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Why is the emphasis on Cardiac sdrift so important
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I had a lab VO2 max test about a year ago when I was not very fit from a racing point of view, having been doing only easy running for 3-4 months, and I came out with what I understand to be a high reading (70/kg), when my racing times would have been extremely poor. I also find that in races I breathe much more easily than those around me, even if they are much fitter/faster and go on to beat me, which probably reflects the same phenomenon. It wouldn't correlate with my speed in a test such as BR describes.
This must also be a problem (although less so) with using broad percentage figures of MHR to gauge training speed - no doubt you get to the same place ultimately that way, but surely it would be more efficient if you had a lactate test to establish where your threshold(s) currently is(are)?
"This must also be a problem (although less so) with using broad percentage figures of MHR to gauge training speed - no doubt you get to the same place ultimately that way, but surely it would be more efficient if you had a lactate test to establish where your threshold(s) currently is(are)?"
I suppose if you had a lactate analyser, and you understood how to interpret the readings (ackowledging that people with different predominant muscle fibre type will have different results, and the degree of aerobic fitness will also obviously affect the results), then I suppose the lactate analyser might offer some advantage. But as I understand it, they're fairly expensive, and the results are also devilishly difficult to interpret.
Paying attention to HR AND your perception of effort at that HR (we haven't discussed this part of Hadd's approach yet explicitly, but if you read the thread, there is a consistent element of noting your perception of effort, as a second measure of progress, during the work sessions and/or 2400m tests), is a fairly cheap, and effective (IMHO), substitute.
You can get some sort of working numbers to start with by doing something along the lines of a 2400m test, and noting perceptions at each HR. Then do a couple workouts, and you'll know pretty fast where your threshold is.
You NEVER want to just use broad general HR percentages, because individual thresholds are all over the map, at least initially. For example, when I started working with Hadd, my aerobic threshold was around 76-79% of HRMax, barely faster than easy running. And this was soon after almost running a 5K PR! Incidentally, this was one thing that convinced me that I needed to work with Hadd, since that number was pathetic, and I knew there was a lot of unexplored potential there.
Oh, and to clarify, when I say LT, I mean the point at which you're not accumulating enough lactate to go into oxygen debt, basically 10mile to HM pace. When I say aerobic threshold, I mean the fastest pace that you could basically keep up forever. My knowledge of physiology isn't great, so it's more useful for me to define thresholds based on duration rather than lactate readings. I think it ends up in about the same place.
I'll try to get to your earlier questions later, but today I actually have things to do, which is not always the case
I expect you have a far more sophisticated grasp of the physiology than I have, but having had a lactate test, the point which I (agreeing with TimmyG) would identify as the aerobic threshhold was easy to see: the level is a constant X until you reach a certain HR, when it starts to move upwards.
I asked the question re testing out of (mild) curiosity - yes the tests cost a fair bit of money (£100 plus), but it struck me as interesting that people take so much care not only about doing their training but also about investigating the science, but apply that careful analysis on the basis of relatively broad brush indicators when a precise guide is potentially available. I do see that you can use a bank of knowledge about your own training that you acquire, however.
for a particular time for the run (same principle as for the MHR=220-age approach). Whilst it may predict VO2 for your average runner, it's not really accurate for a specific runner.
Daniels pseudo VO2 measure is also I think based on statistical analysis. He calles it VDOT. Its not strictly VO2max as it includes the effects of running economy. He explains the rational in his book "Daniels Running Formula".
Pete I've also read that LT results are very hard to interpret, and that there can be a lot of variation in the measure.
TimmyG, agree with your point about individual LT thresholds being all over the place. My heart rate when I'm running at 10 mile pace (ie 6:00 pace) is 92% MHR, which gives me some leeway, even when I'm running at 85%MHR.
JFB, your comments on perceived effort struck a chord. If your running without a heart rate monitor then you do need to have a pretty good perception of effort. I tend to run on perceived effort rather than speed. It comes with experience, but is also helped by two other factors. If your running towards the top end of the aerobic zone, its quite easy to sense when your about to go anaerobic. The other thing which helps is the idea of looking at the weeks training cycle as a whole, and determining your efforts by looking at how currently feel compared with same point in the previous weeks training cycle. Its not very scientific - its just based on the principle of running by feel.
yes
running by feel
i agree with that
This week I've gone from an average of 80mpw and a 3 week taper / race period of 50mpw up to 95 miles. I hit Tuesday's session just right but ran slower than 8m/m yesterday and 7:41 tonight (getting dropped from the 2nd group on the club run).
