a pace much slower than 5K. Here is why, from Lydiard's speech to the Japanese runners in 1990: "Now when we are going to train the athlete, and train him to develop the anaerobic capacity to maximum, we have to understand exactly what we are trying to do. To bring about the low pH level of the arterial blood, we have to do a lot of (volume of) anaerobic training. So if I put an athlete out on the track and say, “I want you to go around that track five times, and every 100 meters I want you to sprint 50 meters as hard as you can,” every 100-meters, he sprints full-out 50 meters; sprint, float, sprint, float. So in 400 meters he sprints 4 times; around the track 5 times, he sprints 20 times. The athlete will probably be out there for about 8 or 9 minutes. By then his legs will be getting very very tired and start to get neuromuscular breakdown; muscles no longer contract. Now if we bring that athlete in, and took the blood from the leg muscles, and took the blood from the ear lobe for arterial blood, we are getting two different readings. We are going to get a very low pH reading in the leg muscles, but it’s not going to be very low in the arterial blood. Just like; if I get down and do 50 push-ups, after 50 push-ups my arms get tired. I’m not tired doing it, but muscles no longer contract. So if we are going to get an effective reaction, we have to do longer training. So if I said to the same athlete, I want you to go out and run 800 meters several times, like six times, run one, jog one, run one, jog one; he’s running at a lower anaerobic effort, but he’s incurring an oxygen debt, which in turn will create lactic acid and start to lower the pH level of blood, but his legs won’t be getting so tired quickly, muscles won’t be getting so tired generally; because you are getting recovery, because you are not trying at such a fast effort and you are getting longer recovery coming back. So if that athlete runs down six times 800 meters fast and six slow, he’d be out there for a half an hour or more. If we bring him in then, and take the blood from the ear lobe, we will find we got lower pH level of the blood which is what we are trying to achieve. So if we are going to do anaerobic training, we have to do a big volume of it to be effective, and it can’t be very very fast; can’t be at the top speed with all those short intervals. So through trial and error, we found that if we did hard anaerobic training three days a week for a period of three-and-a-half to four weeks, we’d develop our anaerobic capacity to exercise to near maximum." Notice that Lydiard says 3 days a week for three and a half to four weeks. I advise people two days a week because we are here in a masters forum and twice a week is better for recovery for older runners. And you will also see that Lydiard only uses about 4 weeks to develop anaerobic conditioning. That's all it takes, 4-6 weeks for masters, and you can do it at the end of your training, not all through it. As to keeping data and times, there is part of us that always wants to emulate the elites and one way we can do that more safely is to stop thinking in terms of miles and instead focus on time of effort. We discussed this here about two weeks ago. If Meg and I both ran 13 miles, she would be done way ahead of me. Who would have worked harder? I am not sure, but Lydiard did address it: "Just talking about aerobic development, we found that if we work on the time basis rather than mileage basis, we got better results, particularly developing young people. For instance, if we say we are all going out for 25 kilometers (=15 miles), some people might finish a half an hour before the others and people who aren’t quite as fit and haven’t got the background of training, therefore those people start to do too much training on the time basis. In other words; some people would only take an hour and a half to run 25 kilometers (=15 miles) in training, others might take 2 hours. The important aspect is that they run an hour and a half in relation to the fitness level and the background of training." And finally, when I see people in the middle of their training running at fiveK or faster speed in a workout, I worry that they are wasting their effort and not getting the most they can from their workout. In addition to Lydiard's comments earlier, we have Jack Daniels' take on it: “…the problem with working harder than the slowest pace that elicits V02 max, when the purpose of the session is to work at max, is that aerobically you can’t work any harder, which means you’re doing the extra work at the expense of anaerobic metabolism, and lactate accumulation begins to limit you as the workout progresses. Further, working at the harder-than-necessary intensity doesn’t improve the aerobic mechanisms any more than working at the minimum max intensity does. The result is that the workout becomes more stressful and the benefits no greater—in fact they could be less beneficial…nothing’s more frustrating than to work really hard in a training session and not get the desired, and deserved benefits.” I think on this forum the most cerebral runners, Lou, Harriet, Bill, Meg, Tramps and especially Perchcreek, are the ones I study most closely. They have read everything, tried everything and eventually put together their own programs that work for them over a long period of time. I love to see runners think and question, then try things, rather than run as fast as they can with no plan or reason. Bill Bowerman coined the phrase, "Train, don't strain." It's the most effective way to build your running proficiency. Take more time and don't work all out. Let the body recover. Spareribs

