This is part 1 of a 3 part response to a specific comment.
Part 2 - The Correct Amount of Specific Training
Part 3 - Different Stimulus for Different Runners
A few months ago I received a comment on the blog in reference to the post “Measuring Stress vs. Volume” from longtime coach Steve Session at Telos Running. It brought up a lot of good points and allowed me to clarify my thinking in some ways.
Below is the first part of the comment:
I agree wholeheartedly that there is great value in training at a wider variety of paces than many coaches who follow either an energy systems pacing model or a race distance pacing model realize. Too often runners are told that the paces they run only check off certain physiological check boxes & ONLY those checked boxes are providing a training stimulus. My coaching experience tells me this is not accurate & has led me away from proscribing strict set paces & into a range of paces to allow for daily variability & flexibility. Of course, we need to have references to know what stimulus an athlete is receiving by running at certain paces or things get too loosey-goosey & it becomes challenging to know what responses the athlete is getting from training. But I think a lot of athletes are overtraining so they can hit a pace for a rep rather than seeing that they are training all the way up & down a longer continuum. We'll probably only have our anecdotal experience to prove this since there seems to be no will to use scientific testing on athletes who are not at an elite level.
My introduction to energy system training came from Jack Daniels and Daniels’ Running Formula. His emphasis on training the lactate threshold is something I carry with me, but what did not make sense was running at paces other than velocity at Vo2 max, 60 minute race pace (threshold) and mile-ish pace (Daniels’ repetition pace) were too hard or too easy to produce a desired training benefit. I am not a scientist, but I truly believe stimulus occurs on a continuum and every pace of every run is creating adaption. As Daniels was so research influenced, I think those paces stood out to him as key areas of improvement because they could be easily measured.
The way I see it is just because it cannot be measured, it doesn’t mean it is not providing benefit. During a base phase of training I like to use 5-minute reps at one-hour race effort and other fartlek type work at 35-minute race effort, 10-minute race effort, and even 5-minute race effort. I think taking athletes off the track and getting them in touch with how these efforts should be goes a long way into building appropriate fitness for where they are at and prevents overreaching just to hit specific paces. It also allows runners to use grass and other workout spots that may be more forgiving on the body. More than that, I think it develops instincts for how things should feel during races versus locking into a specific pace on a Garmin.
From firsthand experience, there have been many races where my “10k pace” caused me to run too fast during the first part of a race only to fall apart late because I was too reliant on hitting set intervals and lacked the body awareness to know how the effort should have felt.
There is most definitely room for specific paced workouts when you are close to preparing for a workout, but I think using effort based fartlek early on can go a long way into building a better runner.
