Double Threshold Training: Applying to Track, Cross-Country, and Marathon

(upbeat music) - And welcome to, we're welcome back to the on coaching podcast on C Magnus. - I did find it all, I did find it all like John Marcus. John was going on with my math. - You know, back to give the people what they want. Let's do something exciting today. I'm excited for this one, Steve. - As always, so am I double threshold training and applying it to track Crest Country and marathon. We're just gonna go into the weeds. That's what we do here. If you want to join us going into the weeds, guess what, we've got all sorts of good stuff. Content courses, literally hundreds, if not thousands of hours of work, spending history, science, training, psychology, everything in between in our running scholar program. Plus you get monthly, get together, zoom, meetings with John and I and a bunch of other great coaches. So, if that sounds interesting to you, if you want to level up, check it out. Link is in the show notes with that. - Scratch a runner, nerd itch. Scratch that runner, nerd itch. No better time than going in the summer, getting ready for marathon, cross country season in the States, you know, and getting the heart of track season internationally. So scratch that runner, nerd itch. Don't hesitate, do it today. - Absolutely, there we go. All right, let's get into this week's episode, double threshold training. - Oh, all right, it's happening and everyone's doing it. And you see it all over and I think you see bits and pieces and snippets, I mean, you see it obviously being successfully applied in the track, cross country, and marathon, but it's different, right? When you are going to utilize that kind of training strategy, different times of the season, different periodization, different points of emphasis. And so that's one of the things where it's like, yes, we have a good general perspective of it 'cause we're seeing like what the pros or elites do. But I think, you know, today I'm excited to see for us to talk about how to actually, you know, think about it when applying it to certain types of runners from a kind of training age and background, as well as also certain types of events, as well as in the periodization cycle. 'Cause for cross country track and marathon training, double thresholds important at different times and phases of the season. So it's not just all a shotgun approach. So let's go. - All right, so I think first it's important to give a little bit of history here is, double threshold is of course popularized by angerbrit scents. They kind of brought it into the framework. It's not that they invented it. It's a long, wonderful piece by former elite runner, Mary Spacken, who tracks his history and utilizing this approach and implementing these workouts back in, was a, well, high school runner for Joe Newton at York High School in the 90s. And then became an elite in the late 90s, early 2000s and one of those was in the pre-Super shoes era, was one of the leading non-East Africans who ran, I think, in 1306 or 1307 for five days, something like that. When basically it was just Bob Kennedy under 13 and nobody else. During that era. So back in's article, we'll link to it. It's wonderful. But back in didn't even originate it. He also has a recent article where a different recent article where he outlined some of his influences, including not just Joe Newton, but other people like Peter Coe, who you'd think like Peter Coe, threshold training, what are you talking about? Like we think Seb Coe, we think, oh, just speed work and all these crazy interval trainings, but no, if you look at Peter Coe's work, what does he do? He implemented a lot of different stimulus as at the similar amount of times. And I remember reading his book, gosh, it was a better training for distance runners. And you look up how often you're supposed to touch on these stimulus. And if you look at the little, I can still picture this chart in my head. This chart of how often you're supposed to hit the different stimulus is that Coe saw was important. And it was something like with threshold training during the early phase, it was something like three to four times a week. And I'm just sitting here like, what? How is this possible? But what Coe realized is that you could do dabble or half workouts or partial workouts touching on things. So the point is historically, double threshold, we might think, oh, anger, rinse, it's invented it. And it goes back further than Coe, but we'll stop there. Anger, rinse, it's invented. It's no, we're always looking at ways to increase the stimulus and get a little bit more out of ourselves. And I think that's what the double threshold idea is is it's saying, hey, here's this relatively moderate intensity. How do we get more bang for our buck or is back in, put it, how do I increase my total weekly mileage where I'm spending at high end aerobic abilities because he realized that he was losing the aerobic battle to the East Africans and he needed some way to bridge that gap. I like the thing of it. It's just compounding interest, right? A little bit with high frequency, day in and day out or week in and week out, compounds quickly over time. And that's-- we gotta remember, right? Your current fitness today is a lag of the work and workouts. You've done or haven't done the last several weeks and months. And that's always the hardest part, right? We see these confirmation workouts all the time where it's like, oh my gosh, this person did this workout they're ready to go. Well, that's a confirmation of the work that was put in months and weeks prior to that confirmation workout. And so double threshold isn't really confirmation workouts. Double threshold is elevation workouts. And so it's understanding that it's not sexy. