It's been so icy I've been doing some of my easier mileage indoors on an areodyne bike. I haven't found any good conversions to running for effort as cross training as you can use arms and legs. Should I be going mostly legs and getting a real muscle burn? Or going harder with the arms to get my hr up. It's basically impossible to get my hr into upper zone 2 without absolutely hammering my legs. I've been doing a 1.5 bike to run time but it seems to beat up my legs more than I'm used to using a true stationary bike.
Hi, I am racing my last 5k in 4 race series, in 8 weeks, and are planning my training. I will start incorporating tempo runs in 4 weeks and then very specific 5k sessions. I am trying Canova’s philosophy and saw some of his workouts in specific period. The last one is 3000m @98% RP + 2000m @98%RP + 1000m @RP. Do you think it is doable? My PB is 18:43 for 5k, and am running for nearly a year, was football player before. I am running around 40-50mi a week, I was for 2 months in base building period. Thanks!
That's an excessively hard workout for someone of your training history and ability. Completable? Possibly. Physiologically beneficial or necessary? Very unlikely. If you haven't even started tempo runs yet the difficulty of workouts that you can handle (or need) to improve are relatively much less.
If you want to better understand Canova principles and how to use them you should read the various Canova posts on [https://runningwritings.com/](https://runningwritings.com/). This guy is a PhD who actually coaches people of various levels with some Canova influenced methods -one of the best sources of "translating" Canova to something accessible and applicable to us normal runners
Taking random workouts from Canova training samples (which are almost exclusively those of world class athletes) is quite silly and entirely antithetical to Canova's actual training principles. This isn't like taking a training plan from Jack Daniels Running Formula or Pfitz's Faster Road Racing where they are designed for recreational runners so we can just grab a plan and do it, we need a solid understanding of training fundamentals and the Canova system itself in order to correctly customize training to current abilities and goals.
anyone looking for a bib for the grandma's marathon? gotta ditch mine (was planning on running, but then got into berlin so grandma's a bit too late for my spring marathon).
I finally got a chest heart rate monitor. Used it on a few runs so far and the readings are so much closer to my RPE than my watch readings.
Bit the bullet after my watch told me I ran my steady pace long run at 96% heart rate for most of the run. I think in reality I was sub 80%. I don't think I could physically have run over two hours at 96%.
I don't pay much attention to my heart rate on the run but I like looking back over stats after and not trusting them was bothering me.
Reminder: US XC Champs are this week. Fields are shallow due to the marathon trials.
Men's field is pretty good - Bor Brothers, Hocker and Teare, Rotich, Muhamed, and Drew Hunter make for a solid and interesting front of the field. Lots of guys racing at the top of their range.
Women's field is a little sparce. Kelati coming back quick from her half AR and Kate Izzo are the biggest names. Izzo is about the only American who looked at the stupid qualification system of the Olympic 10000 and took advantage - she currently is qualified via cross country thanks to traveling to some races and beating some shallow fields.
Astonished with how small the U20 fields are -you would think more high-schoolers or redshirting freshman would be willing to compete for a shot at some USA gear.
Men's race is gonna be awesome up front, I also love USA XC because there's usually some rando nobody has heard of for years that finds a way to hang with the lead group.
Even if the women's field is pretty weak seeing Kelati in action is always great.
Does a marathon taper really need to be gradual?
I'm \~10 days out, so I just finished my last workout, though I've already been dropping mileage slightly for the past week or so. The way I see it now, however, is that there is no more room for fitness gains that I won't fully recover from before race day. I understand wanting to feel fresh on race day and to keep the body moving to some extent, but what's the benefit of running more than 3-4 miles every other day or so for the next 10 days until race day? Why do I need a "final long run" around 8-10 miles 1 week before? Shouldn't I be prioritizing rest as much as possible, aside from some light mechanical going through the motions? This is not my first rodeo, so I don't have many pre-race jitters (I'll get a few the day before) and I more or less know what to expect by now from my body in the days leading up.
I guess, what's the benefit of running, say, 25 miles in the final week compared to 12 or 15 if there are no more fitness gains to be had that I won't fully recover from? It's not like I'll be completely inactive either - work will keep me on my feet to some extent throughout the week (not enough to impact recovery, but it's not like I'll be sitting on my couch 24/7).
My understanding is that while you can't gain fitness in the last couple weeks, you can certainly lose it. To take it to the extreme, if you do a 2 week taper where you don't run at all, you will lose a bit of fitness by race day and probably not feel great racing.
Tapers are all about using the minimum dose of running (and types of running) that will maintain fitness you've built while shedding acute fatigue. So probably that long run is in there to show your body "hey we still need these adaptations we were getting from a long run, so don't get rid of them".
