Run-Down Forums

[Paul]

By this I mean a workout that would look like "6 intervals at 5K pace for 3 minutes with a 1 min rest" vs "800m x 6 at 5K pace with a 200m recovery" I hope I am making sense here. It seems that I read a lot now about people doing their hard training for a specific time period instead of for a specific distance. The reason I am interested in this Topic is because of the posts in "Training for 800 m runner". DG mentioned a workout consisting of 40 sec runs followed by a 20 sec rest. I assume many people use a combo of the two but maybe some people have completely switched over to timed periods(or back!) and I would be interested in their reasons. I would hope that posts would also include things like timing devices (stop watches, etc.) that people have found helpful.

thanks

Paul

[ This Message was edited by: pnb470 on 2002-05-02 02:00 ]

[eddie]

The session we do that close to that is 3x3x300 with 30 sec rec between run and 6 mins between sets.

[Hammer]

While working with up to as many as 30 athletes at a time I use timed intervals instead of distance to keep everyone on the same rest.

exe: 3x8min @ 5k (my top end boys will finish 2000 meters in that time period while most of the runners will not. I then get their pace by getting their time @ 1600; and judge the workout by their speed)

I have seen a lot of 800m programs with timed intervals; more than with any other distance.

[Dan]

A point that one of my old coaches hammered home is that the only reason to run on the track is to closely monitor pace. Too many people make the mistake of looking at the track as speed work, but you can run fast anywhere! So, if you're going to run on the track, it only makes sense to time it.

Dan

[Distance_Guru]

The bottom line is that running for distance and running for time are really the same thing. The human body doesn't understand distance and pace, it understands duration and intensity of work. For example, when you run a mile at 5k pace, lets say that is 6 minuntes, what you are really doing is you are running at the intensity of work that your body exerts when running a 5k race, for 6 minutes. Putting a distance on it just makes the results easier to understand. My 40 secs at 90% of 400 PR pace with 20 secs rest workout could just as easily be 350 meter repeats in 40 secs with 20 secs rest.
But, basing workouts off time and off distance both have advantages. For example, if you base a workout off time for example 10 x 2mins at 5k. Then all of your athletes run the same workout, start and finsih at the same time, have the same rest and it is very easy to control from a coaching stand point. But unless the group of athletes you're working with are very close in terms of performace the workout will be better for some athletes than others. That is because even though all the athletes are working at the same time and intensity level, that intensity level will have to be maintained longer for a 23 minute 5k runner than for a 17 minute 5k runner. And therefore these athletes are working at 5k intensity but at a different percentage of their 5k time. Where as if you do 10x400 at 5k pace with 1 minute rest then even though you're athletes will be finishing the workout at different times, they will all be getting the same amount of running at 5k intensity for the same percentage of time it takes them to run a 5k. Which you should choose to do depends on, if you are focusing on getting each individual to run at the absolute best, or if you are trying to make the workouts as easy to administer and complete in a certain amount of time as possible. If you are an individual trying to determine which type of workout to do it doesn't matter. It is usually easier to start with a distance and figure how long it will take you to run it than to start with a time and figure out how far you should run in that time especially when the workout is done on the track. If you don't want to run on a track and you have some other way of judging distance (such as knowing each telephone poll is 30 meters apart or whatever) then you can do either and they will both be equally effective.

_________________
Time is the fire in which we burn

[Olga Sarti]

[Please do not post duplicate topics.]

[ This Message was edited by: Dan on 2002-05-10 17:06 ]

[Olga Sarti]

[Please do not post duplicate topics.]

[ This Message was edited by: Dan on 2002-05-10 17:06 ]

[Paul]

Thank you for all your replies. Let me add a wrinkle to this. Let's say you went out for a Fartlek workout but you wanted to have a bit more structure to it. Say you warmed up and then you did an up and down ladder of fast paced runs at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 minute with 2 minutes between each at your normal pace. What kind of stop watches are out there that you can set to chime at specific times? Or what are your favorite watches that you like to train with?

