Long runs - fast?

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Originally Posted by ZootHornRollo

If you were going to get technical I'd say targetting threshold might be more useful than targetting VO2 max for almost all fellrunning.

http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com...-training.html

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I agree.

Sorry for my grossly simplistic postings - just been reading some more stuff and realise it's very complex, and I've just been thinking about general conditioning rather than training for races. Must try harder :( I'll get me coat.

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Originally Posted by itissounfair

I suppose this is my next dilemma. When I'm running a shorter distance 400m say, I'm quicker than my peers, but I cannot maintain this andmost will leaVe me in a fell race. I seem to spend most of it in a knackered plod, rather than what I call running. I suspect it is my aerobic system therefore that's relatively lame so I'm trying to figure out how to improve this. I find vo2 max a bit confusing in how it relates
to threshold, and how raising vo2 will help with medium fell races. Thanks for
The advice l'll now go and do a
threshold run

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people's threshold varies little bit as a proportion of their VO2 max level - but suffice to say that you can exercise at a lower intensity to raise your threshold

from a perceived effort / exertion point of view someone usefully described it to me as the point where suddenly your breathing escalates - if you are exercising just below or at that level for any length of time, you are probably helping to raise that threshold and therefore your aerobic endurance

I think if you only know one techninal training thing, this is the most use one.

It seems to me that the thing being missed out from a lot of this discussion is periodisation. Several people have said that to race fast you have to train fast. Well, that's true to a certain extent, but you also have to build the reserves of endurance and aerobic fitness - conditioning, basically - that will allow you to absorb the effects of harder training effectively and without getting injured. I've seen lots of my clubmates who have read all about their three key sessions - tempo run, intervals and long run - and go on doing the same things week after week. And then they wonder why they plateau!

For a lot of amateur runners, it isn't necessarily true that you have to train faster to race faster. For someone with a relatively low volume of mileage in their background, it may well be that they can get faster simply by improving their aerobic fitness and endurance: I've done this myself. I think it's more accurate to say that you have to train fast to race fast assuming that you already have a high level of aerobic conditioning.

Aerobic/endurance training works over months and years. Speed training works over weeks. A good training programme will include a period of high-volume, low-intensity aerobic work, followed by higher-intensity threshold work, followed by sharpening interval work in the weeks before a race. Lots of runners are looking for the one key session that they can do week after week in order to keep improving. It doesn't exist. A training plan should be based on progression: you won't be doing the same things at every stage of the training.

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Originally Posted by Mandovark

It seems to me that the thing being missed out from a lot of this discussion is periodisation. Several people have said that to race fast you have to train fast. Well, that's true to a certain extent, but you also have to build the reserves of endurance and aerobic fitness - conditioning, basically - that will allow you to absorb the effects of harder training effectively and without getting injured. I've seen lots of my clubmates who have read all about their three key sessions - tempo run, intervals and long run - and go on doing the same things week after week. And then they wonder why they plateau!

For a lot of amateur runners, it isn't necessarily true that you have to train faster to race faster. For someone with a relatively low volume of mileage in their background, it may well be that they can get faster simply by improving their aerobic fitness and endurance: I've done this myself. I think it's more accurate to say that you have to train fast to race fast assuming that you already have a high level of aerobic conditioning.

Aerobic/endurance training works over months and years. Speed training works over weeks. A good training programme will include a period of high-volume, low-intensity aerobic work, followed by higher-intensity threshold work, followed by sharpening interval work in the weeks before a race. Lots of runners are looking for the one key session that they can do week after week in order to keep improving. It doesn't exist. A training plan should be based on progression: you won't be doing the same things at every stage of the training.

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an excellent post that - absolutely spot on

An apostle is a (religious) messenger and ambassador.
Do you perhaps mean
"the gospel according to Lydiard the apostle" ?

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Originally Posted by christopher leigh

All runners plateau eventually; the point at which they do depends fundamentally on the intensity/volume ratio.You cannot build the 'reserves of endurance and aerobic fitness,' from anything other than high intensity training. Most runners plateau far earlier than they should because they shuffle about far too slowly for too long a period. To get faster you've got to press on and to press on you've got to have guts.

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I don't think anything in Mandovark's post contradicts that though: all he said was that a runner is more likely to benefit - and recover - from high-intensity training if they have got some decent base fitness.

I agree with you totally that becoming a faster runner - or cyclist - generally requires repeated sessions of painful exertion: but for a beginner or a fairly unfit runner that's not the best place to start is it?

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Originally Posted by christopher leigh

One last point: hard training and racing isn't painful when you come to think of it.

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Now that is unnecessarily pedantic. Maybe not painful compared to dislocating your shoulder no. But we both know what I mean by painful: the same thing as you mean by discomfort / having to have guts, etc etc, so let's not split hairs, eh?

And cycling I do find genuinely painful at times - it's a case of still being able to push when you have that pain in the legs, it's basically what cycling is all about I'm beginning to learn.

To Christopher Leigh: before dismissing others as wimps & phonies why don't you do a little googling about such concepts as No Mans Land training in endurance running - it's really interesting stuff!
And I may sound like a bit of a beginner from my rather naive sounding posts, but have been running in the hills for 25 years (but not racing - although training with some pretty flippin' good, and "hard" fell-runners). Bull-headed grit is obviously important, but only gets you so far... read up on some of this stuff, it's quite fascinating. Confusing (to me at least) but really fascinating.

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Originally Posted by christopher leigh

The whole concept of periodisation is nonsense, because all training involves periodisation.

All runners plateau eventually; the point at which they do depends fundamentally on the intensity/volume ratio.You cannot build the 'reserves of endurance and aerobic fitness,' from anything other than high intensity training. Most runners plateau far earlier than they should because they shuffle about far too slowly for too long a period. To get faster you've got to press on and to press on you've got to have guts.

Too many wimps want to improve without exerting themselves and many of the phoney ideas on this thread and forum pander to such people.

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How are you defining periodisation? If a runner does essentially the same training routine - same mileage, same types of session - every week throughout the year except when tapering for or recovering from races, in what sense is that periodisation?

You're setting up a false opposition that neither I nor, as far as I'm aware, anyone else on this thread has actually made. No-one is suggesting that runners should keep "shuffling about", as you put it. I've known people who have got their steady aerobic pace to 6min/m or faster: hardly what I'd call shuffling. The whole point of Lydiard's approach to aerobic training is that you go faster as you get fitter. Anyone who keeps running at the same speed has missed the point.

You say that "to get faster you've got to press on". That was my point. A good training programme is about progression: first conditioning yourself, building endurance and then building up the intensity towards a peak for a race. I'd argue that someone who does the same thing all the time, whether that's high intensity work or "shuffling about", is not pushing on.

By the way, in several years on the forum over at Runners World, I saw far more posts from people along the lines of "I can't/don't want to run lots of miles" than I did of the "I don't want to run hard" variety. On what evidence are you basing your claim that most runners plateau far earlier than they should because they shuffle about far too slowly for too long a period?