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be this big, big thing that happens on a once week basis. It can happen on a twice week basis or sometimes three times a week basis like Peter Koe demonstrated. But in small dosage because the idea, right, is the recovery penalty from not only the physiology but also the structural integrity, the muscles, the bones, the tissues, isn't that high. So you can turn over and do it again in short order, right? And in 24, depending on your fitness level to 72 hours versus like this bone crushing long run that takes a week to bounce back from. Or these really high intensity speed reps that takes three or four days for the tissues to bounce back from. And that's the beauty of this type of training. Yeah, exactly what it is is I like to think of it as like these small spices or moderate spices instead of going for the home run, right? So if we can stack more of these-- and this was Peter Koe's idea is he figured, hey, if I can stack more of this frequently, I'm going to be able to increase the stimulus over the long haul instead of just going home run, wait several days, trying to come back, home run, wait several days. And this is also which brings us to another point of the double threshold. This is why it's often not done in the traditional Jack Daniels way, which means if you look at Jack Daniels and others before him, when we talked about threshold or quote unquote tempo work, what did we think of traditionally? Go run four, five, six miles straight, no break, add a pace in a zone and like that is the workout. But if you look at what back and did, if you look at Inger Britson, if you look at others, theirs tends to be split up. Meaning in Inger Britson, often for their double threshold in the morning, maybe it's K repeats, maybe it's a little bit longer, 2Ks, miles, whatever it is, something a little bit longer but split up. And then the afternoon, it's often even shorter. It's more igloyal style, 400s with very short rest, not too fast or some variation of fart leg as well. And again, this gets back to the principle that you talked about, which is if we were going to swing for the whole run, we'd say, hey, go run six miles at threshold. And what would happen? The first couple miles of that would feel relatively controlled. And then you'd be like, mile five and six would be, yeah, you're still running at threshold. But it's going to take a lot out of you, both mentally and physically. And what happens is when we split it up, we get to accumulate more load with less stress, which is what partially allows us to bounce back and do it again sooner. I wish I had known about this stuff when I was in high school in college, because I just remember those death march tempo runs, where it's like, all right, we're going to go six, seven, eight miles. And you're just like, you're dragging, you're like, oh, I'm just going to like, you know, will myself through the last two or three miles of this. But it was just like, you're hanging on for dear life versus like, you know, now knowing what we know, it's like, it's okay to split it up. It's okay to get on base, right? It doesn't have to be home runs, just get on base, just get on first base, take a little break. And that's what we see and why like, you know, double threshold isn't necessarily what it to any person or thing. It's this consistency that we see throughout training, intelligent training throughout the history of time where it's like, quote unquote, repetitions and intervals, right, you have little intermittent spices coupled with a little bit of recovery or longer recovery so that you can accommodate and you can get better at the thing versus just the one, the steady, you know, effort until you crack. That's reserved for race day, right? That's reserved for when the gun goes off and there's no timeouts. That's what I love about, you know, double threshold and understanding it and applying it as we're gonna talk about here shortly, two different athletes at different stages in not only their season, but also two in their career. 'Cause I think a lot of times, right, you know, what's happening is we get an example out online or that floats around as a workout and go, okay, this is the template and mod about how to apply it. But it's more of a way of thinking about applying stimulus than it is about, you know, pure exes and knows. We have to copy and paste this recipe in order for it to be quote unquote double threshold. Yeah, exactly. And one comment before we get into the application of it is, I feel like the split up nature also allows you to adjust. Because the whole point is, again, especially with threshold training and back and mentions this and others is that, you know, you're essentially riding below the line. And like once you go over the line, you start to, it starts to shift that stimulus a little bit and makes it more of a draining workout than something you can bounce back and come back from. And that's one of the reasons you split it. But I think from a standpoint of, I remember those long five, six, seven mile, threshold type workouts is if you made a mistake early, you just had to hope and pray that you were gonna be okay. I remember the doing this once, actually, this was my right out of college with Carlos Handler, Brenda Martinez's husband, Big Bear Track Club. Nowadays coaching there, but we were at altitude in Mammoth and we had one of these like seven mile threshold type workouts, right? But it was our first workout at altitude and we had no idea what we were doing. So we thought, okay, yeah, let's do this pace will work. And what happens is that first mile is we bit off more than we can chew. But because it was in the era of like, hey, you just, you're on the threshold, this is the seven, eight mile threshold, you just grind it out. It's like you just suffered for a really long time and your workouts started to go south, but you just suffered because you dug yourself a hole. And I think what we've realized is like, hey, hey, it's not about, you know, toughening it out and, you know, like look how I tough