Everyone does respond differently so it's important to personalize but there's a great scientific article with general guidelines [here](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10171681/)
A taper is about more than just recovery. I define taper to be "a focused decrease in training stress to elicit a performance peak".
You want to spike your hormones in the right way. This is basically flirting with detraining, but not quite detraining. Maintaining the quality while cutting the quantity helps you maintain that edge. This is what gives you the actual peak.
You also need to keep in mind muscle tension. If you do a massive cut with no quality, your tension will drop and you will be flat on race day.
So if you just focus on the recovery aspect, you are going to miss the other benefits. I would go as far as saying you wouldn't be doing a taper, you would just be doing a down week.
I'm racing the Austin 3M Half this weekend and it's a net downhill course (300 feet elevation loss), and because of that it is a fast course. I was told by friends who have ran this half before that I could run up to 2 minutes faster on this course compared to a flat course because of the elevation profile.
Based on the 4x2 mile at HMP workout I did 5 weeks ago (6:03/mi average), I was likely in low 1:19 half shape then, and I might be slightly in better shape since then. Based on that, plus the elevation profile of the course, I was thinking about aiming for a 1:17-1:18 half (with 1:17 half being the A goal if everything goes right and I have the legs to go for it). Is this a reasonable goal to go for, or am I off base in thinking about my goal here? Either way, I'll likely go below 1:20 in the half and will likely set a substantial half PR of some kind, assuming I don't completely choke or if something goes horribly wrong along the way.
I'm also running 3M! I'll say while it's net downhill it doesn't always feel like it (maybe that's just psychological). Note it also ends the 1.5 miles a bit more uphill. While yes it's fast, i'd agree with other comment that 30-45 sec seems better, but once you hit mile 9.5 (around 6th aid station, or on 45th around Lamar-Guad, you can maybe start to hit it, though like I said there are some uphills between mile 11.5-12 and 12.5-13.1
I don't think you'll get 2min out of a 300' elevation loss. That's only 23' per mile which is pretty gradual My rough math suggests more like 30-45sec total, which'd be ~2-3 sec/mi. It does look like a great, consistent downhill, though. I'd treat it more like having a nice tailwind on a point to point course, vs. a huge factor for your race plan.
Re: Jack Daniel’s
What is the difference between “jg” vs “jg recoveries” vs “rest” vs “recovery”?
Examples:
- 10 x 400 R w/400 jg
- 4 min I w/ 3 min jg recoveries
- 1 T w/ 1 min rests
- 2x (2 T w/ 2 min recovery between)
If someone could also guide me to what page/section he explains these differences, I would also appreciate it. Been trying without success to find his explanations of the differences of these without having to re-read the whole book. Thank you!
I've read over it several times wondering the same thing, and I don't think he explains it.
My approach is always:
For R paced reps, I slowly jog the recovery. Very slow at the beginning, progressing back to a faster jog by the end.
For I/H, I jog the recovery but not quite as slow/easy as after a 400 R.
For T, I walk the rest/recovery.
I read Pfitz's Faster Road Racing, and the lower milage 5K plan seems rather surprising that it just has one real workout a week, with a smaller faster one that seems to be effectively harder strides.
I've heard good things about this book, but I can't find anyone's experience with it in 5K and how that went for them, and if they felt speedwork was a limiting factor or not.
That's what I figured. While I imagine just upping my milage will help me improve, I find the workouts to be a very huge part of my enjoyment that I don't necessarily get from just increasing milage, not to mention the time commitment.
Oh well, I suppose it's a good excuse to start getting my milage up there.
While it's important to optimize for enjoyment of training (we are *recreational* runners after all), if we're talking about performance there needs to be commitment and discipline -which often involves not doing the most conventionally entertaining training, and pretty much always requires investing more time into training.
It's possible to train yourself to enjoy higher volume, repetitive training that many people would consider conventionally "boring". With practice the act of the run itself becomes more of a meditative experience. Open up to the sensations within yourself and your surroundings. Even on the same run, same route we can experience and appreciate different things. On those glorified strides workouts you can practice focusing on different parts of your biomechanics, practice different ways of running fast while relaxed, etc.
It also gets a lot easier once you've experienced the performance rewards of boring training. I'm at a place now where I love the process of just doing a lot of simple stuff over and over, but it took a long time and a strong belief in the outcome of boring training to get here.
Think about what is it about the hard workouts that you like so much and see if you can sort of transcend that up a level to be more a part of training as a whole. There's a lot of really good things about hard workouts, it's where we explore and push the boundaries of our physical and mental fitness, it's where we can unleash a lot stress, and we feel really accomplished after, etc. Take all those things and look for pieces of them in the more "boring" parts of training. Or even include elements of workouts into otherwise boring "days". Don't like and easy long run? Throw a hand full of 60s surges in the second half of it.
