50s, overcast, dry
mind/body - zippy
easy effort
Easy effort with a hard effort sprinkled in that is! I'm an addict to running period. Even though I committed to taking two weeks as mellow as can be, I'm finding it more difficult than I imagined. I'm 41 years old and when my legs are zippy I have to jump at the opportunity cause these days don't come 'round too often. So what I did today was just a sprinkle of hard (2.55 m - 16:06 (6:18 pace) - 337 ft climbing) to get the legs and lungs conditioned for the next couple of weeks. I feel quality, not quantity, is what my training has been lacking.
10 comments:
Long easy volume is something you have already (obviously) adapted to. And what happens after you fully adapt to a stimulus? It's the law of diminishing returns. And as a Masters runner you will lose fitness roughly in this order:
1) Vo2 max
2) power
3) strength
4) endurance
Endurance is very easily maintained and also very easily built... and it's the last thing you will lose. Vo2 max and tempo are where all of us old guys should be more focused. Matt C did it for Leadville and that other bad ass... Paul DeWitt. ;)
Saturday at 8:00am?
What's the difference between power and strength?
AJW
And that's why this masters runner will see you at 8AM
Technically, strength (and speed) is a component of power.
But strength is basically muscles ability to exert force against resistance.
Power is more explosive and implies speed of movement.
Lucho, this is good stuff. So, you build power by working on explosiveness (fast, hard, efforts, etc...) and strength by resistence work (hills, weights, etc...). True? If so, can't you do all three (vo2max, strength and power) with hilly tempo runs blended with fartlek work done for an hour plus to stimulate all three systems?
AJW- I doubt this will make complete sense... I've only had one cup of coffee so far.
You could work on two, but getting the most benefit for the effort would be limited. By only working on one system you can gain much more quickly. In order to truly build any one of those three you have to be able to activate the muscles in a specific manner, of course there are always some generalized or accidental benefits.
If you want to build power then the effort needs to be at near maximum effort and very short, like 8"-15" long and then you need near full recovery (synthesis of ATP). These efforts should be short enough to not illicit a high HR or high breath rate (use of oxygen is almost absent). If you hold the effort for a longer period of time then you do not build power as much, but you start to work more towards V02 max. Once fatigue is introduced in to the mix, then we get in to fuel issues and depletion of acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction which causes a loss in full muscle activation. But this can be good for fatigue resistance. Strength could be gained, as I said it is a component of power so you could work them simultaneously.
So let’s say you did a workout where you ran this structure:
Wu) this has to be fairly thorough and your core temperature has to be elevated, muscles hot and loose. 20:00 minimum with fast strides and/ or drills to prepare for the hills.
6 X 10" max effort hills. These build power specific to running and when they are done truly at maximum effort they are quite difficult and cause muscle breakdown. In order to build power and strength you must break the muscles down to force adaptation! Then once they heal and recover you are (theoretically) stronger and more powerful.
Recoveries have to be no less than 2:00 each.
Then went in to 4 X 1:30 at Vo2 max. These have to be well above threshold and just below maximum efforts. Once again, recovery must be close to full. Fatigue will only limit your ability to reach the appropriate effort level. 3:00 minimum up to 5:00.
Then you might go in to 30:00 at FT/LT.
So here we have ~1:30 total run time.
So you are covering 3 systems here, but it's very likely that the first set of power intervals is going to throw off muscle function for the next set. You may be too fatigued to hit Vo2 max (which is only slightly lower than max effort) on the 1:30 intervals, and even then in order to stimulate Vo2 effectively you need to be utilizing oxygen specific to Vo2 max and you need to be able to push hard enough to do this, the hill intervals (and remember that the body is recovering constantly during a workout which requires high levels of oxygen and nutrients) could very well limit this ability. And then by the time you went in to the tempo you are already producing so much lactate (and you would be low on muscle fuel) that you will likely be WELL below threshold PACE. Pace is a critical factor here when we talk about running fast. An exhausted muscle will produce high levels of lactate even when walking but this doesn't mean that you are gaining the same benefit of running tempo when you are fresh.
And then there is the recovery issue. This workout would tax your systems so severely that you may carry fatigue in to the next session which then delays recovery and limits the benefit of the session. One golden rule is that if you can't recover from a workout then don't do it. Any well written training plan should be planned around recovery days, not quality days.
Wow, and Lucho only had ONE cup of coffee!
I've always thought about power and strength as: Power=ability to get "it" there, Strength=ability to keep "it" there. I'm a simpleton and all the technical stuff just confuses me.
Darren
Darren- Simplified analogies are often times far better at making things make sense. When you're out running hard who cares if ATP is being synthesized at an adequate rate? If you're getting "it" there faster than the next guy that's all that matters.
Lucho - this is great stuff.
Regarding working on these at the same time ... so, I think you are advocating that those not get be done in the same workout, but would you generally endorse that masters runners (with a good aerobic base) mix in separate workouts to hit all three?
Definitely GZ. All three should be fairly simple to fit in to a week and this is a fairly classic structure. Nothing too new here. Lydiard had hill bounding which was also designed to increase power.
It all really does come down to recovery in deciding how best to structure the training. If you are wasted all the time then the "quality" training ends up being low quality, once again, nothing new there. Quality and volume should almost never cross at our level. At the very pointy end it is OK and good... but unless you're a 2:10 marathoner the rules are different.
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