through this seven, eight mile threshold to workout at tempo workout, like I'm ready to go. It's like, no, no, we screwed up the stimulus. You should have probably stopped, took some recovery and like started the camp. - Yeah. So anyways, there's a reason behind this. And again, tying it to history, this is why Zadapak did 50, 400. So Regloid did short intervals. This is why the invention of fart like occurred. All sorts of things like that. This is why you often saw linear athletes do things progressively. So with that being said, let's jump into the, okay, we get it. Here are some ideas behind threshold, double threshold work. How do we apply this in a world that that, you know, tells us this is the thing to do and that we should do it all the time? - If we're starting from like step one, right? Like if we're starting from square one with someone, first we just have to be able to do double runs. Like just do two runs a day and it doesn't have to, I mean, maybe somewhere where it's like an hour each, roughly. Like 60 minutes and then 45 to 60 minutes. Something like that, right? Because that capacity, that foundation, that ability just to do two runs a day, well, if you're doing double threshold workouts, like think about it, workouts are very difficult and trying, no matter even if they're like just little get on base workouts. But if you don't have the capacity, if you don't have the ability to just go for two runs in one day, then if you jump right into that or you have athletes jump right into that, what's gonna happen is ultimately, you know, the juice isn't gonna be worth the squeeze, right? Like you're gonna get over trained, injured, sick, or a combination of all three and it's just gonna be so overwhelming. So first things first, right, is understanding like in kind of that kind of preparatory period of training in a season for whoever, you know, whatever athlete it is, track cross country or marathon. First, we have to get them to a space where they can just run twice a day for the period of time that you're gonna do a double threshold workout. So if it's gonna be two workouts that consists from warm up to cool down in the session of 45 to 60 minutes, great, you wanna start to build a bridge towards that before you start applying it. The next thing, right, is then have them have it. So then one of those workouts or one of those sessions becomes a workout, just a simple broken threshold workout then prefaced or complemented by a second run. So you can do the workout in the afternoon, you can do the workout in the morning and then it's just an easy run afterwards, right? It's really important, I think, that we build the bridge first and understand you have to build that bridge before we jump right in and do the sexy thing that everyone's doing, that everyone says is making, you know, people so fast nowadays. 'Cause it is, it's a part of it, but we have to be smart before we, you know, dive headfirst in the deep end. - I think that's such a astute point that is often missed is that you gotta be able to handle the double (laughs) and you gotta be able to handle the double at a relatively easy intensity and come back. And this is something that if you've only done singles, especially for a high school kid or early in their college careers, it takes a different kind of skill and recovery and adaptation to be able to run twice and then more so, run twice will, one of them is heart. - Yeah. (laughs) - Because it does, if you're used to doing a hard workout and then coming back the next day and getting your run in, that second run in the evening has got to feel weird and strange and your body's gonna feel like, what the heck is this? Like I'm stiff, I'm sore or like, it takes a little bit time getting used to it. We've gotta be able to bridge that gap. And I would say, you know, you can take this a step further is like think of it as transitioning, you know, if the end goal is eventually to do double threshold, then it's double easy, it's one hard, one easy, and then it's like, again, when we say hard, one threshold session, and then it's just adding something in like, okay, we gotta get you to running relatively fast in the second session, meaning adding some strides, right? Doing a very, very light fart lick or what Kenova would call speed variations, which basically means in your seven mile run, adding some 30 second pickups that aren't that hard. And what you're trying to custom your body to do in this transition is to realize like, okay, like yeah, I know I did a harder workout in the morning, but like my legs, I can still warm up into this and still get them to a place where it's like, okay, this doesn't feel that bad, turning over and not just jogging and going through the motions and having a quote unquote recovery run. - Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, Steve, 'cause you know, too, also as a side tangent, you might have an athlete who wants to get the stimulus of the double threshold, but may not have the physical durability. So another thing you can do is make one session or running session, a nervous session, a cross-training session, right, the pool or the bike or elliptical, what have you. So that's something also to consider, because you know, we have to understand, getting people, whoever you are, getting runners to be able to not only handle and withstand double threshold work, but also benefit from it. That build-up is kind of, you have to think of it as a marathon, right? It's not a sprint. We don't just like sprint right to that. So the other thing I think that, you know, to compliment what you said, Steve, and to keep in mind is that too, we wanna make sure that the recovery early on before and after those days is very adequate and the thing to keep in mind, like what I'd like to do when like onboarding or bridging people to be able to get to a double threshold space is thinking in use the heuristic of the rule of six. So