Let's have a pro and con for quality of miles vs quantity of miles in the summer.
QUANTITY:
PRO:
Minimally invasive training mentally and physically.
Lower chance of overtraining.
Prepares for the volume and duration of the school year.
CON:
Missing the middle steps between 6:30-7:30 pace summer miles and 5:00-5:30 pace Fall workouts.
Less effective at developing aerobic capacity.
QUALITY:
PRO:
Makes transitioning to Fall workouts more natural
Allows for bigger workouts in the Fall, and an improved ability to recovery from them.
CON:
Chance of burnout if taken too intensely.
Higher chance of injury.
Obviously neither extreme is correct. Don't run 25 miles a week at 5:45 pace, but don't run 140 miles a week at 8:00. The 2-3 quality days per 8-10 days I was talking about are days with a regular run, maybe 8-10 miles, a few steps faster than the usual 6:45-7:15 clip, working down to 6:00 or so for the last half hour. I really think the benefit is huge of having a run like this every week. They are completely aerobic, the way our tempo runs SHOULD have been over the summer and during the year last year. As I've said to Nick a few times this year, no one should ever DNF a tempo run (which I've stupidly done my fair share of times). If you do, it's not a tempo run. Tempo running is pushing up and improving your aerobic limit, maximum aerobic output, threshold, whatever you want to call it. To do that, we run at or just below that limit. Running just below that limit, we're still completely aerobic, meaning you should never ever feel a drop of lactic acid build up when running "tempo pace." The benefit of this kind of training throughout July and August is better preparation for full on tempo runs and tempo /cruise intervals, which are the 8k paced stuff like 5xmile, 3x2000, 5-8x1200 type workouts, as well as developing your aerobic engine over the course of months and years. Those of us looking toward the marathon in a few years (which is basically all of us based on who's been posting) should be very interested in this. Uptempo running is pretty close to marathon/half marathon pace, which I think Corey mentioned in his post. I think HM pace is the ideal middle ground pace where you can stay minimally invasive, while still increasing the bounds on your maximum aerobic output. OK someone else take over.
That, and running a lot on hills a few times a week. This will be another post once I'm home. We did no hills in September October or November last year, and I think we, or at least I, paid the price by sucking monkey nuts at Mt. Greylock last year.
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This makes sense...I had a different concept of a "quality day" (i.e. workouts at tempo pace we do during the season), but this seems like good preparation that won't kill you by the end of the summer.
ReplyDelete-And Corey...your idea of transitions between phases seems smart. It seems easier mentally to think of the summer in phases, and adding different aspects of the training gradually won't be as physically taxing.
I'll definitely take your ideas into consideration when deciding how to train this summer.
That's also one of the benefits of doing hill sprints during the summer. It helps to transition from phase to phase, from slower stuff in the summer, to faster stuff in season, by recruiting muscles that we wouldn't otherwise be recruiting without the sprints. It makes going from running 5:40 pace during workouts to 4:40 pace less of a change because those muscles have already been developed.
ReplyDeleteThe only things I don't completely agree with here are that quantity is less effective at developing aerobic capacity and quality gives you a higher chance of injury.
ReplyDeleteThe first would need to be qualified because if I do 20 miles per week, all quality, my aerobic capacity is going nowhere. The second I think depends on the runner a lot. While I've been able to handle crazy mileage in the past, I know runners who break down at 60 mpw, even doing easy mileage with a safe build-up.
Another item that I think is very important during the summer is running a long enough long run. Many of the benefits we look for in a long run don't occur (or at least are restricted) when you only reach 12-14 miles each week. Mitochondria production increases greatly up near two hours. You're working a different energy system. It can also be very beneficial to increase pace towards the end of the long run to make further use of the changes in energy breakdown. Magness talks about it a lot in various places here: http://magstraining.tripod.com/