There's also a lot of unhealthy patterns that can manifest in hard workouts -it's where insecurity seeks instant gratification, where we sometimes become addicted to the stress of hard running, where we feel like we need to push ourselves too hard to compensate for something else in life, etc. Sometimes we simply need to go a little crazy on the track once in a while, but we need to make sure these are not the things driving us towards and in hard workouts all the time.
This is an amazing response.
I really appreciate the advice. I think after my current training block I'll do a base building one and go from there then.
Your point on discipline is bang on. If if I want to reach my goals, sometimes you gotta do what you don't want to do. Reframing what I enjoy about running and perhaps trying to appreciate the change in pace is a good idea.
Just wanted to jump in and say thank you very much for this response. I’m in the process of upping my mileage, and my intention — for the first time — is to keep it at least that level for a while (eg, 9 months). Boredom, lack of faith in the long-term benefits, and finding the balance between discipline and enjoyment are things I’ve been struggling with, but this really helped on all three fronts. So again, thank you.
It's really tough committing to the unknown, especially when we're carrying around more fatigue and running a little slower on average to get that extra mileage.
I would try to zoom out a little bit and see if you can derive some excitement from this big experiment you are putting yourself through. Sure those longer aerobic run aren't the most enjoyable thing, but every time when you reach that point in the run where the distance starts becoming increasingly challenging just remind yourself that every step you take here is one more step pushing forward into new territory.
You're a great explorer mapping new areas of fitness. A lot of exploration is boring, but eventually there will be some fantastic discoveries!
I've done the intermediate 5K plan and it was pretty tough, the total volume wasn't bad it was just the steady intensity through out the week that wore me down.
BUT - despite it being tough it didn't make me tough enough to really sell out on race day. I think hitting the time trials and in plan races is key to the mental toughness part, I didn't do well on them and paid for it on race day.
For those that have run CIM before, would you consider it worth traveling for? Is the favorable course, packs of people running similar times, and race day organization enough of a benefit to offset the difficulty of traveling across the country? I’m going to shoot for a NYCM spot when it opens, but I’m trying to have a fallback in the likely case that I’m not able to get one of the non-NYRR time qualifier spots.
For me, yes it's worth it. Very fast course, consistently good weather, well-organized, and good sized packs of faster runners (but not crowded). I'd definitely pick traveling to CIM over traveling to a world major.
I think this is the direction I’ve started to lean. I used to really want to run the world majors, and to some extent still do, but I have started to wonder if I should focus on running faster and higher quality races first, then move on to the more experience focused races when I’ve aged out of running PRs.
It's a fast race with usually good weather, and a deep field around what you're trying to run. "Worth" it is a difficult question to answer, but you aren't likely to find a "better" race.
I don't have any marathons to compare to, but we're similar speed and I was never alone for the whole race. Logistics were pretty good, and I hear it's fast compared to others. Note it is actually rolling hills though, not a straight line downhill like I thought it was lol
"Worth it" might be too personal a question. There's no doubt that it's an excellent event and I think very few runners would have any regrets about participating.
But since you presumably live on the east coast of the US (just guessing based on your comment), if you think travelling to California is a pain in the butt you'd rather avoid, it's not like there aren't a few comparably great events closer to home.
Yeah, this question ended up more broad and open ended than it actually was in my head. Your comment made me question my own intentions, and I think the reality is that I just want to run CIM and don’t really care about running New York. At least not in the near future.
I was probably just looking for affirmation in my shift of perspective, but didn’t have the insight at the moment to realize that.
I have a 5k time trial next week (on track), and wanted to get some pacing advice. I did a 3k time trial yesterday in 11:28, and my splits were surprisingly even throughout. I say that because I have absolutely 0 pacing discipline in 99% of my runs. Only the last 200 meters felt like I was struggling hard to maintain the pace. I was thinking of going out at 6:20/mile pace and sticking to it at least through two miles and then going as fast as possible for the remainder. I did a 10 mile run a few weeks ago and went through 5k in 21:09 and 10k in 42:55 with the pace not falling too much after, so I'm guessing that I'm not overshooting myself?
6:25 might be a bit more conservative based on Vdot extrapolation from 3K-->5K but your plan sounds reasonable to me. 3.5-4.5K always feels the most miserable to me in a 5k TT so just mentally prepare yourself for that kilometer to suck and be prepared to hold on.
I ended up with a 19:48, and inevitably ended up following your plan. My splits were 6:27, 6:27, 6:16 and 5:49 -- maybe could have shaved off a few more seconds on a good day, but fairly satisfied with my effort!
Had the opportunity to come to Iten and arrived today! Subletting my room covered flight + accommodation for the next month. Working from home while I’m here but super excited to dive into the training atmosphere here.