six sessions of, okay, six sessions of a double run, right, then six sessions of, you know, a double run and one of the runs has kind of say the canova, farlics or pickups or speed variations. And then six sessions of, you know, where now we have a true broken stimuli or threshold work out. And then, in Easy Run and then Successions of a true broken threshold stimulus and then it's variation. And then finally Successions of Double Threshold. So when you take that graduated approach and again this is a heuristics, some people might be able to accelerate different phases quicker than others. Some people might need to spend a little bit of few more sessions in different phases than others. You see like we start to do the math on this and it's we're talking about you know pretty much 24 sessions plus or minus before we can actually get someone who's never really done double threshold to a space where we can confidently, safely and productively say, yeah now this stimulus is going to have the impact we want without the corrosion, without the fear or liability of you know excessive corrosion or overtraining or injury and fatigue. Yeah and you might sit here and say oh that seems like a really long time but think of it as a coach like the first time you instituted doubles for a runner. Did you go okay you've been doing singles all your all your life maybe you're a college runner now we're going to implement four days a week of doubles. No what did you do you you said okay like you've been doing singles on Thursday I want you to add a shakeout run right and this is and you kept that one day a week for a while until you added and that and until you got to a point where you know whatever goal it is you're trying to reach. It's the same here and I would say it's even more important here because we're adding twice you know two two intensity sessions and within a you know relatively short amount of time which again can you know push us over the edge instead of creating a stimulus for ad adaptation. Now the second thing I think once we get to a point where we can add this is that I think it comes back to what we talked about earlier which is like it becomes really important how you're bridging that gap and making sure that where you are under control. Yes yes that's that's huge and you you know I just I know it you know before you say Steve I just want to remind people it's better to be a couple degrees on the inside of control than right on the red line or one degree over the red line and you know what Mary's back and wrote about this decade ago when he was experimenting and he said you know he's a kind of a science nerd doctor but he said essentially like he would try and have lactate levels not be right at threshold but you know 0.5 below right why because he needed the safety margin the margin for and this is a guy measuring lactate and he's saying hey hey like be careful on pressing the bounds of it it's the same when we look at adding this into training and this is why you look at it as okay how do we do this for the athlete sitting in front of me to create yes we're trying to spend time here but spend time in this place where I can control that and they don't think of it as like oh my gosh I'm doing too hard workouts in the same day how in the world am I going to handle this this is why again we split things up so I want you to think about there are a number of different ways we can do this we can do it again the kind of cruise interval style of you know Daniels or others where we said hey we're going to do a couple mile repeats at this pace and just control it or a couple K repeats at this pace we can do it fart lick style if that's maybe a little more easier mentally where we say hey no we're going to do 6 by 3 minutes with 1 minute off and at this pace we can do it one of my favorite ways which is saying hey I want you to get 15 minutes of threshold work how you split it up whatever just get it done and that seems like what but what you're doing there is you're empowering the athlete to say hey the whole goal is to not come or get close to going over the edge so if I start to feel like I'm going over the edge whether that's at 4 minutes or 6 and a half minutes that's the signal where I stop jog around for a while and start again until I get my 15 or 20 minutes of threshold work and I think the most important thing to compliment that Steve is kind of what you said you want to meet the athlete where they are and you want to make sure these sessions are very approachable and not overwhelming and and and give them permission to be like hey yeah when it comes overwhelming or when it comes red line or becomes excessively difficult take a step back either cut the session take a longer bit of recovery what have you because we really want to ensure that they understand the intent of what they're supposed to feel behind this workout because again it's so sophisticated relative to the mindset that most people have when you say quote unquote workout you know when people say workout they think straining going max tilt like you know it's not a quality session unless hands are on the knees you're collapsing on the track and those sessions are important and matter down the road to kind of call us you for the race day stimulus or a stay a reality but these sessions are more about just working where you're at with it you know at the upper limit of your threshold and that's the key thing is communicating that to the athlete your threshold might not be the same as Billy's threshold as Suzy's threshold initially early on and this can be tough though like dynamics of group settings right where you want to have groups together so it's always better you know in the group setting dynamic when you if you're part of like a cross country team or you know track team is making sure like the groups that you do make as a coach are respectful of you know where everyone's at and no one's really being