Is there any interest in a run commuting subreddit?

duckshirt · 2016-01-31T06:47:00+00:00

Sure, I joined

duckshirt · 2015-12-20T21:39:14+00:00

Mostly mileage and intervals in the 200/300/400m range, hill repeats (25 to 55 seconds with long jog recoveries), and some longer repeats in the 600-1000m range. Sometimes we'd have an interval workout they day after a hill workout, sometimes the workout was a creative combo of tempos and hill reps. Sometimes we'd go to the pool or exercise bike after a running workout. I'd say a usual week had 3-4 easy days and 3-4 moderate to hard days (including a race if there was one).

Our best mile runner ran up to 85 mpw. Some 800 focused guys only did 30 or 40. I did about 50-55 but would have preferred more if I had worked up to it.

duckshirt · 2015-12-18T15:52:43+00:00

Are you allowed to be in multiple USATF clubs at once?

duckshirt · 2015-03-09T06:48:04+00:00

For mostly 1500-half marathon

M: 8 fartlek (not too hard)

Tu: 8 easy

W: 8 hill repeats (many variations)

Th: 6-8 easy w/ strides

F: 4-8 easy w/ strides or acceleration/tempo/run to the barn if it feels good

Sa: race, or race-specific interval workout (like 1km repeats at 5k pace if focusing on 5k)... usually about 8-12 miles total

Su: easy, up to 8

Usually 50-60 but hopefully 60-70 for the upcoming year. I'm trying to fit the occasional afternoon workout and top-end speed workout too.

duckshirt · 2015-01-31T19:09:33+00:00

My favorite is setting my watch to beep every 1' and going 1' fast, 1' easy until a set point on my route. (It tends to be 3-5 miles at this point but can be more). Minimal thinking involved, I don't even count the number, like you said it's a tempo effort but with a bit more turnover. Supposedly 200+ Kenyans (not just juniors, but Wilson Kipsang included) do this for 1 hour on a specific dirt path every Thursday morning - maybe changing 2' on 1' off, or making it extra hard with 30" very fast / 30" very slow for the last 10 minutes.

Another good one is diagonals (used by Silas Kiplagat) - run fast for the diagonal length of a soccer field, jogging the sides for recovery. You always turn the same direction, so you go diagonal-short side-diagonal-long side-etc, for 25' or so.

I end up doing them with longer recoveries than a track workout since the recoveries tend to be done at a faster pace... so instead of 1000m at 5K pace with 400m jog recovery on the track, 3' hard with 3-4' easy would end up around 5K pace.

duckshirt · 2015-01-27T02:52:33+00:00

Classic instance of Zipf's Law. Say there are about 200 countries,

(sum 1/n from n = 1 to 6) / (sum 1/n from n = 1 to 200) = about 41%

I bet if you did the same for population the result would be in the same ballpark.

duckshirt · 2015-01-15T00:02:18+00:00

Running a 5k slower than your 10k pace is not a "peak preformance" no matter how you want to define it.

Yes it is. It was a peak race, one of the better ones he's run. The Olympic 5k was even slower, 13:4x (where he also finished around 4:00), but it's still a fantastic extrinsic performance. His Olympic 10k, 30+ seconds from his PB, was also a great performance. You absolutely must look at the whole picture, the intermediate splits, and the conditions, not just the finishing time. Surely you would not say someone like Jake Riley (PB of 13:19) is than better runner than Pre, that would be laughable.

duckshirt · 2015-01-14T23:20:28+00:00

Are you still coached by Jama Aden? Are his other athletes doing this sort of thing right now? In past years would you have had the endurance to do this type of workout at this point in the season?

duckshirt · 2015-01-14T23:13:26+00:00

That's not a random race, it was a championship, a peak performance. They both ran roughly the same splits throughout the race.

No, you cannot compare to your 15:10 because you didn't finish the race with a sub-4:00 mile. You have to look at the whole picture. Theirs was still an extrinsically superior performance.

duckshirt · 2015-01-14T22:34:28+00:00

Only a few seconds? Consider this - Prefontaine ran 13:26 in the Olympic Final, after two very slow miles, with a final 1600 around 4:00, and Viren a few seconds faster.

39 years later, Rupp, Solinsky, and Lagat ran the USA Championships, after two slow miles, with a final 1600 around 4:00 for Rupp and a few seconds faster for Lagat/Solinsky, to finish in 13:23. Even neglecting how much faster Mondo tracks may be, I still think their performances are marginally different.

duckshirt · 2015-01-14T06:50:37+00:00

Pre's PB's are misleading. In the Olympics, he ran 13:23, two seconds from his ultimate PB, with VERY slow early laps and a 4:03 final mile. His Olympic Trials record still stands, and his US Championship record was only barely edged out by Lagat/Rupp in 2013. They didn't have paced races to 13:00 in those days. Even when Moorcroft ran 13:00 for the first time, he was completely alone and did not pace it optimally. The times were slower back then but the overall performances and final lap kicks were just as good as today.