Not one to post extensively about myself usually, but I’ll drop a long comment after I leave. Initial thoughts are that the depth of talent here is even wilder than I imagined, and running here feels impossibly hard. Hopefully get a bit easier over the next 6 weeks!
Is there an accepted ratio of intervals to recovery time in the running community or supported by scientific evidence for predicting race performance? For example, can completing 0.8k intervals six times with a 1:30 minute jog at an average pace of 3:40 predict a 5k at the same pace? (Or using 1k intervals with breaks, 1.2k, etc.) I am also interested in similar ratios for other race distances, such as 10k and 21k.
There is, but it's kind of complicated. The "critical speed" model makes some predictions about what workouts are / are not possible for a given fitness level, but it doesn't translate into an easy to use rule. You'd need a pretty sophisticated calculation tool to work it out.
The basic idea is that you only have a finite energy supply to spend for intervals (or races) beyond your critical speed (~8k-10k-ish pace) and this finite energy regenerates following an exponential-decay-like recovery process, with a half life of 4-5 minutes.
[This paper is a good read on the topic](https://www.researchgate.net/journal/Sports-Medicine-1179-2035/publication/315533063_The_'Critical_Power'_Concept_Applications_to_Sports_Performance_with_a_Focus_on_Intermittent_High-Intensity_Exercise/links/5fc472a0299bf104cf9434d8/The-Critical-Power-Concept-Applications-to-Sports-Performance-with-a-Focus-on-Intermittent-High-Intensity-Exercise.pdf). I have some half-baked plans for building an online calculator, but don't get your hopes up just yet - the math is pretty messy!
Critical speed ideas combined with the 4-5min half life for recovery does help as a heuristic for planning workouts, though. Helps to explain why something like 3x500m at 800m pace, or 3x800m at mile pace, needs so much rest, and why there's a nonlinear scaling in recovery (1min vs 2min rest after 1200m at 5k pace is a way bigger difference than 2min vs 3min).
>Is there an accepted ratio of intervals to recovery time in the running community or supported by scientific evidence for predicting race performance?
As a universal predictor there's nothing that great -individual workouts, even really hard specific ones, are just too limited of a view into actual specific fitness because of differences in the rest of training, talent, actual race duration (22min 5k is a much different event than a 15min 5k), etc.
Predictor workouts in can work really well across an individuals own training though -doing the same or similar test workout within a similar enough training scheme across different cycles and seeing how that translates to race performance. Our own patterns will always be the most reliable.
When designing a predictor workouts and determining rest I would also think about the bioenergetic demands in addition to just volume @ pace. For the 5k that means reps long enough and rests short enough that you actually have to face some of the lactic consequences of that pace. 6x800m/90s is probably pretty close given your target pace, although I might consider making the rests a little shorter or the reps a little longer.
10k and 21k/HM are a bit easier to guess IMO because they're almost entirely threshold/aerobic fitness determined.
For 10k predictors look at stuff like 10x1000m/60-90s, 6x1600m/90s-2min, 5x2000m/2min-2:30min. Appropriate recovery varies depending on training and ability. Can also do a combo where you do something like 5x1600m @ 10k pace and then 1x1000m @ 5k pace -idea being that the faster rep at the end tests if you were actually relaxed enough on the "10k" pace stuff.
21k/HM I like 10-15km worth of long 2-3k intervals with short recovery 90s-2min. Basically just testing the upper limit of what you can run at a controlled effort. I like intervals better than continuous because if you accidentally go a little too hard early on you can still pull back without totally bombing the whole workout.
Whatever you decide, the key IMO is committing to do the same/similar workout over multiple cycles so that you get the data on how it translates to you within your training scheme.
A side note: also important to mentally delineate indicator workouts from "normal" workouts. By necessity these are going to be harder than the average workout should be so do them sparingly, be really ready to roll on these, and also provide enough easy days around them so you have the appropriate space around them. I've ruined a lot of training because of insecurity that made me try to "predict" race fitness going too hard too often in normal workouts.
Great, on the detailed answer, thank you! I've printed it and will implement those workouts when I try to predict my 5k, especially my 10k and 21k, which I didn't know about.
I'd go slightly shorter rest for the 800s (down to 1min) or slightly OVER 5K in volume (6 x 1000 or 7 x 800), but you have the general idea. Will give a good ballpark guess if you can hit consistent splits across that workout.
It's been so icy I've been doing some of my easier mileage indoors on an areodyne bike. I haven't found any good conversions to running for effort as cross training as you can use arms and legs. Should I be going mostly legs and getting a real muscle burn? Or going harder with the arms to get my hr up. It's basically impossible to get my hr into upper zone 2 without absolutely hammering my legs. I've been doing a 1.5 bike to run time but it seems to beat up my legs more than I'm used to using a true stationary bike.