overly pressed or pushed and so sometimes that can create smaller pairings like threes and fours versus like eights and tens but that's okay as you start as everyone starts to elevate and gain fitness. Yeah and I think this is important it's your job as a coach to recognize this is the goal and to inform them because it's different and this is one of the major mistakes I see when we implement double threshold training is what often happens is we treat it like the mental side or the mindset of other workouts meaning the goal we go down the track we hit the paces sometimes we turn it into confirmation workout where we're trying to confirm our fitness and we say oh man I ran my threshold repeats at you know 450 mile pace instead of five minute mile pace now I'm ready to go the goal especially when doing double thresholds is not to confirm fitness it is again to ride below that line and accumulate time in that that space and intensity so what that means is you've got to reframe and reteach that both to individuals and even more so with the group and what I would often do with our threshold training for the group is I would take you know when we split off into groups I would take the the quote unquote fittest or most senior guy in that group and I'm really like hey if I'm not there like talk to these guys and see if anyone feels like they're struggling because way back you know when I got my start coaching high school and then I did this with college as I would often run the threshold sessions with different groups and then just start talking to them in the middle of it and you could quickly see oh no Billy says he's okay but he's really he's really working hard here and you give that senior you give that person either permission that you know inform you if you're there or like tell the kid hey stop take 30 seconds or we're going to stop and take 30 seconds and like get back under control and then get get back on this so giving that leadership and then the other part of that is if you say hey I can't do that I don't I have that trust or development yet which is fine um then what I would say is consider having your quote unquote threshold workouts done either on a grass loop or a track where you can observe and what I love to do again when I was coaching college athletes and do this as we had these grass fields and I just watch and if someone felt like ah that that one's going a little too hard for me I'd be like you know what sit out this this loop the rest of your group is going to keep going you're going to get a rest and then we'll jump back in here or we'll move you down a group and put you in this or adjusted in some way but you're observing and watching and it's not a negative you're saying hey like I'm going to teach this is this is we're we're a little bit harder than I want you to be on this so like let's let's dial it back a little bit yeah and that's it's important to understand like these are foundational sessions right like we want to you know keep that always in top of mind or especially when they're early on in the training cycle for the season they're foundational sessions then when you start to transition them from the kind of early kind of base fillet phase build up phase it would have whatever you want to call it early in your progression to later in the the season and this can be again for more track across country type people this is going to be then maintenance sessions so you want to say hey we're doing these hard types of things and you know on the track or these harder repeats that are a little bit more at race pace intensity. We wouldn't want to compliment in the afternoon or sometimes even just within the tail end of the workout itself Some of this just maintenance threshold work if the athlete's right because it's gonna have one Recovery effect it's gonna have like a flushing effect to it and then - it also will maintain that general aerobic capacity Even on the quote unquote tired legs and it's really important to remember that the pace doesn't matter so much In the later part of the season when you're doing this as a compliment to a more difficult race-paced oriented session It's more just about back to effort. So someone might be like oh well. I was doing double threshold at You know six-minute mile pace coach in you know The build-up or the base phase of the season and then I we just did these like you know 800s at 5k race pace effort and then this afternoon I went to double threshold eyes only able to do or a threshold session eyes only able to do Repeat miles or broken miles at 620. That's okay. That's fine Like as long as you got the stimulus and the you know the breathing heavy and the aerobic effort You nailed it and so it's just affirming again. These are these sessions When they are applied at their best are applied based by quote unquote feel or Sense of the athlete versus being more mathematical remember their physics is cano would say These are sessions about the physiology not so much sessions about the mathematics Absolutely and again, I think that's really important This is why I back in and ingrubrits and all those measure lactate because they realize it's about the physiology to set the standard if there's One intensity or zone that really is physiological it is lactate threshold or you know They're about because we know how to you know the effects of writing below that line and pushing that boundary and Improving that that threshold in those high-end aerobic abilities. Okay, so we've gone through kind of like Okay, how do we transition how do we bridge into this how do we? Do all the things you hinted at something that I think is really important which is like foundational versus later, but I want to Branch it out a little bit further and say okay. How does this differ? When we look at using it for cross country interaction Yeah, I mean it's Cross-con what I love about cross country right is cross country everyone's writing the