Overachievers

 At 20, I thought I should be running marathons under 2:30, as I was routinely beating 2:30 marathoners at shorter distances while I was training for marathons. I was stuck at just over 2:40.

Just then, Allan Lawrence (Bronze medalist at 5K in 1956) published a book with marathon training schedules actually used by people who finished in times separated every 10 minutes.  I immediately looked at 2:30. He had listed required times at 10K and the mile before starting and I had achieved them. I could only do the recovery runs.

So I looked at 2:40. I could do the short speed work, but that was it. At 2:50, I could do most of the interval workouts and the shorter fast continuous runs, but not the longer ones. At 3:00, I could do the longer fast runs, but needed easy days before them and a week or two of recovery, not doing hard runs the next day or two. At 3:10, I could do all the workouts as written; I also could (and frequently did) run 3:10 marathons every week as training runs.

I thought "coaching is easy if you take a guy who could run 2:40, but has only run 3:13, get him to run 3:08, and call it a breakthrough." It wasn't until long after my best years were past that it occurred to me that he hadn't cherry-picked underachievers, but that I was an anomaly, an overachiever. 

Overachievers are rare in anything, but almost unheard of in running. I know of one clear example beside myself: Derek Clayton, who lowered the world record for the marathon from 2:12 to 2:08, a record which stood 15 years.

Clayton's maximal oxygen uptake (admittedly not a perfect measure for marathon ability, but what we have) was 69.7ml/min/kg. For comparison, Greta Weitz, measured on the same equipment by the same person, measured 71.6 and she had set the women's world record 4 times, with a best in the mid-high 2:20s, almost 20 minutes slower. There are now many sub-2:08 marathoners and they almost all have a VO2max over 80. People with a VO2max of 70, like Clayton, tend to run about 2:30-2:35. He was clearly an overachiever by that measure. 

He did it by very high mileage done relatively hard. Word got out that he ran 200 miles per week and he said that he'd done that only a few times, he averaged 170. Over time, he's been pushed to say that maybe he could have run faster had he run less. He's made that 170 a six month figure, he really averaged 140 for years. By the time Fred Wilt got him to write down what a typical week looked like ("How They Train, vol. 3" reproduced in "The Lore of Running" by Noakes) it was down to 120.

He ran 170 because he needed to. At 120, he could have run a 2:30 marathon every week and no one would ever have heard of him. The high mileage allowed him (who had not run a sub-4 mile as all 2:08 marathoners today can run) to run sub-5 mile pace for two hours and be able to carry on a conversation while doing it. 

Overachievers train very hard. They're often injured. They're usually tired and irritable. They often have their best performances in training or in races they were using to get ready for their goal (which almost inevitably is a bust). Their careers are very short.

But they know the limits of what they can do, because they've pushed those limits. It is common now to hear top runners say that the worst thing you can do is to take chances and get injured, because that sets you back, that steady slow progress is the way. These are people who have won championships on minimal training, so of course they think that. They will never know what they might have been able to do, because they never had to find out.

Think about it. If you could win races without pushing, would you ever push yourself? Would you push yourself to the breaking point?

How badly do you really want to know "what's the absolute best I could do?" 

Comparing performance

[I got tired of trying to make pretty images for this. Please bear with it.]

One of the big challenges of running is figuring out if one run at one distance is better or worse than another at another distance. There are apps that claim to do this and some of them work very well for some people. None has worked for me. I had to devise my own system and I think it can work for others.

If you plot World records (men, women, age class doesn't matter much) on a log-log plot, you get this:

There's a steep line up to 800m or a mile, then it flattens into another straight line to the marathon or 50K, then rises steeply again. The marathon itself is marked with an x, it's an anomaly below the straight line; this is because of the number of people who have raced the distance at a high level because one can win one major race and retire if you're from Kenya or Ethiopia. 

If you plot all of your runs, races and training, you get a plot like this.

I have 600+ races and 10000+ workouts, so the data is good (if messy), but you may have to make this just a thought experiment for yourself. The lowest dots should be your fastest races at different distances and should form a straight line.