Not at all concerned as I feel fresh for tomorrow's session. Had I run at 6:33 pace (with the 1st group) or 7:15 pace (sticking with the 2nd group) I would not have recovered properly to hit tomorrow's session as I want. I also bore in mind that work has been hassled this week, so it's a case of `protecting what you have before reaching out for more'.
I won't make the progress in the way Pete and Timmy state by running 6:33 pace when tired then bombing on the AeT and AeT sessions.
Now next week, if work pressures are less and my body has adapted more to the idea of running 90+mpw then I might find I'm a little faster and Weds and Thurs between work sessions.
Pete, re. your earlier question about the running scene this side of the pond, it is running clubs which determine the pattern most people follow. Most people belong to a club and like to take part in events their clubmates are. If you're a faster runner there's always pressure to make up a relay team or run in the county championships. It's also dead easy to pick from a variety of races most weekends throughout the year, plus midweek races in summer. The longer travelling distances in the US and Canada don't apply here and races are more affordable. This can lead to over racing (no, honest;-).
Although there is a school of thought from the `old school' runners like Ron Hill and Bill Adcocks think today's top club runners don't race enough and wrap themselves in cotton wool too much.
On this thread, by contrast, everyone, Hadd trainer or not, seems to agree that a base period/general conditioning/off-season phase is necessary. Therefore the statement that Hadd has the merit of conditioning an athlete aerobically before introducing the specific work is far from a unique element of his approach. What does seem to me to be individual to his approach, and rather odd, is the avoidance of ever going above LT at ANY point in the first phase of training.
This seems to contrast with any elite training that I know of. Hicham El Guerrouj's aerobic training in the off season, as detailed on the King of the Mile website involves long intervals which are neither the gut-wrenching intervals scorned by the Hadd devotees but are clearly faster than LT. Paula Radcliffe, although she lets on little about her training, has stated in the past when asked about speedwork vs. endurance that at no point of the year does she completely neglect either but simply changes emphasis. Even Steve Ovett, seen as the high mileage side of the Ovett/Coe coin, certainly did high mileage in the training of the Winter pre-Moscow as detailed by the BMC article. It was also, however incredibly intense with 56/57 minute ten milers as well as interval work.
In the light of all this, why the fear of any moderate amount of work above LT bringing the whole carefully constructed aerobic edifice down, even to the extent of some people walking up hills (OK, I admit Hadd himself probably wouldn't coach this but it shows how worried some of those trying to follow him are about minor increases in intensity.)?
Hadd would say that training at a pace above LT for long periods actually pushes the LT down. To improve it you train at just below it. I'm sure Pete and Timmy can explain the whys and wherefores much better than I could.
On the Paula / Ovett training regime:- do we know exactly how the emphasis changes re. speedwork / endurance? Is the speedwork there in short bursts just to maintain leg speed without going anaerobic? I don't know. Does anyone have any better information?
Also Ovett and Radcliffe's bodies will be able to handle higher intensity than you or I because we have to go to work instead of sleeping when we need and do not have access to 2 hours' worth of high quality physiotherapy every day.
Ovett on the other hand is a different case. The article I mention is in a back issue of BMC News, freely available on their website. While I fully agree he has more rest and I couldn't hack his training, even proportionately to my own race paces, off the rest I get. That confuses the point that Hadd makes, however, which is that it pushes the LT down. I may misunderstand him, but he appears to state this more as a physiological principle rather than saying that higher than LT work can damage your LT if you don't have sufficient recovery time.
As for El G, I've seen his training logs in detail (the infamous ones that everyone ALWAYS brings up in this discussion). First of all, does anyone ever stop and think that this is El G's training from when he was at the top of this game? Morrocco has an extensive talent identification system, they have probably had him building his aerobic base since he was 12-14 years old. So these current workouts are no problem for him, and remember, he WANTS to dampen his LT somewhat, since he's a 1500/5000 runner.
You always have to remember 2 things when reading about elite training;
1. It (usually) took them years to become elite. You can't just take random weeks out of their schedule when they're at the top of their game.
2. It's all well and good to orgasm in front of your monitor at the incredible paces that elites run day in and day out, but always stop and think: What is their marathon pace? Are they running faster than that? If not, than the workout is not that intense for their body.
My best reason I can give for why faster training lowers the LT is specificity. First, lactate is NOT A BAD THING. If I can't produce lots of lactate, I have no chance to run a fast 1500m race. It's just a matter of balancing your lactate producing capability (anaerobic ability) and your aerobic ability. This balance will be determined by your race.
Now, let's say I'm a runner who could run a smokin' marathon, but I really want to take a shot at breaking 3:45 in the 1500. So first thing I need to do is find some speed, and the best way to do that is to increase my anaerobic ability.