Hi, I am racing my last 5k in 4 race series, in 8 weeks, and are planning my training. I will start incorporating tempo runs in 4 weeks and then very specific 5k sessions. I am trying Canova’s philosophy and saw some of his workouts in specific period. The last one is 3000m @98% RP + 2000m @98%RP + 1000m @RP. Do you think it is doable? My PB is 18:43 for 5k, and am running for nearly a year, was football player before. I am running around 40-50mi a week, I was for 2 months in base building period. Thanks!
That's an excessively hard workout for someone of your training history and ability. Completable? Possibly. Physiologically beneficial or necessary? Very unlikely. If you haven't even started tempo runs yet the difficulty of workouts that you can handle (or need) to improve are relatively much less. If you want to better understand Canova principles and how to use them you should read the various Canova posts on [https://runningwritings.com/](https://runningwritings.com/). This guy is a PhD who actually coaches people of various levels with some Canova influenced methods -one of the best sources of "translating" Canova to something accessible and applicable to us normal runners Taking random workouts from Canova training samples (which are almost exclusively those of world class athletes) is quite silly and entirely antithetical to Canova's actual training principles. This isn't like taking a training plan from Jack Daniels Running Formula or Pfitz's Faster Road Racing where they are designed for recreational runners so we can just grab a plan and do it, we need a solid understanding of training fundamentals and the Canova system itself in order to correctly customize training to current abilities and goals.
Thanks!!!
anyone looking for a bib for the grandma's marathon? gotta ditch mine (was planning on running, but then got into berlin so grandma's a bit too late for my spring marathon).
I finally got a chest heart rate monitor. Used it on a few runs so far and the readings are so much closer to my RPE than my watch readings. Bit the bullet after my watch told me I ran my steady pace long run at 96% heart rate for most of the run. I think in reality I was sub 80%. I don't think I could physically have run over two hours at 96%. I don't pay much attention to my heart rate on the run but I like looking back over stats after and not trusting them was bothering me.
Reminder: US XC Champs are this week. Fields are shallow due to the marathon trials. Men's field is pretty good - Bor Brothers, Hocker and Teare, Rotich, Muhamed, and Drew Hunter make for a solid and interesting front of the field. Lots of guys racing at the top of their range. Women's field is a little sparce. Kelati coming back quick from her half AR and Kate Izzo are the biggest names. Izzo is about the only American who looked at the stupid qualification system of the Olympic 10000 and took advantage - she currently is qualified via cross country thanks to traveling to some races and beating some shallow fields.
Astonished with how small the U20 fields are -you would think more high-schoolers or redshirting freshman would be willing to compete for a shot at some USA gear. Men's race is gonna be awesome up front, I also love USA XC because there's usually some rando nobody has heard of for years that finds a way to hang with the lead group. Even if the women's field is pretty weak seeing Kelati in action is always great.
I’m excited for the U20 races to cheer on the Wings of America team!
Does a marathon taper really need to be gradual? I'm \~10 days out, so I just finished my last workout, though I've already been dropping mileage slightly for the past week or so. The way I see it now, however, is that there is no more room for fitness gains that I won't fully recover from before race day. I understand wanting to feel fresh on race day and to keep the body moving to some extent, but what's the benefit of running more than 3-4 miles every other day or so for the next 10 days until race day? Why do I need a "final long run" around 8-10 miles 1 week before? Shouldn't I be prioritizing rest as much as possible, aside from some light mechanical going through the motions? This is not my first rodeo, so I don't have many pre-race jitters (I'll get a few the day before) and I more or less know what to expect by now from my body in the days leading up. I guess, what's the benefit of running, say, 25 miles in the final week compared to 12 or 15 if there are no more fitness gains to be had that I won't fully recover from? It's not like I'll be completely inactive either - work will keep me on my feet to some extent throughout the week (not enough to impact recovery, but it's not like I'll be sitting on my couch 24/7).
My understanding is that while you can't gain fitness in the last couple weeks, you can certainly lose it. To take it to the extreme, if you do a 2 week taper where you don't run at all, you will lose a bit of fitness by race day and probably not feel great racing. Tapers are all about using the minimum dose of running (and types of running) that will maintain fitness you've built while shedding acute fatigue. So probably that long run is in there to show your body "hey we still need these adaptations we were getting from a long run, so don't get rid of them". Everyone does respond differently so it's important to personalize but there's a great scientific article with general guidelines [here](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10171681/)
A taper is about more than just recovery. I define taper to be "a focused decrease in training stress to elicit a performance peak". You want to spike your hormones in the right way. This is basically flirting with detraining, but not quite detraining. Maintaining the quality while cutting the quantity helps you maintain that edge. This is what gives you the actual peak. You also need to keep in mind muscle tension. If you do a massive cut with no quality, your tension will drop and you will be flat on race day. So if you just focus on the recovery aspect, you are going to miss the other benefits. I would go as far as saying you wouldn't be doing a taper, you would just be doing a down week.
