mr b's latest comeback

[Travs]

Parkruns have pacers?

My local parkrun will have a "pacer event" maybe once every 3 months or so.

You can actually get paid to run in some decent half-marathons, 10km's etc if you agree to be a pacer.... if that's your sort of thing.... although that probably means having to turn up and run at a level slower than your max effort, which doesn't appeal to me...!!

[mr brightside]

Bramley parkrun this morning, 24.50, which was bang on as i had a 25m pacing vest on. I think that doing pacing runs will stop me from getting involved in any racing and taking undue risks, it must also be a big milestone for any improvers.

Parkruns have pacers?

Bramley parkrun has pacing overvests with numbers 20 to 35 written on the back. You just let the run director know what you are intending on, get the vest, and they announce all the pacing times at the start briefing.

[mr brightside]

Bramley parkrun this morning, 24.57, you can't get much closer than that on a 25m pacing run. It was the 8th birthday of Bramley parkrun and they went for a pirate theme, as in pieces of eight. There was a big turnout from other clubs, northowram pumas were there, but I have no idea who they are.

Today was my first two session day. I've considered more slower sessions before, but it was impossible to convert my existing runs as they were too hilly and had to be hard sessions, so I lost interest. If I'm to run more slow runs, I have to add sessions, but I have no idea what impact that will have on my niggles.

The second run was the 6m/650' timble loop from fewston car park, don't Google it, I invented it myself. The big news is that high lane in nether timble is dry! Some may be familiar with this rusty sludge ridden, stinking pog infested bridle track by the way it plasters you up to your shins. It is now dry...I repeat, dry. The Washburn valley, Yorkshire's forgotten dale, was looking stunning in the summer sun and many trout were spotted in the river. I took tea and cake at the Washburn heritage centre and was dripping with sweat after finishing my tea, but who eats cake with chilled fizzy pop?

The route was too rough for someone with a rolled ankle, so I may have to switch to the reservoir figure eight next time. The ancient pony tracks the loop follows are badly washed out.

[Marco]

He was telling me how if you do too much fast and hard training the body never develops the cellular biochemical conditions to generate power effectively. It's all to do with ATP and mitochondria and crap. He told me I ought to be doing one fast parkrun a month and a lot more running at about 8.30mmp based on my typical parkrun time of 20m. The way I do things at the moment, with my fast sessions and plenty of racing, my body is missing the tools to produce maximum motion at a cellular level.

Its fairly commonly regarded that there should be around an 80:20 split between easy miles:effort

For me, if i try and push above two sessions a week then its unsustainable... if i'm racing consecutive weekends then sometimes can't manage any sessions between, its just too arduous on the body/recovery.

And i think this is one of the main "disciplines" to master in training.... being disciplined enough to run easy when you should... of course if you run twice a day, most days, like me, it can be quite boring.

I used to think that running "slow" runs too fast meant simply being too tired to run fast runs fast enough. But it is a bit more complicated than that. If we don't run slow enough often/long enough we fail to develop our aerobic - mitochondrial - biochemical pathways, so we keep having to go anaerobic at too slow a pace so are forced to slow down even more. If you cannot chat in sentences then your slow runs are too fast.

I read about an 80:20 (easy/hard) split years ago and have always tried to do it. For the benefit of those of us in the injured/recovering from injury or surgery/bio-mechanically disadvantaged categories, I have a question that I'm hoping Mike T, or anyone else with suitable knowledge and/or experience, may be able to answer:

"Do you think that it is possible to do the easy effort, 80 percent part, of the 80:20 using a different activity, such as swimming, cycling or walking, or is it important that the 80 percent part is done with running because you are using the required muscles in the correct way?"

I'd be grateful of any considered thoughts on this, as like several other people here I will now always be restricted on the running mileage I can do.

Thanks

[mr brightside]

Looks like the ship is listing already, it turns out I have posterior tibial tendonitis or something. I know when this happened, black combe, it's been hanging about for ages, but not fully manifesting as anything concrete. Might be able to get it under control with comfrey and massage.

4m in the fields and woods this evening.

[mr brightside]

We can now add hallux rigidus in the other foot to my list of things that don't like extra slow running. I'm going to have to back off it all and drip feed it all back in one step at a time, just going out for a run whenever i feel like it is off the cards, and historically always has been so not a lot has changed.