same race distance So it's a little bit more uniform because the time commitment or the time The race time is fairly similar for everyone on your team now when we go to track It's much wider variance because you're gonna have the 15-8 type people who run cross country You're gonna have the five and 10 k people run cross country. So that's a key thing to keep in mind is Just understanding that in cross country we are gonna do this at kind of a little bit with a little bit more Uniformity versus in track. It's gonna be way more individualized based off the event group you're in I mean Steve how would you kind of build off of that perspective? Yeah, I think your spot on I think what it does is it shifts the the role Because if we look at threshold Just in general what role does it serve well if you're running a 10k in cross country It's a very important support because like threshold is what is it? It's relatively the pace that you could sustain for an hour give or take and if your race is 30 minutes give or take Like it is directly supporting that race meaning it is the Basically the highest or under robic ability that is like giving you the the aerobic support to sustain that 30-minute race Now if we change that we change that and we say okay now how does it differ for a 1500? Well all the sudden there's there's a bigger gap there right there's not a direct connection to use Canovas language between our our race pace and our three and a half minute or three Minutes and 45 second race pace. It's still serves a purpose But it's more of a kind of general aerobic support meaning it's laying as you use these words earlier that foundation of a Robic ability so think of when that comes now in terms of it it's importance So if we're saying okay for a 1500 runner We've got to build this aerobic foundation and we start off with lots of easy stuff and then we add in some high-end aerobics Some tempos the threshold and then at some point we say okay for this athlete We've got to really get that threshold up. This is one of the limiting factors We introduce this double threshold we emphasize it when does this occur? It's early in the training block Because why is it early we have to lay that foundation and then we have to do the work to connect it to the 1500 specific work Okay So what that means is it serves a different role Think about it in cross country is yeah, it's still Earlier in the season in the training block, but it's more connected to This is the so it's almost like your pre competition, right? It's not the base phase It's the pre competition before we go into a more hey We got to nail our specific work and like get sharp for this period. It serves a different role Now if we change that just for example, I say okay What about for 10k athlete on the track? Well there it mimics a little bit more cross country 5k It's a little bit in between if we go all the way out to the marathon. Guess what its role has changed. Yes Because now we see it as threshold is actually It's still a robeic training, but it's our speed support meaning It's essentially speed work for the marathon in a layman's term. It's a robeic speed work and it's speed work meaning It allows us to get a little bit sharper right to be able to create that gap between You know half marathon speed and the marathon speed that we need so we might depending on our marathon training We might say okay a robeic training our marathon stuff is really good, but like it doesn't feel that comfortable right now So what do we have to do is we got to go do some speed and just like a Myler might say hey, I need to do some 800 pace stuff to make this pace feel easier a marathoner might literally say I need to do a little bit of speed and sharpen up somewhat and we might do some double threshold training to get that like Boost that ability so that we create that gap. So the point is the difference of where it falls in your training periodization depends on the role that is serving and the last thing I'll say before hitting it over is You can see this in anger ritzens training like you talk's double threshold double threshold threshold But if you look at it it comes primarily during the base or into a little bit of pre competition phase Where they're really emphasizing this and back and shows this too and then back and said years ago he said Well, then when we're competing He almost puts on his Peter co-hat on and says hey, I got to do some of this Quote unquote VO2 max stuff or fast interval training and then those threshold workouts essentially become Okay, what is the dose that I need to maintain this right where I'm not pushing the bounds of it But I'm just I'm just maintaining this ability Which again tying it all the way back to that Peter Coach art that I saw in the book decades ago Is it goes from three to four to one to two per week? Why? Because co goes alright, we built this thing up and now I'm now I'm just maintaining it I just need maybe Instead of a double threshold I pull from canova and say you know what I'm gonna do a track workout in the morning and then I'm gonna come down back with a Threshold fart like in the evening and it's not double threshold is still double workout But what you've done is maybe some rhythm or pace stuff in the morning and then said you know What I got to maintain my threshold so I'm gonna do some threshold fart like in the afternoon because I'm not trying to Improve it anymore. I'm just trying to maintain that ability Yeah, I'm so glad you brought up that point about the marathon versus 15 Steve like you know a rubik is such a tricky Laneverbige in our you know language of training because it can mean a lot of different things and you know for aerobic support Aerobic maintenance aerobic elevation threshold what you know all these different You know verbiage that's out there. It gets really confusing. I mean I still sometimes get confused You know when I hear people and read training