Paul

[Dan]

I doubt there's any stopwatch available, short of a handheld computer or something, that's capable of counting down that many different lengths of time. You could set most any stopwatch to countdown/repeat for 1 minute and just keep track mentally of how many beeps correspond to the interval you're on.

I've been on a mission for the ultimate stopwatch for some time now. Having contacted retailers and top stopwatch manufacturers directly, I'm afraid to say it doesn't exist. Least creative product niche on the market.

Dan

[Distance_Guru]

I've never seen a wrist watch that you could program to do exactly that. Although I have seen treadmills that could be programed to do somehting like that.
_________________
Time is the fire in which we burn

[Paul]

I'm revisting these posts again because I've been mulling over the answers over the last couple of days. I realize that it is important to correlate time and distance to get a sense of pace. Hammer's post was interesting because even though he may send his athletes out on an 8 min run, he still gets their times at a set distance (in this case 1600m) so he can determine their pace.
But it is DG's post that is the most compelling. If I am interpreting this correctly, it is the slower person who is short changing him or herself by training strictly off time. In your example (DG) 2 people running 10 x400m, one running 90 sec intervals, the other running 2 min intervals, both have run 4K at their 5K pace, even if one has run 15 minutes and the other has run 20 minutes.
This has me thinking that I should scrap the timed runs and stay with timed distances except in a fartlek run where I might like to do a timed acceleration.
I may be reading too much in to this, but I wonder if this is part of the reason you have some issues with Jack Daniel's coaching. When he sends 2 athletes out on a 20 minute tempo run at 10K pace, a 32 minute 10K runner is covering 62.5% of the distance, a 50 minute 10K runner is only covering 40% of the distance.

Thanks again for your posts.

Paul

[Distance_Guru]

Actually that isn't the reason I don't like Jack Daniels. That stems from my first coaching experience. I was still in college, my university didn't have an organized track program so I coached during the spring, and I was coaching at a local high school. I had never organized an entire seasons worth of training before and Daniel's book had just come out and with all the hype surrounding him, I just decieded to use his book as a guide. I went with his methods and the athletes never showed any real improvement. All the interval, fartlek and tempo workouts were right where they were suppossed to be, at the proper paces. And the athletes just never really got faster. Since then I've used a system that is influenced by Vigil and to a lesser extent Martin and Coe, and I've had mych better success.

On a strange side note the 20 minute tempo remains a staple of my training program today. The reason for the time as oppossed to a distance is that 20 minutes is what is generally recognized as the optimum amount of time spent at lactate threshold during a tempo/fartlek/anaerobic conditioning run. Longer and the threshold increasing diminish per minute of running. Less and you aren't spending enough time at lactate threshold pace to get the full benefit.
_________________
Time is the fire in which we burn

[training2run]

After better than 25 years as a distance and ultra-distance runner, I go nutz ( ) on the track. Hence, I do most of my training on hilly trails.

It's impossible to calculate distance on the trails, so I just run for a specific length of time (one to three hours).

Since it's impossible to keep an accurate track of distance on the trails, it is also difficult to calculate pace. So I don't lose my "sense of pace," once or twice a week I end my trail runs with about 8 laps or so on the track for time.

By the way, does anyone know which lane of a 400m track you have to run in, to get close to 440 to the lap? The second or third, I think, but it would be nice to know for sure. Mike www.training2run.com

[Paul]

Thanks, DG. I knew that 20 min was considered the correct amount of time to spend at tempo, but I wasn't sure how that played under your general theories. Interesting info about Daniels. Speaking of Vigil, isn't Drossin having some kind of year this year?? I think I'd pay a decent ticket price to see a Drossin/Runyan 5000m.

Mike, actually the 2nd lane would be much farther than 440y. Toward the outside of the 1st lane would do it. You have to make up just a bit over 2.5 yds per 400m which you will notice is much less than the stagger between lanes. Coaches, am I correct on this??

[Dan]

It's similar to the not often discussed problem with improvement in runners, or comparisons between significantly different levels of runners. Take a 13:30 5k guy that gets down to 13:00 or compare a 14 flat and 17 flat runner. You're getting into some rather different energy requirements in both scenarios, so a single training approach will have a difficult time taking that into account.