How do I do this? I run at speeds that produce large increases in lactate, i.e. above the THRESHOLD where the lactate curve slopes upward more steeply, i.e. the LT. Specificity folks. If I want to produce lactate on demand, I gotta train at speeds that produce more lactate.
Now it should be easy to see why running faster than the LT lowers your LT. It's because you're training your body to make anaerobic energy more accessible, i.e. lowering the THRESHOLD at which you can get at it.
Now obviously you need a good aerobic system to clear away this lactate that is produced, which is where base training comes into the picture, I think I posted Hadd's quotes on that back at the bottom of page 5, it's said more succinctly there.
Has anyone had their VO2 max accurately recorded?
I did it a few years ago to help a fellow student with his sports science thesis. My reading was around 73 or 74 as I recall, which I was told was quite good.
What does VO2 max tell you about yourself anyway?
Some (Horwill, Cooper, Falke) et at have tables which predict V02 max from distance covered in a set time. By inverting these you can extrapolate predicted performances based on the measured V02 max figure.
"This seems to contrast with any elite training that I know of. Hicham El Guerrouj's aerobic training in the off season, as detailed on the King of the Mile website involves long intervals which are neither the gut-wrenching intervals scorned by the Hadd devotees but are clearly faster than LT."
I'd like to attempt to answer this one.
As your aerobic fitness improves, you can do longer, faster interval sessions and keep them quite aerobic. The concept of "LT pace" as a fixed entity dividing aerobic and anaerobic work is a little (maybe a lot) misleading.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that LT pace is defined as your current HM pace. If you were to run 100m at that pace, do you expect that you would go anaerobic? Probably not, I'm sure we will all agree.
If you run a HM at that pace, do you think you'll go anaerobic at some point? Again, I tu
ust we can all agree on the affrimative - you will go anaerobic sometime during the race if you truly run your hardest.
So at one end of the time/distance spectrum, LT pace doesn't result in excessive lactate, while at the other (longer) end, it does.
So what about durations or distances between about 20s and an hour at so-called LT pace? Do you go anaerobic, or not? Well, clearly it's shades of grey between ends of the spectrum, but what determines how long/far you can go at that pace and remain aerobic depends on your aerobic fitness. If you have never concentrated on aerobic fitness, maybe 800m intervals with long walking rest start to result in excessive lactate after 4-6 intervals.
By contrast, if you are aerobically fit (like Paula, El G, or maybe a well trained Hadd athlete, as some examples), you can likely run something like 4 x 3200 with 400m easy jog rest and NOT go aerobic.
If you recall from Hadd's base training thread, he suggests an occasional 200m/200m on/off fartlek for 5k, with the "on" part at about 5k pace, and the "off" part 15-20s slower. Clearly 5k pace is faster than LT pace. For an unfit (aerobically) runner, this workout will probably seem very stessful. By contrast, once fit (aerobically), this workout, or longer variations (ie 2 x 5k or 10k continuous) becomes very comfortable, and entirely aerobic.
If you had some insight into the details of how Hadd's training evolves, you'd know that his approach is not much different than what you refer to with Paula etc. Using me as an example, I'm training for the marathon, and yet my last few weeks have looked like this:
Week 86: 101 miles incl 8 miles @ 140-45 (6:25ish, fading), 5 x 2000 (7:00 avg), 12 mile LR
Week 87: 54 miles incl 5k of 200/200 @ 39/54, HM @ 1:14:58, 18 mile LR (race day)
Week 88: 77 miles, all easy, 15 mile LR
Week 89: 97 miles incl 8 miles @ 140-145 (6:22ish, mild fade), 3 x "2 mile" @ 145-150 (6:02-5:52), 13 mile LR
Week 90: 105 miles incl 2 x 5 miles @ 140-145 (6:18-6:05), 6 x 2000 @ 7:17 w/200m jog, 18 mile LR
And this week I've done (3k @ 3:39/km + 2 x 2k @ 3:24/km + 3 x 1k @ 3:18/km) Tuesday evening and will do 3 x 4k @ 3:40/km.
For reference, my LT pace is roughly 3:31-32/km, and yet Tuesday's workout was quite aerobic. Would it have been aerobic two years ago? No, it would have killed me. And yet, there was a good chunk of what you refer to as sub-LT work.
So Paula and El G should quite easily incorporate quite a bit of sub-LT pace work in their training, without ever going anaerobic or damaging their aerobic fitness.
DOH! (you guys all know what I meant, right?)
and " (3k @ 3:39/km + 2 x 2k @ 3:24/km + 3 x 1k @ 3:18/km) "
should read
(3k @ 3:29/km + 2 x 2k @ 3:24/km + 3 x 1k @ 3:18/km)
in other words, all faster than so-called LT.