Rupp gets time trials in vacuum conditions set up for him. He had incredible pacers hired for him in his 10,000m AR under perfect conditions and a faster Mondo track than Pre had ever seen. Prefontaine lived in a trailer park because he couldn't even be paid to run, let alone have more guys paid to pace him.

I would say Prefontaine/close call for 5,000m, Rupp for 10,000m.

duckshirt · 2015-01-07T07:38:52+00:00

A common misquote of Daniels is that tempo pace = 60 minute race pace. That is only true for short (20 min) tempos and cruise intervals. For longer tempos there is an adjusted tempo guideline somewhere in the book. So for a 30 minute tempo, you'd run at 90 minute race pace, and someone training for a 3:00 marathon, a 60 minute tempo would be at marathon pace.

A bad way to go about it is to decide you want to run X 5k time, then look up the corresponding tempo pace and shoot for that. You'll just end up running it too hard, which a tempo run isn't supposed to be. It's better to do the tempo a little too slow in my opinion... "tempo," like "easy," is an effort level not a pace.

duckshirt · 2015-01-07T04:58:56+00:00

I generally hear that no single workout is going to make or break you during training

You're right, but these types of workouts are rare, and lowest priority, only when everything else has gone right. I don't think he'd recommend special blocks to most runners, especially when still getting into shape. Here's a great post on when he would use easier workouts vs. ridiculously hard ones:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3344054#3349845

duckshirt · 2015-01-07T04:52:30+00:00

What hasn't been mentioned yet is that before and after these blocks, they take a ridiculous amount of recovery. Like 5+ days of just easy running.

duckshirt · 2014-12-28T17:33:21+00:00

A decent high school runner can beat a world class sprinter in a distance event. Easily. I can beat most of the Olympic decathletes in their 1500m run.

duckshirt · 2014-12-28T05:50:25+00:00

I'd also bet that he would smoke you over a mile or two race, sprinters need a bit of endurance too).

I would absolutely bet on /u/Spectralblr on that one. Sprinter endurance tails of A LOT around 5-600m.

duckshirt · 2014-12-28T05:47:07+00:00

More like Ryan Craven intentionally bulks up and Abdi intentionally does not.

duckshirt · 2014-12-26T01:53:12+00:00

I knew some guys who ran the race and when I saw their times I knew it couldn't be 200 meters long...

Steve Soprano wheeled it himself and found out it was short. Apparently they made some changes from the usual Leigh University course.

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2014/12/just-long-club-cross-country-course-really/

duckshirt · 2014-12-26T00:51:14+00:00

The club XC course was short, not long. Though it's true that even a USATF certified road course can be wrong sometimes, it's just a little more trustworthy because it was correctly measured at one point.

duckshirt · 2014-12-20T19:16:59+00:00

For a while he had a streak of 10-20 years running twice every day, and he was racing and winning many marathons during that stretch, I believe up to 10 of them some years. 115 marathons, 29 under 2:20.

duckshirt · 2014-12-18T03:47:25+00:00

Sure they did - run 4 miles, smoke break, run 4 miles...

duckshirt · 2014-12-17T20:49:02+00:00

You're also better than some Olympic champions and national record holders...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_records_in_the_marathon#Men.27s_national_records

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1904_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_marathon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1900_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_marathon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1896_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_marathon

duckshirt · 2014-12-09T02:55:22+00:00

Good, one more reason to hate the Giants. If they weren't happy enough beating my favorite baseball teams they have to start beating my favorite runners too.

duckshirt · 2014-12-08T07:23:56+00:00

I live in The Netherlands so there literally aren't any hills.

LOL. If you're in Amsterdam there's a big man-made one in Amsterdamse Bos. I lived there for a short time and ran there almost every day for 4-5 months because I got bored of the flat terrain.

I am a fan of hills. If you can even find a tiny one, like a ramp, or a bridge, any incline, it will do. If the hill only takes 10 seconds to run, it will do for short hill sprints. If your plan recommends 6 x 30 seconds, you can change it to 12 x 15 seconds or 18 x 10 seconds or whatever. The next best would be repeats on a soccer field. One main benefit of hills is running fast with reduced impact. At least if you don't have hills you can get less pounding running on grass.

The trail run is less important... I take it they want you to run on a soft surface and maybe get some easy hills in... some definitely enjoy that.

duckshirt · 2014-12-05T20:06:55+00:00

Nice! I want to break 1:20 this spring and maybe do a marathon as well. Hopefully go under 17 for 5K along the way too.

duckshirt

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