If that line is parallel to the record line, you're equally good at all distances. The line is then

1.085 log (miles) + log (mile time) = log (minutes)

This is essentially the same as the charts made by J. Gerry Purdy in the 1960s and published in the classic Computerized Running Training by Gardner and Purdy, easily found online. This works best for those whose best races are 5K to 10K.

If the slope is shallower, 1.06 rather than 1.085 in the above, it matches the charts made for Jack Daniels in the 1960s and easily found in any of his works. This works best for those who are by nature marathoners. It's what's used in a lot of sports trackers.

In my case, the line is steeper, 1.10 rather than 1.085 and this is common for 800m/1500m specialists. There is no published charts for this, but the math isn't terrible. 

There should be a line in the center of all the training dots parallel to your races that is your average training run regardless of distance. [Linear regression isn't the best way to find this, as one tends to cut bad runs short and not do truly easy long runs.] For me, race times are 0.79 times this average and I find this 80% (rounding) average run is typical for other runners. 

So, if you have races or common favorite runs that are accurately measured, you can figure out what that compares to at other distances. 

If you imagine looking down the average line from one end, most performances are close to the line and then it spreads out in a normal curve of error. 

There will be statistics in future posts.

The Standard Training Model

This is a good place to start with serious competitive running.

Sunday, run as far as you can without walking or slowing much more than a minute per mile (2, under unusual circumstances). This will be 20-25% of your weekly mileage; if you manage to run more than 2.5 hours, call it 30% and plan to train for a marathon [the few people who manage more than 3.5 hours are ultramarathoners and the rules I state in this post won't apply; I'll try to address them later].

Wednesday is a run 2/3rds as long in miles as Sunday's, with the last 45-60 minutes run at a pace for a race of three times the duration (often marathon pace for faster runners).

The Saturday run is 20-40 minutes done at a pace for a race that takes 1-2 hours to finish [I'll explain how to predict race times in the next post... I hope]. This is about a 5K done at 15K pace for a lot of runners. The total distance of Wednesday and Saturday hard segments should be about 10% of the week's mileage. 

The Tuesday run is 3-5x3-6 minutes (800-1600m) at 5K race pace, with recovery jogs in-between repeats of half the time spent running hard. The total distance run hard should be 8% or less of the week's mileage.  

The Thursday run is 6-12x1-2 minutes (often 400m) at 1 mile race pace, with recovery jogs twice as long in time as the hard repeats. The hard parts should total 5% or less of the week's mileage. 

Monday is generally a few 100-150m repeats at 400m race pace, the number determined by setting the total of Tuesday, Thursday and Monday hard distances to 10% of the week's mileage. Sprinters will eventually do much more of this, but we'll assume for the moment you aren't one. If you're running only 5 days per week, this is one day to take off.

Friday's run is a few sprints of 30-40m, usually done up a steep hill, intending 100m race pace effort, though the hill precludes running that fast. If you're running 5 or 6 days per week, this is one to take off.

Your shorter runs should be under an hour. It may be necessary to run more than 7 times in a week to manage all the above requirements. 

Yes, it's a lot of math. I also have one more rule I use to vary the miles run, but it's extremely complicated and I have no real basis for it and something else will probably work for you. 

................

You may note that the plan has running at paces from 100m to 100 mile race paces, as described in the last post. If you run this schedule for several weeks, you'd expect to improve equally at each one, but what you'll find is that you improve rapidly at one or two and there will be one or two where your body stubbornly refuses to improve. This is a good indication of what you're naturally good at and what distance you should be racing. 

Finding Your Distance

Ideally, the distance you race the most, the one you enjoy the most, and the one you're best at are the same. I might be best at 800m, a distance I haven't raced since high school, but that's unusual. 

If you're passing people regularly the second half of a race, you probably should be racing longer. If you're getting passed a lot in the second half, either you trained badly, got hurt, or you should be racing shorter distances.

A thought experiment I like to use is: if at the end of a hard workout you are given the choice of running one more mile, but it has to be your fastest mile of the day, or running two miles at any pace, which do you choose? Every distance runner I've asked has chosen the 2 miles. Every sprinter has chosen the one fast mile. I've actually tried it; I decide on one, worry that it's not going to be the fastest and so I'll have to run 2 anyway,  so I speed up, continuously thinking of "spent cost fallacy" and continuously speeding up until I sprint the last meters.

