Not sure my measly average of 25 mpw qualifies for 'proper' 80:20, but my breakdown is around that, maybe edging towards 90:10 and I'm seeing WAVA over 5km improving.
Thanks JDA. I have a 1/2 marathon in 60 days that I would like to PB at (sub-90). Annoyingly I estimate I was in about 85 minute shape last year but got injured.
Longer intervals seem to be working well for me. I suppose I'll just have to experiment.
Some inspiration from Steve Vernon on this hill running focus
I think real speed work (so short sprints and strides with good recovery) is very useful for distance runners. Seeing it as specific plyometrics is a good way to look at it and hills remove some of the requirements that scares distance runners.
Thanks SPR - I read the speed article a few pages back - quite interesting.
Trying to draw up my own plan and think I will include some hill sprints on one of my easy days. I can't save the following videos on YouTube (as they are marked for children) so pasting here. They are from Dan Nash - (2:15 marathoner) on Welsh Althletics and cover the basics and how to put them together. It might be a bit too simple for most on this thread but I found some value. He leans towards an 80:20 model and gives a couple of example weeks towards the end of the 2nd video
I've made my own plan to experiment with over the next 8 weeks. This is the first week with some volume squeezed into the first day as I'm away for a long weekend. The ratio is about 90:10 easy to hard or 80:20 if the Wednesday PM ckib run is zone 3.
Clashing easy as zone 1&2, Hard as zone 3,4,5,6
Sessions will change but will mainly be a bit of vo2max work and a bit of Lactate Threshold or Lactate Turnpoint. Hill sprints with longer recovery give me a little zone 6 exposure. Long run will build up on Saturday or Sunday sometimes all easy, sometimes mixed with a bit of MP or threshold.
Weights are to be minimal - mainly to see if I can build the routine.
Everything might change after the first week. I dont have any like for like races, so parkrun might have to be my benchmark.
I'm not particularly up to date on polarised training but if you were looking to make your 1/2 marathon a goal race I'd include a weekly run of at least 10 miles or 80-90 minutes.
I think it's a good idea to have longer reps at/above HM pace.
My only other comment was that you have a lot of 8km runs, I used to commute 4 miles to/from work most days, then when we went into lockdown I switched to 1 run daily and got some decent variation in distances and paces I improved quite a bit despite running similar overall mileages.
Yeah overall it looks pretty reasonable but I agree with Brunski that you probably want some longer runs. Of course this is only one week a long way out, maybe you have longer runs planned for the future.
This morning I did a steady 16km even though I'm not particularly training for anything, just ticking over.
I agree with SPR about plyo/strides even for longer distance running. However I do a little bit of that within a steady run, it's not a speed session per se for me.
I agree that sprinting provides useful plyometric training. I also found Steve Vernon’s video on mountain running interesting. Up-hill running is clearly good for aerobic fitness. I have always also included a modest amount of down-hill running in my programme, largely because I consider it to be an effective form of plyometric training. I was interested to read a recent paper in which regular stair climbing (up 10 floors, then take the lift down) was compared with stair descending (take the lift up and descend 10 floors). I would have expected that the only substantial gains from stair descending would be resilience due to the eccentric muscle contractions. To my surprise, the aerobic gain from the regular stair descending exceeded the aerobic gain from the stair climbing in that study.
These days I do not run either up or down stairs. I would now describe myself as a casual fell jogger who runs only because I enjoy being on the hills. Running downhill is especially exhilarating. It is good to know that there is at least some evidence that running downhill is not only exhilarating and good for muscle resilience, but also good for aerobic fitness.
I would have had a long run on the Sunday but I'm at Edinburgh Comedy Festival this weekend perhaps not living mt healthiest lifestyle so I'm not sure what I can run that weekend.
The rough plan is to alternate long runs between all easy and mixed effort with some Marathon pace or threshold or both.
The Half-Marathon, is not my main goal. Just training to train at the moment. Legs atrophied a lot after double illness, so keen to get a bit of muscle back.
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That's interesting on the stairs Canute. I wonder why that is. Perhaps the greater loading/ tension?
I did my hill sprints today. Only 5x15s to test the waters. I gave myself 2:30 recovery.
The Garmin thinks my fastest rep was only 4:00/KM which is definitely wrong - not that it matters. It record a peak speed of 1:46/km digging into the graph.
My legs were a bit uncoordinated but held together.
Despite feeling demanding on the heart, heart rate for the reps was a lot lower than the warmup / cooldown easy run commute.
I might try more reps next time or a steeper section on the hill.
Polarised training is a form of training that places emphasis on the two extremes of intensity. There is a large amount of low intensity training (comfortably below lactate threshold) and an appreciable minority of high intensity training (above LT).
Polarised training does also include some training near lactate threshold, but the amount of threshold training is modest, in contrast to the relatively high proportion of threshold running that is popular among some recreational runners.
Polarised training is not new. It has been used for many years by many elites and some recreational runners. However, it has attracted great interest in recent years for two reasons.
First, detailed reviews of the training of many elite endurance athletes confirms that they employ a polarised approach (typically 80% low intensity, 10% threshold and 10% high intensity. )
Secondly, several scientific studies have demonstrated that for well trained athletes who have reached a plateau of performance, polarised training produces greater gains in fitness and performance, than other forms of training such as threshold training on the one hand, or high volume, low intensity training on the other.
Much of the this evidence was reviewed by Stephen Seiler in a lecture delivered in Paris in 2013 . vimeo.com
In case you cannot access that lecture by Seiler in 2013, here is a link to his more recent TED talk.
ted.com This has less technical detail than his 2013 talk, but is nonetheless a very good introduction to the topic. It should be noted that from the historical perspective, Seiler shows a US bias.
Here is another useful video by Stephen Seiler in which he discusses the question of the optimum intensity and duration of low intensity sessions. Although the answer ‘depends on circumstances’ he proposes that a low intensity session should be long enough to reach the point where there are detectable indications of rising stress (either the beginning of upwards drift of HR or increased in perceived effort). If longer than this, there is increasing risk of damaging effects. A session shorter than this might not be enough to produce enough stress to achieve a useful training effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GXc474Hu5U
The coach who probably deserves the greatest credit for emphasis on the value of low intensity training was Arthur Lydiard, who coached some of the great New Zealanders in the 1960's and Scandinavians in the 1970’s. One of his catch-phrases was 'train, don't strain'. However Lydiard never made it really clear what he meant by ‘quarter effort’. I have discussed Lydiard’s ideas on several occasions on my Wordpress blog. For example: canute1.wordpress.com
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80/20
Jun 2019