I read about an 80:20 (easy/hard) split years ago and have always tried to do it. For the benefit of those of us in the injured/recovering from injury or surgery/bio-mechanically disadvantaged categories, I have a question that I'm hoping Mike T, or anyone else with suitable knowledge and/or experience, may be able to answer:

"Do you think that it is possible to do the easy effort, 80 percent part, of the 80:20 using a different activity, such as swimming, cycling or walking, or is it important that the 80 percent part is done with running because you are using the required muscles in the correct way?"

I'd be grateful of any considered thoughts on this, as like several other people here I will now always be restricted on the running mileage I can do.

Thanks

Does anyone have any feedback on Marco's question, i'm intrigued too.

[Travs]

My (amateur) opinion is the 80% preferably needs to be running, as you are then building the necessary strength/conditioning to be able to sustain the higher-intensity sessions.

Although this may fly in the face of popular opinion.... a large number of clubmates attain a far higher level of ability than me, off a far lower weekly mileage.... i find though that my level of performance remains fairly constant, where others on lower mileage reach higher "highs" but don't always consistently perform.

[Mike T]

I doubt swimming or non power walking would help as substitutes for the "easy" 80%. Swimming uses the wrong muscles, and ordinary walking is too easy. The sort of power walking that fell runners do would help, as would cycling. Training for endurance takes time, but fortunately can be done at any age, as long as there is nothing else that is limiting, such as heart disease. Training the muscles' biochemistry for speed takes much less time, but risks injury, and the effect fades quickly; the skill aspect of speed, like a language, is best learnt when young.

[mr brightside]

I doubt swimming or non power walking would help as substitutes for the "easy" 80%. Swimming uses the wrong muscles, and ordinary walking is too easy. The sort of power walking that fell runners do would help, as would cycling. Training for endurance takes time, but fortunately can be done at any age, as long as there is nothing else that is limiting, such as heart disease. Training the muscles' biochemistry for speed takes much less time, but risks injury, and the effect fades quickly; the skill aspect of speed, like a language, is best learnt when young.

I would have thought cycling, especially out of the saddle where i spend a lot of time, is close enough to running. My kneecap tracking alters when i cycle due to the preferential use of the lateral quads in a cycling position, leading to problems, but when i'm dancing on the pedals i'm better off.

[Marco]

My (amateur) opinion is the 80% preferably needs to be running, as you are then building the necessary strength/conditioning to be able to sustain the higher-intensity sessions.

Although this may fly in the face of popular opinion.... a large number of clubmates attain a far higher level of ability than me, off a far lower weekly mileage.... i find though that my level of performance remains fairly constant, where others on lower mileage reach higher "highs" but don't always consistently perform.

I doubt swimming or non power walking would help as substitutes for the "easy" 80%. Swimming uses the wrong muscles, and ordinary walking is too easy. The sort of power walking that fell runners do would help, as would cycling. Training for endurance takes time, but fortunately can be done at any age, as long as there is nothing else that is limiting, such as heart disease. Training the muscles' biochemistry for speed takes much less time, but risks injury, and the effect fades quickly; the skill aspect of speed, like a language, is best learnt when young.

Thanks for your answers and opinions, I'll listen to anyone, and any theories, on this as I don't know the answer. I do appreciate there's a bit of "we're all different" too.

What I do know, however, is that a number of us, (myself most definitely included), are unable to do any great volume of running, and that if we are to run competitively, (in whatever form that takes), then doing the 80 percent, or a large amount of it, will be necessary in non-running exercise.

As this was an issue for me through the latter years (including all of my fell running), I have some anecdotal experience that cycling does at least give you some aerobic fitness that can be used. Likewise, I have noted that one of our respected members, GB, used a cycling-based approach to training successfully in his later years of racing.

My concern, is what Mike T said about developing aerobic - mitochondrial -biochemical pathways (below). If I develop such pathways in a barely-used hamstring activity, such as cycling, will the pathways in the mitochondria of my hamstrings get the benefit? Or will it just be my quads?.

I used to think that running "slow" runs too fast meant simply being too tired to run fast runs fast enough. But it is a bit more complicated than that. If we don't run slow enough often/long enough we fail to develop our aerobic - mitochondrial - biochemical pathways, so we keep having to go anaerobic at too slow a pace so are forced to slow down even more. If you cannot chat in sentences then your slow runs are too fast.

As I said above, I'll listen to anyone's thoughts on this. Thanks again