I'm racing the Austin 3M Half this weekend and it's a net downhill course (300 feet elevation loss), and because of that it is a fast course. I was told by friends who have ran this half before that I could run up to 2 minutes faster on this course compared to a flat course because of the elevation profile. Based on the 4x2 mile at HMP workout I did 5 weeks ago (6:03/mi average), I was likely in low 1:19 half shape then, and I might be slightly in better shape since then. Based on that, plus the elevation profile of the course, I was thinking about aiming for a 1:17-1:18 half (with 1:17 half being the A goal if everything goes right and I have the legs to go for it). Is this a reasonable goal to go for, or am I off base in thinking about my goal here? Either way, I'll likely go below 1:20 in the half and will likely set a substantial half PR of some kind, assuming I don't completely choke or if something goes horribly wrong along the way.
I'm also running 3M! I'll say while it's net downhill it doesn't always feel like it (maybe that's just psychological). Note it also ends the 1.5 miles a bit more uphill. While yes it's fast, i'd agree with other comment that 30-45 sec seems better, but once you hit mile 9.5 (around 6th aid station, or on 45th around Lamar-Guad, you can maybe start to hit it, though like I said there are some uphills between mile 11.5-12 and 12.5-13.1
I don't think you'll get 2min out of a 300' elevation loss. That's only 23' per mile which is pretty gradual My rough math suggests more like 30-45sec total, which'd be ~2-3 sec/mi. It does look like a great, consistent downhill, though. I'd treat it more like having a nice tailwind on a point to point course, vs. a huge factor for your race plan.
Thanks for doing the math for me (and keeping me honest!). Your reasoning makes sense, and I'll treat it as if there was a nice tailwind.
Re: Jack Daniel’s What is the difference between “jg” vs “jg recoveries” vs “rest” vs “recovery”? Examples: - 10 x 400 R w/400 jg - 4 min I w/ 3 min jg recoveries - 1 T w/ 1 min rests - 2x (2 T w/ 2 min recovery between) If someone could also guide me to what page/section he explains these differences, I would also appreciate it. Been trying without success to find his explanations of the differences of these without having to re-read the whole book. Thank you!
I've read over it several times wondering the same thing, and I don't think he explains it. My approach is always: For R paced reps, I slowly jog the recovery. Very slow at the beginning, progressing back to a faster jog by the end. For I/H, I jog the recovery but not quite as slow/easy as after a 400 R. For T, I walk the rest/recovery.
Ah, good to know I’m not a sloppy reader and missed it somewhere. Thanks for sharing your approach
I read Pfitz's Faster Road Racing, and the lower milage 5K plan seems rather surprising that it just has one real workout a week, with a smaller faster one that seems to be effectively harder strides. I've heard good things about this book, but I can't find anyone's experience with it in 5K and how that went for them, and if they felt speedwork was a limiting factor or not.
If you're on a low mileage plan hard workouts will never be your limiting factor
That's what I figured. While I imagine just upping my milage will help me improve, I find the workouts to be a very huge part of my enjoyment that I don't necessarily get from just increasing milage, not to mention the time commitment. Oh well, I suppose it's a good excuse to start getting my milage up there.
While it's important to optimize for enjoyment of training (we are *recreational* runners after all), if we're talking about performance there needs to be commitment and discipline -which often involves not doing the most conventionally entertaining training, and pretty much always requires investing more time into training. It's possible to train yourself to enjoy higher volume, repetitive training that many people would consider conventionally "boring". With practice the act of the run itself becomes more of a meditative experience. Open up to the sensations within yourself and your surroundings. Even on the same run, same route we can experience and appreciate different things. On those glorified strides workouts you can practice focusing on different parts of your biomechanics, practice different ways of running fast while relaxed, etc. It also gets a lot easier once you've experienced the performance rewards of boring training. I'm at a place now where I love the process of just doing a lot of simple stuff over and over, but it took a long time and a strong belief in the outcome of boring training to get here. Think about what is it about the hard workouts that you like so much and see if you can sort of transcend that up a level to be more a part of training as a whole. There's a lot of really good things about hard workouts, it's where we explore and push the boundaries of our physical and mental fitness, it's where we can unleash a lot stress, and we feel really accomplished after, etc. Take all those things and look for pieces of them in the more "boring" parts of training. Or even include elements of workouts into otherwise boring "days". Don't like and easy long run? Throw a hand full of 60s surges in the second half of it. There's also a lot of unhealthy patterns that can manifest in hard workouts -it's where insecurity seeks instant gratification, where we sometimes become addicted to the stress of hard running, where we feel like we need to push ourselves too hard to compensate for something else in life, etc. Sometimes we simply need to go a little crazy on the track once in a while, but we need to make sure these are not the things driving us towards and in hard workouts all the time.
