Posted by Spareribs in the B&B daily thread, 14 Feb 2007:

From time to time I express opinions here and I don't go into detail on why. For example, I don't like the Pfitzinger programs and there was some debate about it here a few weeks ago, with those who were injured using his programs as the staunchest supporters. I feel the way I do about training based on not only my personal experience in training for the marathon and middle distance races over many years, but also based on what I have read and my understanding of the best approaches to training.

The interesting subject of training speeds and work sessions came up yesterday in the arfenarf cruise interval mention, and in Holly's question about mile repeats and AT. First let me just say that AT stands for aerobic threshold (more on that to come) and that Holly, you can see that you did in fact misread the deviations from the various distance speeds from the program you are following. Since you have posted those deviations, you should now be able to see that as the deviation is GREATER, from the shorter distances, for example a much bigger deviation from your 400 meter pace, than from your tenK pace, the creator of the program most certainly meant that these deviations are how much SLOWER you should go. So you worked very hard, and very unnecessarily yesterday.

For many of you who are new to all this, where you might be confused by much of this running jargon that others take for granted, let's start with the simple analogy that all of us have experienced: burning a pile of leaves on a crisp autumn day. The fire is perfect, the leaves are dry and they are burning nicely, with almost no smoke. This means there is an ideal relationship between the burning fuel and the amount of oxygen needed to sustain it burning in this efficient way. Now with your rake you turn over a big pile of the leaves, smothering some of the burning ones, and immediately you get a thick, milky smoke coming out, the rate of combustion is now retarded and the smoke is everywhere.

So you see I am making an analogy of the human body doing work. You are getting exactly the right amount of oxygen to perform the work, which is running, and if you begin to run too fast, you will eventually get into "oxygen debt", which will cause your body to create lactic acid (that milky smoke!), which will interfere with the muscles' ability to contract and continue the work. Ideally, you want to run in such a way that oxygen and fuel combine to allow you to perform work most efficiently.

This ability to work efficiently is a measure of your present oxygen uptake level, and it can be developed through sound training. It is virtually unlimited too, for any individual. The maximum amount of work that you can do (running speed over distance) burning fuel efficiently, is your AEROBIC THRESHOLD, or AT. What arfenarf was doing with her cruise intervals was allowing her body to function at or near this upper threshold, and providing sufficient interval rest jogs to continue the exercise, thus giving her more total training time doing quality work.

Before any of you read any farther in this post, I will ask you to take a few minutes and click on the link that follows. What you will find is a copy of a speech that Arthur Lydiard gave to the Japanese many years ago. It is worth reading because he makes so many great teaching points, explaining the importance of massive amounts of aerobic work to grow the maximum oxygen uptake, and other training points such as knowing why you are doing a particular exercise. (This last point is important to you Holly, as you were following a training program, just as the Pfitz people do, without understanding why you were doing it. You are not alone, believe me.)

Here is the link. Please read all of this, then come back:

http://www.geocities.com/gprrc/lydiard.html

Now let's refresh our memory of what Lydiard said about given track workouts. If you do a great deal of anaerobic work you end up with fewer quality miles AND the risk that you will not be ideally prepared for your next training run. That's one key point. The second key point is that the anaerobic development is limited, in everyone's case, so you are stifled in what you can improve with that type of work, AND you can develop it anyway in a very short time as a final phase of your training, about 4-6 weeks in most cases. So we can conclude that if you were going to maximize your training to run a faster, stronger marathon, you would invest most of your time in building your aerobic base, and running many, many miles within your aerobic threshold.

Here is a final thing to consider. Two years ago, after Tramps put up his first recap of the year's mileage, by CR Boomer, someone made the observation that the top racers on this site, Joplus, RDracing, DaveinAA, JJ, Dale, Tall, etc., were also the ones who ran the most total mileage. There is no getting around the facts. The runners who invest in running the most miles are generally the most successful. Of course an ideal program will ensure that many of those miles will be at that lactate threshold area, so that you give your body a healthy opportunity to work through mild stress, assimilate and grow.

This brings me to my beef with the "canned" 16, 18 and other "you can run a marathon in so many weeks" programs. They work for some, but the risk to many is that they program too much speed into them at the same time that total mileage is building. I do not like to see speed added during a mileage buildup phase because I have seen too many people get hurt. Perhaps the most competent user of this type of program is Breger, who has stated many times, including recently on the 50+ thread, that he attributes his success primarily to easy mileage buildup. I believe he is right and he has tons more successful and faster races he will run as a result.

I also blame some of the people who adopt these programs when they don't take the time to learn why they are doing them. PDR made a terrific point when she said (paraphrasing here), "don't blame the program; blame the way people use it." There is merit to this. But what if I said, 'Here is a great automobile, the Formula I Ferrari. Anybody can drive this car and set some race records on the track." And so the average car-buyer listens to this, buys the high-performance car and slides it around a tree his first time out. Blame the driver? Or blame the manufacturer for selling a bill of goods to an unsuspecting and ignorant public? You decide.

If I were training someone to run a marathon, I would train him or her the same way I used to train, build lots of mileage first, at any comfortable speed, then slowly build some quality runs into it, marathon pace, cruise intervals, tempo runs, fartlek, all at gently fast paces, and ample recovery times. And no track, unless I am standing right there with a watch. People go insane on the track. You have all heard me scold one guy who is running hard now on an indoor track, for that reason.

I hope this clarifies some of the training issues for the newer runners here, and welcome anyone adding to this, or correcting my language where I have made an error. The general approach however, I believe to be sound. Spareribs

visits so far