and think about training because people have just a little bit different Way of explaining something but you crystallize a very important point for you know the marathoner It's understanding that double threshold is Speed work that is specific specific type of speed work that supports the Marathoning pace right because the physiology needs the aerobic capacity the mitochondria need to be dense enough enough high function of 2bc support. that constant churn and recycling of lactate and other fuel products in carbohydrates and fatty acids as we're going at this pace. But on the other side of the spectrum, right? It's the 1500 meter runner. This is a setting up so that when they do, like say, Mary's back in, the VO2 stuff, they can process the recovery from all those metabolites being flushed into their system with that high-end VO2 work much more expediently. So it's a different, kind of physiological response for, say, the track runner versus the marathon runner. But equally important to have this stimulus in the training menu and often and done with regularity. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's where it's often thrown into double threshold means the same thing for everyone and everything. But it's not. It depends on the stimulus year after the event you're training for, the athlete in front of you, and the other thing that I'll say, and back and talk about this a long time ago, is where certain middle distance runners, let's take that 1500 runner. If you take a 1500 runner is more speed-oriented, and these double threshold workouts can backfire because what it does is it boosts your threshold. But it almost shifts the, we'll call it the sea-solve balance between aerobic and anaerobic capacity and power, too much in the direction where you lose what made you good. You lose the gear. You lose the gear switch, right? So it's like you can just go along at a certain pace and then you lose the first three laps, and it's like this feels aerobically super duper easy, right? Hey, no big deal. But then at the bell, then it's time to switch gears really rapidly and really quick and just like, you know, turn the screws. You lose that capacity because again, you're so robotly fit, but you don't have the neuromuscular training behind you to get the turnover that you need. So it's tough for the middle distance runner to about how long to emphasize double threshold and to be careful not to over emphasize it in the middle and late parts of the season. Exactly. And if people are hearing this and they're like, "But anger is since a 1500 runner," but he's an endurance-based one. And he's the world champion, Olympic champion, in the 5K. Yes. 5K. Exactly. So it depends where you're coming from and what your strengths are. And if you look at angerbrits and his strength is not shifting that gear, it is grinding it out and essentially being like, "All right, I'm going to kill everybody else's gear because like, I don't have a huge gear shift. So let's go and let's ride the line and go run something crazy faster. You know, have a long draw out, you know, pace for a while to get rid of that. And I think that again, it comes down to, "Okay, who are you? What's your physiological makeup? What event are you trading for?" And all of these factors come in to say, "Okay, how should we use this?" Because, you know, we've talked a lot, but if you zoom back out, essentially what it is, is it's saying, "Hey, the stimulus is important. How do we get more of it? We're going to emphasize this. A way we can emphasize this in a relatively safe way is to do it twice in the same day to get more bang for our buck. Great, but you have to decide, like, does that emphasis is that needed in this moment?" And I should say there's, what makes threshold the thing that people often latch on to when we do double workouts? Is that it's, of all the workouts you could do, it's the relatively safest to do it twice in the same day. Because as we've pointed out over and over again, you're writing below a line, you can bounce back, you're not creating as much residual fatigue, it's easy to bounce back. Kenova also has another kind of double workout, right? He calls them special blocks. In those special blocks, sometimes it's threshold workout, but often what it is is something intense and specific and he's saying, "Hey, we're going to raise this, we're going to apply as a big stimulus, raise the bar and see what we happen." And different from the double threshold is, he's saying, "Hey, the key here is, make sure you're well rested coming in and well rested going out." Because this is going to be, essentially, we're going to swing for the fences a little bit, not in any individual one workout, but by doing two of these relatively hard workouts in the same day. And we've got to have that recovery to bounce back and come back. The reason that hasn't caught on as much is because it's for really advanced athletes. It's really hard. It's really hard. I mean, that's it, right? And this is why it's tough. It reminds me, I guess we'll go there. It reminds me years ago when the race and then workout was invoked because Salazar did it all the time. Where you do a race and then you work out afterwards. And some people had success with it. And many people just like, "Oh my god, this pushed me over the edge." And it's like, "No crap. This isn't an advanced session, right? Where it's especially if you're doing something relatively hard, is this is the canova special block. You've got to be able to have the ability to bounce back, recover, and be in a good spot." This isn't unfortunately, as I saw it often used, for the high school or even low-level college kid, just because we saw some elite do it. It's the same with the special block in canova training. It's really hard. That differs from threshold training because it's a little bit easier to utilize because you're not pressing those boundaries. Yeah, it's the important