Friday, 5.16

[kevinspradlin]

Track workout Friday beginning around 4 p.m. at Fort Hill. Come one, come all or ... not.

[scott]

Is there a non-track run planned for today?

[frojoe23]

Scott, I'll be glued to my treadmill this afternoon. Tomorrow, we are meeting at the bath houses at Rocky Gap at 8AM. Give me a buzz if you want to go and I can give you a ride - 689-3530. Same for you Jeremiah.

[kevinspradlin]

You guys really don't like intervals, do you? Must be nice to already be fast...

[frojoe23]

I do not like them at all - but we'll be doing some this summer. If I have to do them, they must be long intervalls (1000 - 3000 meters). Those I can do well at, but 200's and 400's I will always stink them up.

[kevinspradlin]

Jaron, even for someone of your talent, doesn't the practice of faster leg turnover gained from shorter interval workouts help you? I hate them too, but I do them because they seem to work.

[flyinghighrunner]

you should practice faster leg turnover on daily runs....speedwork should simply be lengthening your stride. Before you bash the arguement...find some videos of elites....1500 to the marathon...all keep a cadence of ~180 steps a minute. I believe Jaron to be a marathoner above all other distances, so short interval would not be too beneficial for him....the 1000-3000 repeated intervals are probably great. IMO a faster leg turnover is very beneficial in that you are not in the air as long and don't have as hard an impact on the ground when you land...reducing your risk of injury. And if there is just one thing that prevents any of us from getting better, I'd pick injury.

[kevinspradlin]

I'm gonna give that some thought and respond.

[Justin]

The statement made about stride length and stride rate is true to some extent. The problem is that is a very small part of the equation. I would tend to look at elites' training, not just videos of them running. You would see most elite marathoners would put some short sprint work in every week of the year. This kind of work isn't cranking out 50 200's or anything, but more maintenance speed work. I'd say everyone would benefit from a short "turnover" workout once a week. After an easy run go to a track and put in 8-10 200's, with the recovery being walk 100m and jog 100m. It doesn't take long, and it will keep those fast twitch muscles, which get ignored in marathon training, primed and ready to go. If you want to know if you would benefit from work like this I'd recommend doing it once and if your legs are sore afterwards, if so then you'd benefit from it. My argument for doing this work for marathoners is because in marathons the muscles get completely depleted and at the end all muscles are being recruited to get to the finish line. Just this small amount of work can have your fast-twitch muscles ready for the task.

Also, the body will find the most efficient form when pushed to try and run fast. If you work on running fast, then those small form differences can mean a whole lot, especially over the marathon distance.

[flyinghighrunner]

Good point Justin. It is hard to get those legs turning over like that after regular training runs unless you condition yourself for it. I've never done 200's after, but (especially if at a track) I'll go barefoot doing the length of the football field 4-6x. Not all out, but pretty quick....more of a "strider" with a quick turnover....take 15-20 seconds rest between.

[Justin]

That's a great thing to do. Most of the time these kinds of runs are called striders in elite training logs, but from what I've found if you tell the average runner to do striders, they end up lolly-gagging a couple 50m runs that serve no purpose. I like to do them longer so it feels like I have guidelines. The 200's are probably a little more serious than a strider, I like to call mine striders with a purpose. The purpose isn't to build lactic acid or for a serious workout, just to feel the turnover and be keep the body in tune to sprinting. These are also not meant to replace another workout, but to be added to an easy day. They are also good for every phase of training, especially base building.

[frojoe23]

I'm not saying that fast intervals wouldn't benefit me, but I have to look at my main goal: to run a fast marathon. In the end, me going to the track and doing 200's serves very little purpose. If I did it like Justin stated (after a run), then I'd be getting something out of it. That ability to recruit fast twitch fibers while you are tired.

In this regard, I do speedwork - not intervals - where the group will finish a 14-15 mile run and I'll try to drop anywhere from 4:45 - 5:15 over the final 2-3 miles.

This winter I did some light speed every week where I was doing 1 minute hard, then 1 minute easy for 20 minutes. I'd take a ten minute jog and do another set. So I'd have 20 minute sessions at a decent pace (probably around 4:40 pace or so). I did these to try and recruit those fast twitch fibers while I was in a base phase since they typically get ignored. I had a lot of time between races and most of them were longer races, so I felt this part was being ignored. Mostly I focused on running them with great form and not trying to run too hard of a pace. I enjoyed those workouts, but a minute is about as short as I'm going to go.