And to extend this thought:
"So Paula and El G should quite easily incorporate quite a bit of sub-LT pace work in their training, without ever going anaerobic or damaging their aerobic fitness."
... provided the workouts are structured to KEEP them aerobic.
(is their a preview fuction on this message board?)
I haven't run a marthon post-Hadd, but my HM time has gone from stagnating at 1:16:40 to 1:14:58 (and should be better, I think). Strangely, in my case, my best improvements have come at shorter distances. I've managed 4:18 and 9:17 for 1500 and 3000 since starting his training. I'd never run those distances pre-Hadd, so have no basis for comparison, but those times are relatively "better" than my longer distance times.
The times aren't blazingly fast and the leaps aren't enormous, but I was a fairly seasoned runner (38 yo, with over 15 years running experience) when I started, so I'm delighted with the improvements.
I am nowhere near the calibre of PeteQ or virtually everyone else this thread. But I spent 1.5 years with my 10k PB time stuck around 39 mins doing a mix of speedwork/tempo/long run averaging 40-50 mpw and getting injured a lot.
I then ran a decent (55 growing to 80 mpw) of miles at 75% HR for 6 months, then began "squeezing the tube" with two weekly runs at 82% HR. No speedwork, no tempo runs, no anaerobic work all "easy" milage. 5 weeks later I entered a 10k for fun (i.e. no tapering and having done ~60 miles already that week, including 20, over 2 runs, @82%) and I ran 36.xx mins, unable to get my HR over 92% as I had not tapered and not run that fast in ages..
The power of this type of training is amazing..
I'm always more convinced by people's actual experiences than the science, probably sheer prejudice as an ex arts student.
I was thinking about the people I've seen on this website who've made very large improvements (which it seems to me you both have), and what I know of their training. There are other examples of very substantial improvements by individuals (such as Pantman and, I think, BR) via the sort of route you are taking, but also some who have increased mileage, but not, as far as I know, moved away from what I would regard as a more traditional training mix with the hills, tempo runs, lots of racing etc (eg URR, Spans).
I suppose it comes back to it being presented as one method of training, rather than the only possible method.
I confess I was also interested in your time, Pete, because the interval training you described was in the ballpark of what I do in terms of sessions and speeds, but your mileage is more than double mine over the period you describe (which for me was the most I've done in my life!), so I was interested to compare the end result! You seem to be the same age as me, too.
Good luck on the weekend, by the way!
My pbs are...
5000m - 16:38 (16:56 pre-Hadd)
10k - 33:41 (33:58 pre-Hadd)
HM - 73:40 (76:25 pre-Hadd)
Marathon - 2:42 (2:49 pre-Hadd)
Interestingly Pete's shorter distance times knock the spots off mine (9:40 3000m) but I have the edge (at present:-)) over HM.
Nonetheless I maintain that overall the schedule far from reflects any concern that overly intense sessions would dampen his LT
The link is below, it's page 30-31
BMC Link
I don't believe that a 1500 runner would want to dampen LT down, being well aerobically trained is vital from 1500-marathon - a point I believe Hadd also argues and has been rightly made in this thread.
My only point of disagreement is on the way of getting there. Incidentally, I think Hadd's training is very good and should lead to success - my only worry is that everyone on these boards starts counselling all base work to never touch anything remotely anaerobic, which I think is an overreaction.
Look at Ovett's winter schedule. It looks like he did a ton of runs at 5:30-6 min pace, which as we've established, isn't even close to his marathon pace. Some people might have trouble going faster than M+1 min day-in-day out, but if memory serves me correctly, extremely fast-twitch guys seem to be able to handle it better. Snell was another one who hit paces like that nearly every day. But again, these paces are nowhere near the LT.
There don't seem to be any traditional "long runs", but fat-burning is much much less important for the 1500 than for long events. It looks like Ovett opted to use his high-end aerobic system as frequently as possible, similar to Tom's training.
With regards to the "hard" sessions of 6x1000, if you read the article, the author says that Ovett went about 80% on the track workouts. Even if he didn't and went faster, refer to my earlier post at the end of the previous page. "Dampening" LT IS NOT A BAD THING. But in this case, we probably have something more similar to what Pete Q was talking about. 6x1000 for Ovett at a non-maximal effort is going to clear from his system very rapidly.
The rest of the work basically looks like lots and lots of strides and technique work, even in the spring getting ready for track season. I was actually thinking that I would see a lot more interval work, that's a very surprising log.
Now, as for not touching anything anaerobic during base training, that's a matter for debate. Obviously we have examples of people like Coe, who, regardless of the mileage debate surrounding him, definitely did some hard stuff during base.