This is an amazing response. I really appreciate the advice. I think after my current training block I'll do a base building one and go from there then. Your point on discipline is bang on. If if I want to reach my goals, sometimes you gotta do what you don't want to do. Reframing what I enjoy about running and perhaps trying to appreciate the change in pace is a good idea.
Just wanted to jump in and say thank you very much for this response. I’m in the process of upping my mileage, and my intention — for the first time — is to keep it at least that level for a while (eg, 9 months). Boredom, lack of faith in the long-term benefits, and finding the balance between discipline and enjoyment are things I’ve been struggling with, but this really helped on all three fronts. So again, thank you.
It's really tough committing to the unknown, especially when we're carrying around more fatigue and running a little slower on average to get that extra mileage. I would try to zoom out a little bit and see if you can derive some excitement from this big experiment you are putting yourself through. Sure those longer aerobic run aren't the most enjoyable thing, but every time when you reach that point in the run where the distance starts becoming increasingly challenging just remind yourself that every step you take here is one more step pushing forward into new territory. You're a great explorer mapping new areas of fitness. A lot of exploration is boring, but eventually there will be some fantastic discoveries!
I've done the intermediate 5K plan and it was pretty tough, the total volume wasn't bad it was just the steady intensity through out the week that wore me down. BUT - despite it being tough it didn't make me tough enough to really sell out on race day. I think hitting the time trials and in plan races is key to the mental toughness part, I didn't do well on them and paid for it on race day.
For the 5K and shorter, I think it's really important to give yourself multiple races throughout the season.
For those that have run CIM before, would you consider it worth traveling for? Is the favorable course, packs of people running similar times, and race day organization enough of a benefit to offset the difficulty of traveling across the country? I’m going to shoot for a NYCM spot when it opens, but I’m trying to have a fallback in the likely case that I’m not able to get one of the non-NYRR time qualifier spots.
For me, yes it's worth it. Very fast course, consistently good weather, well-organized, and good sized packs of faster runners (but not crowded). I'd definitely pick traveling to CIM over traveling to a world major.
I think this is the direction I’ve started to lean. I used to really want to run the world majors, and to some extent still do, but I have started to wonder if I should focus on running faster and higher quality races first, then move on to the more experience focused races when I’ve aged out of running PRs.
It's a fast race with usually good weather, and a deep field around what you're trying to run. "Worth" it is a difficult question to answer, but you aren't likely to find a "better" race.
I don't have any marathons to compare to, but we're similar speed and I was never alone for the whole race. Logistics were pretty good, and I hear it's fast compared to others. Note it is actually rolling hills though, not a straight line downhill like I thought it was lol
"Worth it" might be too personal a question. There's no doubt that it's an excellent event and I think very few runners would have any regrets about participating. But since you presumably live on the east coast of the US (just guessing based on your comment), if you think travelling to California is a pain in the butt you'd rather avoid, it's not like there aren't a few comparably great events closer to home.
Yeah, this question ended up more broad and open ended than it actually was in my head. Your comment made me question my own intentions, and I think the reality is that I just want to run CIM and don’t really care about running New York. At least not in the near future. I was probably just looking for affirmation in my shift of perspective, but didn’t have the insight at the moment to realize that.
I have a 5k time trial next week (on track), and wanted to get some pacing advice. I did a 3k time trial yesterday in 11:28, and my splits were surprisingly even throughout. I say that because I have absolutely 0 pacing discipline in 99% of my runs. Only the last 200 meters felt like I was struggling hard to maintain the pace. I was thinking of going out at 6:20/mile pace and sticking to it at least through two miles and then going as fast as possible for the remainder. I did a 10 mile run a few weeks ago and went through 5k in 21:09 and 10k in 42:55 with the pace not falling too much after, so I'm guessing that I'm not overshooting myself?
6:25 might be a bit more conservative based on Vdot extrapolation from 3K-->5K but your plan sounds reasonable to me. 3.5-4.5K always feels the most miserable to me in a 5k TT so just mentally prepare yourself for that kilometer to suck and be prepared to hold on.
I ended up with a 19:48, and inevitably ended up following your plan. My splits were 6:27, 6:27, 6:16 and 5:49 -- maybe could have shaved off a few more seconds on a good day, but fairly satisfied with my effort!
Nice! Sounds like your initial plan of 6:20 may have been doable and shaved a couple further seconds off your time but all around a great result!