thing too is understand. It's about exploration, really. Explorations are key here. It's not supposed to be perfect. It's not supposed to be high precision, but you want to be persistent with it. And know that for double threshold, that's the nature of the enterprise. The fun, sexy stuff like that, right? Where it's like, "Oh my gosh, you raced and then did a workout or this crazy special block workout, right? Those are for people who need a really, really high degree of stimulus to get an adaptation and compensation effect. Most of us mere mortals can get away with just relatively persistent and consistent exposure to this stuff on a regular basis. So I think for how I look at it when we apply double threshold, and where we apply it is different, right? As we kind of have alluded to in this podcast for the track runner, the cross country runner, and the marathon runner, right? For the track runner, it's early in the training cycle and then it becomes something that's supportive. For cross country, it's early to mid and then it becomes supportive towards the end. And for marathoner, it's actually going to be, not to say double threshold early on, but just double work or double pre marathon pace or date marathon pace. And then it becomes, you know, one workout at threshold, one workout at marathon pace, and then it becomes double threshold because it's again more speed support or speed side aerobic support. So you're going to have more of that emphasis towards the end, middle and end of the training cycle towards that big race than you would for each one. So kind of, you know, the flag and the sand shifts for each type of group. And being sensitive to that and understanding like, all right, it's early here, it's early to middle there and it's middle to late here. Really can help us as coaches think a little bit more intelligently about when to apply the stimulus to get the athlete the most benefit for the event the training for. Yeah, I think that is spot on. That's a good way to kind of summarize where it stands and how to utilize these things. I think if, you know, I could offer anything else, it's that this double threshold is invogue. And when things get invogue, we tend to apply them half-hazardly and often in places where they don't often belong. But if you look at, again, going back to the history, look at anger Britsons, look at, going back further, looking at back and looking at code, looking at others. But especially back in, is there's an intentionality behind it. Right? There's an intentionality behind it. And we as coaches need to make sure that we don't just say, "Oh, everybody's doing this." Like, let's just throw it into the training. No, be intentional about it. How are you bridging that gap? When are you periodizing it? What role does it serve in the training for the athlete sitting in front of you and for the event that they are preparing for? Those are the guiding markers. And it's not to just jump on the bandwagon, but to say, "Okay, this fits in, and this is the stimulus I need for this team or these athletes because of, you know, X, Y and Z reason." Yeah. And what I had also had to do is to that too is when we think about kind of constructing double threshold sessions for the athletes you're working with, there's different rules on thumb I have. So for that kind of track runner who is 15/8 or 15/5, the way I think about it from a time standpoint is you want to have the session be roughly, if you're more of a 15/8, it's going to be about a 3 to 4 to 1 time ratio. And what I mean by that, let's say somewhere runs a 1500 and you know, 4 minutes flat or 5 minutes flat, well then it's going to be 15 to 20 minutes of that double threshold work for a session. So 15 to 20 minutes in the morning, 15 to 20 minutes in the afternoon. Now if they're like more of a 5K 10K, it's more 1 to 1, right? It's more 1 to 1, so it'll be 30 minutes or 15 minutes. It's not a lot of time or not like going deep on this. Now if we're in cross country, same deal, it's going to be probably like more 1 to 1 and a half, meaning if they run, say let's just simple numbers, 20 minutes for a cross country race distance, not going to, you know, worry about the distance, 20 to maybe 30 minutes of that type of work, right? Maybe 30 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon when they're, it's fully realized. And then for the marathon runner, it's actually going to be somewhere where it's like half to a third, right? So if you're running a three hour marathon, it doesn't make sense to do a double threshold that is 90 minutes in the morning and 90 minutes in the afternoon. And it can even be parsed down even more. And what I mean by half to a third, I mean half to a third of the total time. So let's say you run a three hour marathon, then that total time that you're going to do a double threshold work in one day is going to be maximum 90 minutes to like 75 minutes. So in the morning is going to be maybe, you know, 45 minutes, 60 minutes in the afternoon, maybe 20 to 30 minutes. What have you, right? So it's understanding like for the different events, the amount of time spent there because again, for the, as we've talked about before, for the track runner, that's more of a building physiological building thing for the marathon runner. It's more of a speed support speed specific aerobic thing. So the percentage of time relative to race time is going to be different to make sure that you get the stimulus and adaptation and exposure. That is one manageable to effective and three repeatable. Couldn't set it better. John, I think that's a great way to sum it up and leave it for listeners. So hopefully you found some good value in that. If you did, don't forget to check out the running scholar program. Thanks so much, everyone, for listening to us and sharing the podcast with your coaching and running friends. We appreciate it. 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