Nov 10
13
Training to a pace- right or wrong?
Does the “effort” come before “pace” or vice versa?
The vast majority of the literature on endurance training talks about using physiology markers to determine training intensity.
This is a well founded and accepted logic that goes like this:
-Execute a training session at a determined work rate. For example Ride 4 hours at 150 bpm or 4 hrs at 240 Watts
-Rest
-Body adapts
-Re-execute the session
-Over time the average pace an athlete can execute should increase(other things being constant-terrain,climate,etc) for the same effort
-When the adaptions stop you change to a different training stimulus or incorporate rest
For example the Maffetone type school (the bloke Mark Allen set his protocols from) did all their stuff on HR. If you read stuff about Pauli Kiru or Gordo Byrnes early years it was all driven from exacting HR in training
In recent years with the marketing of Powermeters and associated software it has become Watts or Training Stress Scores (TSS), Intensity Factors(IF) or Functional Threshold Power (FTP) -the list goes on ad naseum
Again the idea is applying a hell of a lot of science to determine a training “effort” and by applying a controlled stimulus (work) improved performance will come (PACE)
Ok lets pretend for a minute none of this stuff existed?
Whats our goal? we want to go from A to B as fast as possible and hopefully go faster the more we invest time in training right?
Is there anything wrong with training to a “pace”. If you want to run a 5hr IM bike or a 2.40 marathon why not spend some training the time up to the pace?
A criticism of endurance athletes is many keep training with a focus on “effort” hoping the pace will come?
Some interesting work is taking place amongst coaches/scientists in this area
What seems to be emerging is that by practicing a pace a number of nervous system, neuromuscular, brain, co-ordination adaptions take place
whilst knocking out that 2hr run at 4.30/k may “spike” your HR above your theoretical aerobic training pace -over time there is evidence the body learns to get comfortable and coordinated at this pace
This is especially true for better athletes with mature training histories
There are many that argue that running 3m/k intervals for a IM athlete is irrelevant as you will never run at this intensity in a race. However it is undeniable that it “feels” much easier to run at 4.30/k after you have learned to run much faster
Both schools are right to some degree. You cant discount that there are other adaptions outside of that measured by a HR or TSS going on every time we train. But on the other hand these measures are very useful in stopping us from blowing ourselves up in training/ controlling our rest and recovery
But dont let the science overule your life- there is a whole business out there preying on people who are drawn to things technical and want to pay people to decipher for them. Lawyers have made a killing out of making things complicated for years as have accountants and engineers. This is starting to hit sports coaching too.
When the worlds best runners train in Kenya or Eithopia they spend a lot of time running slowly focusing on how they feel/focusing on effort. They also spend a lot of time running focusing on a set pace not worrying about what the numbers say- experimenting and learning to relax into the pace
There is no right or wrong just dont get trapped into spending all your training time locked in one paradigm
http://3jc.com.au/forum/index.php?topic=4.0