Spareribs, great reading in that, thanks for taking the time to do this. What I got from it was Lydiard saying he preferred training in open country and hills, something I do and the last quote from Bill Bowerman 'train don't strain'. I remember when I was training for a marathon, you told me, don't do any speed work as it's your first marathon. Unfortunately, I listened to my team mate, the old timer who I've mentioned here before and ended up injured and still haven't run a marathon. In future I will take your advice. Now my training is, out the door, hit the trails and jog/run gently (usually) then rest when I feel like I need to. A saying from the AA rooms, 'easy does it, do it but don't over do it' Thanks Again Spareribs Roy

Hi Mr. Ribs, Thanks for taking the time to craft this post (which is very well written, as your posts so often are). I've always had a tendency to want to push hard in my workouts, and always have to remind myself that it is OK, and even a good thing to back off. Too many fast workouts don't necessarily result in fast races, and they more often lead to overuse injuries. Your post is an excellent reminder of why building a base is so important, and of how to do it right. And "train, don't strain" is an excellent mantra! Thanks! Jay

Spareribs, Excellent post. Let me ask a question that might affect how I am training right now. When Lydiard states:

"The day you start doing anaerobic training and stop your (aerobic) conditioning, your performance level (for that season) has been determined."

Is it not possible to do some anaerobic training while still doing mostly aerobic training, and thus not stop your aerobic conditioning? I hope Lydiard is not saying that once you start including speedwork, whatever other aerobic work you're still doing becomes ineffective due to the introduction of speedwork. Bill

Ribs... Thanks for a great post. There are some great kernels in this one. I freely admit to being the least cerebral runner. - I have read a few books on running, but after killing (and injuring) myself with repeats, progression runs etc. for several years , I just said screw it and started going with a plan that included running hard once hard per week (10+ mile arund MP), and once long (and occasionally hard) once a week. The suprising thing is that once I started doing my own thing on workouts, my times dropped almost immediately. But I wouldn't go back to the drudgery of repeats etc. even if they did work for me. I think I'm an outlier on the curve...and I only concentrate on marathons and my times when I do run slower races stink. Theres definitely more than one way to skin the marathon cat... and its great to read that to gain in the marathon you may not necessarily have to go through speedwork pain. Ray

Well Ray, despite Ribs' characterization of me, I have never though of myself as a cerebral runner either. I have always either winged it or followed a coach's advice or training program. I don't think you need anaerobic speed sessions to run a fast marathon. I know the Pfitzinger programs don't have any of that in them - just tempo, long and MP running. Now if you want to improve your 5K or 10K time . . . .

Wow.....It has been unbelievably busy today ! But the 4:30 am phone call kinda tipped me off that it would be. All is good though......we're getting product out the door. You were saying..... As to keeping data and times, there is part of us that always wants to emulate the elites and one way we can do that more safely is to stop thinking in terms of miles and instead focus on time of effort. We discussed this here about two weeks ago. If Meg and I both ran 13 miles, she would be done way ahead of me. Who would have worked harder? I am not sure, but Lydiard did address it: "Just talking about aerobic development, we found that if we work on the time basis rather than mileage basis, we got better results, particularly developing young people. For instance, if we say we are all going out for 25 kilometers (=15 miles), some people might finish a half an hour before the others and people who aren’t quite as fit and haven’t got the background of training, therefore those people start to do too much training on the time basis. In other words; some people would only take an hour and a half to run 25 kilometers (=15 miles) in training, others might take 2 hours. The important aspect is that they run an hour and a half in relation to the fitness level and the background of training." What to come away with..... The important aspect is that they run an hour and a half in relation to the fitness level and the background of training. May I add.......At Least Once per Week If you ever want to see a heart rate monitor work then the above statement is were your going to see results. If you run these runs in upper of zone one to lower zone two (69 to 75% of MHR) and track your average pace.....provided the conditions of the run remain the same ie....on the track on a calm day.......then you will see a dramatic change in your pace to heart rate you have been training at. I'm not saying every run needs to be the same conditions.......just sayin every three - 4 weeks perform a test and document your results. I'm just a runner.......well read......goal oriented.......experimenter. I train....every run, bike ride, swim, core workout......has a purpose. Every race I enter has a goal. Which means everytime I toe that line I'm setting myself up for a possible let down. After every race I ask myself......was that the best performance I could have delivered ? The answer has always been the same........No. I don't expect to break a 6 min pace in a 5k but I do hope to. I could once......no reason to think I couldn't do it again.

Well Ray, despite Ribs' characterization of me, I have never though of myself as a cerebral runner either. I have always either winged it or followed a coach's advice or training program. I don't think you need anaerobic speed sessions to run a fast marathon. I know the Pfitzinger programs don't have any of that in them - just tempo, long and MP running. Now if you want to improve your 5K or 10K time . . . .

Hey Meg... Its great to hear from you again! -- Hopefully your running is going well and you are again burning up the roads and dominating the compeition! Ray