A different thought experiment. Imagine you're equally good at every distance from 100 meters to 100 miles. You can run 1/10th of a race distance at race pace every day for weeks (I've done it), so you could run 10m at 100m pace Monday, 40m at 400m pace Tuesday, 150m at 1500m pace Wednesday, 500m at 5K pace Thursday,  1500m at 15K pace Friday,  5K at 50K pace Saturday, and 10 miles at 100 mile pace on Sunday. Moreover, if you were equally good at each, they'd feel like the same effort. You're probably already saying these would feel very different, but if you truly were equally good at each, these workouts would be interchangeable! You could train for 100m races by running 70 slow miles a week - and a few have advocated this. You could train for 100 mile races on only 70 meters a week  - and a few people have actually proposed that as well.

Obviously, this would work for exceptionally few people in practice. You probably have a feel for where on that continuum you would fit.

You have to start somewhere, though. And for that, there's a general training plan that works fairly well for most people for most distances for some time. I call it "The Standard Model." That's what I'll describe in the next post (or 2). By doing it for a while, you can also learn to zero in on what your best race distance probably is and I'll explain that too.

Rehab 1

One of the things I've learned over my running career is how to deal with the hundred minor injuries I've developed. I thought I'd do occasional pieces on them as they appear. 

Adductor hallucis tendonitis.

This happens with high mileage, especially when wearing shoes with a narrow toe box, because runners tend to use their feet like paddles when they step. Spreading toes happens when making sharp turns and trying to keep balance when barefoot and is the best preventative. 

The symptoms of this are inability to spread toes or cramping when spreading. Most muscles connect to two bones, but this one connects to 5. The injury is identified by pain when pressing at the point marked with a green x. Deep massage where it hurts will loosen it up. This should be followed by standing with a golf ball at the pressure point and slowly moving it around until discomfort stops. Then stretching the muscle by spreading the toes repeatedly keeps it from recurring. 

How you train may not matter

For someone who's spent 45 years trying to find the best way for runners to train, it's an odd thing to say it might not matter. If you take a typical career and plot performance over time, you get something like the plot below (intentionally not labeled, as this is just to help illustrate)

When you first start running (point A above), your body considers not running to be normal, and it makes you stiff, sore, and tired to try to keep you from changing the status quo. You try everything: running more, running faster, running hills, switching hard and easy days around, and nothing works. You keep trying and don't improve. This is when people quit, and for good reason; "I tried it and it wasn't for me." How you trained doesn't matter. 

If you keep with it, though, you might start improving, and improving quickly (point B). Your body has accepted running as the new normal and decided to make some changes to accommodate this new activity. This is when racing is fun and addictive. You get better fast and it seems easy. The work you did before is starting to pay off. Every type of running you do is still new to you, so it all helps. How you train doesn't matter. A lot of people when they hit this point have added some new type of training and they think that that is the secret to their success. Many have written books on their "revolutionary" training regimen, when they could have done as well doing almost anything else.

Then improvements start to slow (point C). This is, I believe, the one point where how you train is all-important. That's what I'm going to be writing about in posts for some time. 

Eventually, performance plateaus (point D). You want to improve, but nothing works. You try increasing mileage, you try decreasing mileage but doing more speedwork, you cross-train, you change diets and shoes and try running new race distances (this is when aging runners decide to move up in distance because they don't have the speed they used to). But it's of no avail; how you train doesn't matter. Then you hit the downslope (point E), where you keep getting worse and usually out of frustration, retire.

I'm now 38 years past that point. And I'm still learning. I hope I can pass on some information that's a little more hopeful than this post. Next up: where do you start?

Run Race Returns?

 I'm thinking about writing about running again here. The short version of the past 4 years: I developed severe asthma, got in under control,  but with side effects that made running difficult, managed to train for a marathon anyway and had a bad race.

I've sort of written another book about training in my head. Getting it written seems the next step. The first chapter is why how you train probably doesn't matter much.