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Distance_Guru · Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2002 9:32 pm Post subject:

Wettmore was talking about the state of American distance running, particlaurly at the high school and college level when he made it so it is totally relevent to the conversation.

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Time is the fire in which we burn

Dan · Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2002 9:40 pm Post subject:

Distance_Guru · Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2002 9:45 pm Post subject:

You still have to train hard to get better. And that means you will get tired.

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Time is the fire in which we burn

Dan · Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2002 9:47 pm Post subject:

Do you not see the difference between training harder and training smarter???

Dan

Distance_Guru · Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2002 9:55 pm Post subject:

I've seen a lot more athletes under train and underacheive in the name of training smart than I have seen athletes overtrain while trying to acheive big things.

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Time is the fire in which we burn

Dan · Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2002 10:05 pm Post subject:

So the answer is to blindly tell people to not worry about easy days and just train hard all the time? I fail to see what is remotely smart about that.

Dan

Hammer · Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2002 11:14 am Post subject:

A lot of Americans talk about overtraining (working too hard)in the same breath they mention elites that are training extremely hard. I don't believe that (most)MS or HS kids even come close to physcially overtraining. Most of them run only run 1 time a day and have sufficient time to recover. They shouldn't waste a workout. Besides they will not run hard enough to do damage.

Conway · Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2002 2:58 pm Post subject:

I think the key here is to define what it means to "train hard" ... And I think training hard also means to "get the most out of your training" ... Which means training smart as well as "hard" .. Simply running and running and running isn't going get you there any faster than only running a little bit if you are not doing the proper things doing training ..

I agree that most distance runners at the high school and college level "undertrain" ... But ... I think it involves more than just teh amount of mileage that they put in ..

I think they are very undertrained whenit comes to speed .. And frankly I think they are undertrained when it comes to stregnth ..

I also think that it stands to reason that the harder you work the greater the need to monitor your body to make sure that you do not injure yourself in the process !!! I meant the ultimate goal is to put your self in the position to compete at your optimum level and you can't do that if you are hurt !!!

That is why at the elite level they use nutritionists, massueses, and other specialists ... Running your body hard is no different than running your car hard .. The harder you run it the more attentionit needs on the maintenace end !!!

NYIntensity · Water Boy Joined: 10 Mar 2002 Posts: 10

The effort required to be successful varies in how you measure successful. If you just want to improve..yes, stay conservative and dont risk 'overtraining' (which i translate to..stay conservative and take it easy). You MUST work hard. I'm a wrestler...you cant imagine the things olympic wrestlers go through in their training...it would be considered overtraingin by many...its the daily routine. To be successful (crushing the competition) you have to bust your butt...more often than not. (Meaning more hard days than easy days with a high majority on hard days). As for the two workouts after a cross country race...our team won 15-50 (a perfect score). Our coach just thought we could have worked harder. SO he made his point. He knew it wouldnt hurt us...because he knows his runners, sometimes better than we know ourselves. So in that sense, know your limits, and break through them....creating new ones.

Distance_Guru · Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2002 10:33 am Post subject:

NY is right the level of your goals predetermines the level of work you will have to put in. To improve you improve upon what you have done, either in intensity or volume. To be at the top you have to have more talent and train at a higher quality and quantity than others. In other words if you want to improve train, if you want to be the best train more and harder than anyone else.

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Time is the fire in which we burn

Hammer · Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2002 11:18 am Post subject:

Most runners who say they want to get better get in a rut. They train the same way week in and week out. Every week runners can up their mileage around 5%. (2-3 miles if you run 50 a week) If this is done over a period of months pretty soon a runner is kranking out 70 mile weeks. Intensity also needs to be improved on a week to week basis. Running slow burns fat well but it doesn't do much to increase the quality of a runner.

Conway · Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2002 2:25 pm Post subject:

Your statement about cranking out 70 mile weeks - along with this thread of training hard made me think back to ARthur Lydiard as he was the guru of the 60's .. Which coincidentally was maybe the greatest period of distance running in the US (the successes of the 70's were born in the 60's .. Check this out ...

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Arthur Lydiard on Running - June 1987
As told by Pete Sexton, mild mannered Staff Reporter
FLYER: How was it that, back before 1960, when everyone else started to find out about Arthur Lydiard, you, as a younger coach, came to see a need for change in the coaching of distance runners?

LYDIARD: Well, I got a lot of criticism. People said, "You're coaching a middle distance runner, and he's running 100 miles a week in the evening, and maybe jogging 40 miles a week in the mornings, and the guy has to run around the track just 2 or 4 times. " But what they didn't understand was that your performance level is really governed by your aerobic capacity, your ability to assimilate, transport and utilize oxygen, not by your anaerobic development. Your anaerobic development is a limited factor - you can't turn all your blood into lactic acid. But these people didn't realize that if we're going to improve our performance level, we've got to improve our endurance, our ability to withstand higher oxygen debts and not get tired.

So, I try to get my athletes into a tireless state, so they can run and run and run, and when they get near to 100 to 250 meters to go, they could kick, they weren't tired, whereas the other guys, even though they had very good speed, they couldn't kick, they were too damned tired to kick. So that was simply the principle of it.
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Makes that 70 miles a week seem like a slackard !!!!

Hammer · Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2002 9:21 am Post subject:

For the most part I am pro-Lydiard. I look at the success of Colorado University and Western State College (in Colorado) and I am impressed.

The amount of mileage a runner puts in differs from person to person based on ability level and experience. All runners can increase the amount of mileage they put in. At the same time runners should not add "junk" miles to bost their weekly totals.

Distance_Guru · Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2002 12:37 pm Post subject:

I find it interesting that at the college and HS levels most coaches use a Multi-tier training system, or as I often refer to it as the Martin and Coe system after the authors of the books "Training for Distance Runners" and "Better Training for Distance Runners". I think there brand of lower mileage (relative to Lydiard anyway), interval based training probably is the best way to train "average" high school runners. It requires less time to show improvement and is less demanding in that it doesn't seem to grind on the athlete as much. I also feel that if done absolutly perfectly it will get an athlete closer to his or her genetic limit as far as performance.
That said I actually perfer the Lydiard system for college, post-college and even the very top high school athletes. Although for the high school kids the mileage should be scaled back somewhat. The reason for this is that it is a lot harder to do the Lydiard system incorrectly. For example lets compare two workouts that are approximatly equal in value relative to their systems. M&C. 10 x 1000 meters and for Lyd. a 13 mile run. With the 13 mile run it really isn't that complicated, you go out and click off 13 miles at a given pace range and that is that. You've gotten the precribed amount of high quaility aerobic conditioning and if you were on or two seconds off on your per mile pace it's not a huge problem. Where as with the 1000's it is much more complicated, you must hit the times right on, the times have to have been calculated correctly, the rest must be right both in calculation and in aplication, the workout must be placed correctly in the training cycle, ect. Basicly there are a lot more things to get wrong with the M&C system.
Also I do find it interesting that when the US was at it's penicle as far as distance running, the Lydiard system was the system being the most widely used, and that today some of the college teams that are the most successful, U of Colorado and WSC (which has won the last three men and two womens D2 national x-c titles) are using systems that are very much Lydiard based.

_________________
Time is the fire in which we burn

Conway · Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2002 3:59 pm Post subject:

While I have mixed feelings about Lydiard's methods it has produced some outstanding athletes .. And as Guru stated was pretty much the system (or variations of it) in use during the US's hey day in distance running ...

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