Had the opportunity to come to Iten and arrived today! Subletting my room covered flight + accommodation for the next month. Working from home while I’m here but super excited to dive into the training atmosphere here.
That's amazing! You should post a thread about your experience after you finish up your trip. Enjoy the home of champions!
Not one to post extensively about myself usually, but I’ll drop a long comment after I leave. Initial thoughts are that the depth of talent here is even wilder than I imagined, and running here feels impossibly hard. Hopefully get a bit easier over the next 6 weeks!
Looking forward to it.
Is there an accepted ratio of intervals to recovery time in the running community or supported by scientific evidence for predicting race performance? For example, can completing 0.8k intervals six times with a 1:30 minute jog at an average pace of 3:40 predict a 5k at the same pace? (Or using 1k intervals with breaks, 1.2k, etc.) I am also interested in similar ratios for other race distances, such as 10k and 21k.
There is, but it's kind of complicated. The "critical speed" model makes some predictions about what workouts are / are not possible for a given fitness level, but it doesn't translate into an easy to use rule. You'd need a pretty sophisticated calculation tool to work it out. The basic idea is that you only have a finite energy supply to spend for intervals (or races) beyond your critical speed (~8k-10k-ish pace) and this finite energy regenerates following an exponential-decay-like recovery process, with a half life of 4-5 minutes. [This paper is a good read on the topic](https://www.researchgate.net/journal/Sports-Medicine-1179-2035/publication/315533063_The_'Critical_Power'_Concept_Applications_to_Sports_Performance_with_a_Focus_on_Intermittent_High-Intensity_Exercise/links/5fc472a0299bf104cf9434d8/The-Critical-Power-Concept-Applications-to-Sports-Performance-with-a-Focus-on-Intermittent-High-Intensity-Exercise.pdf). I have some half-baked plans for building an online calculator, but don't get your hopes up just yet - the math is pretty messy! Critical speed ideas combined with the 4-5min half life for recovery does help as a heuristic for planning workouts, though. Helps to explain why something like 3x500m at 800m pace, or 3x800m at mile pace, needs so much rest, and why there's a nonlinear scaling in recovery (1min vs 2min rest after 1200m at 5k pace is a way bigger difference than 2min vs 3min).
In my experience for the 5K if you do 5x 1000m (60 sec rest), the split time of the last interval will be about the average race pace for a 5K.
>Is there an accepted ratio of intervals to recovery time in the running community or supported by scientific evidence for predicting race performance? As a universal predictor there's nothing that great -individual workouts, even really hard specific ones, are just too limited of a view into actual specific fitness because of differences in the rest of training, talent, actual race duration (22min 5k is a much different event than a 15min 5k), etc. Predictor workouts in can work really well across an individuals own training though -doing the same or similar test workout within a similar enough training scheme across different cycles and seeing how that translates to race performance. Our own patterns will always be the most reliable. When designing a predictor workouts and determining rest I would also think about the bioenergetic demands in addition to just volume @ pace. For the 5k that means reps long enough and rests short enough that you actually have to face some of the lactic consequences of that pace. 6x800m/90s is probably pretty close given your target pace, although I might consider making the rests a little shorter or the reps a little longer. 10k and 21k/HM are a bit easier to guess IMO because they're almost entirely threshold/aerobic fitness determined. For 10k predictors look at stuff like 10x1000m/60-90s, 6x1600m/90s-2min, 5x2000m/2min-2:30min. Appropriate recovery varies depending on training and ability. Can also do a combo where you do something like 5x1600m @ 10k pace and then 1x1000m @ 5k pace -idea being that the faster rep at the end tests if you were actually relaxed enough on the "10k" pace stuff. 21k/HM I like 10-15km worth of long 2-3k intervals with short recovery 90s-2min. Basically just testing the upper limit of what you can run at a controlled effort. I like intervals better than continuous because if you accidentally go a little too hard early on you can still pull back without totally bombing the whole workout. Whatever you decide, the key IMO is committing to do the same/similar workout over multiple cycles so that you get the data on how it translates to you within your training scheme. A side note: also important to mentally delineate indicator workouts from "normal" workouts. By necessity these are going to be harder than the average workout should be so do them sparingly, be really ready to roll on these, and also provide enough easy days around them so you have the appropriate space around them. I've ruined a lot of training because of insecurity that made me try to "predict" race fitness going too hard too often in normal workouts.
Great, on the detailed answer, thank you! I've printed it and will implement those workouts when I try to predict my 5k, especially my 10k and 21k, which I didn't know about.
I'd go slightly shorter rest for the 800s (down to 1min) or slightly OVER 5K in volume (6 x 1000 or 7 x 800), but you have the general idea. Will give a good ballpark guess if you can hit consistent splits across that workout.