Quote Originally Posted by mr brightside View Post
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.
Quote Originally Posted by Travs View Post
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.
Quote Originally Posted by Mike T View Post
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