S1E6: The Ultimate Guide to Speed Work: When and How to Implement

Hello everybody, welcome to the consistently good podcast. I am your host Jeff Cunningham. Today we're going to be talking about speed work. We hear the term speed work thrown around a lot. But what does it actually mean? Is it faster than jogging? Is it faster than race paced? Is it sprinting? We're going to walk through the different training zones, the different kinds of training, and we're going to have a deeper understanding of the process of building what we call speed in a distance runner. We're going to learn about different kinds of muscle fibers, how they work. We're going to learn about different kinds of paces, in physiologically and scientifically, what we call them in the context of speed, speed relative to a 5K marathon. Half marathon. At the end of the day, what I'm hoping is is that you'll be able to draw something from this, whether or not you're an experienced runner, an experienced racer, a coach, or somebody who's new to the sport and have a larger understanding on the physiologic processes that go into speed, what we call speed, and then how to build it so that you can end up being the best runner that you can be. What is up everybody? Welcome to the podcast. Today's episode is one that I've been super, super excited about. We get to dive into the marrow that is my coaching life, which is speed work. The reason why I say it's the marrow of my coaching life is that this is what we do to try to get faster. I coach people to hit PRs, to hit their personal best, to be the best that they can be, to maximize their potential. And this is the component of the training that I think can be a little bit confusing sometimes. Call it confounding if we may sort of how it all fits together, how much of it to do? What does it look like? Are we talking about sprinting? Are we talking about running just a little bit faster than goal marathon pace or half marathon or 10k pace? So what is speed in the context of being specifically a distance runner? Right? And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to dive into the specific kinds of paces, the different kinds of training that we do, what we call these different kinds of training and sort of parse out what speed is. Now let's remember, speed work can be relative to the event that you're doing, right? If you're running the mile or you're racing the 5k speed relative to race pace could look very different, right? Then what your marathon pace is because obviously marathon pace on race day is going to be much different than what your pace might be when you race a 5k, 10k or drop all the way down and race the mile. So I'm going to try to take maybe some of the mystery out of it for those of you who might be a little bit vague, a little bit confused on exactly how it all fits together. And then for people who are watching this, who may have been in the industry for a long time, may have been racing at a high level for a long time, hopefully you're going to garner some tidbits, maybe a refresher on some of the science of speed and how we go about building out this beautiful, beautiful house that is our fitness with the blueprints that we're given and then the blueprints as they lay out the training. And so when we talk about speed at its essence, we can talk about sprinting, right? Running from home plate to first bay, base after we get a hit, exploding, running down a basketball court, dunking the basketball, that's explosive, that is all speed based stuff for lack of a better way of putting it in running terms. We're looking at, you know, you race the 60 meter dash and indoor track, the 100 meter dash outdoors. And then of course, we have sprint distances at 200 meters, 400 meters. And then we start getting into the mid distance of 800 and speed even for those events is very explosive. Now when we talk about speed and we talk about getting faster on the aerobic side of the coin, we actually have two big buckets that we sort of put fitness in and we put our training in. It's anaerobic, which is without oxygen. And then we have aerobic, which is exercising using oxygen, right, as the main conduit to which we generate energy. And so what we're going to do is, is sort of parse that out even with more specificity so that you can get some ideas on how we go about training these systems when we train them. And then how you train a special aerobic system, which has sort of very layered sort of approach to it with very different paces that have specific physiologic goals. And they have different names that we've identified through the course of scientific study. Speed work. What does it look like when we're actually just doing flat out foot speed work? We're talking about explosive work, 100 meters, flying 40s even when my wife and I are obviously we're coaching the four by 400 meter relay and the 400 and the 200 meter dash at the high school level. We're talking about doing flying 40s, right? We're talking about doing really, really fast reps, maybe multiple reps of 150 meters with a lot of recovery, typically doing them late in the season to simply address the white fibers. Okay, we have white fibers and we have red fibers. The red fibers in our muscles are fibers that operate aerobically. Okay, red fibers actually when you buy off your muscle, actually have a red color to them. And it's largely due to the fact that they have a really, really high myoglobin content, which means that they're able to operate very aerobically, really, really high mitochondrial density, which is what is used for aerobic respiration, meaning when we breathe in oxygen, okay, the red fibers are able to use that oxygen and they're durable. The red fibers are for extended physical exercise for not just minutes, but sometimes hours at a time. Okay, those are the endurance fibers. They are not explosive fibers. And then you have your type two fibers. Now, what's interesting is is we always heard about fast switch slow twitch. Well, the slow twitch fibers, okay, are those red fibers, but then when you have fast twitch, we actually have two kinds of fast twitch fibers. Okay, we're born with a finite amount of these fast twitch fibers, which were referred to as white fibers because when you actually buy off the muscles, it actually sort of has more of a white color to it. Physically, you can visualize it. It looks different than the slow twitch red fibers. Those white fibers are type 2A and 2B. Now, type 2B is flat out sprint speed fibers, explosive fibers. They do not and they will not use oxygen, the aerobic process by which they function. That is reserved for the red fibers. And then what's interesting is you should top 2A fibers in the coaching business. And I think that it's safe to say that even if we don't characterize it like this, if we don't talk about this, in the coaching business and in the training business, meaning those of you who are training to run races, these top 2A fibers, which are referred to as malleable fibers, these are the ones that we spend so much of our time ringing our hands over this workout and that workout in attempt to try to recruit them. And you pull them this way toward being more light red fibers in their function. Okay, these top 2A fibers untrained are going to function like just flat out speed fibers. Go dunk a basketball, sprint the first base, run the 100 meter dash. Right? But we can actually take these top 2A fibers and through the course of the training that I'm going to talk to you about in the different training zones, the different training intensities. Physologically, you can actually get those to perform more like red fibers. And at the end of the day, running a long way, running really, really fast for an extended period of time is our goal when we're running 10Ks, half marathons, marathons. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and pause it down to 5K in even the mile because I could show you the percentages of each one of those races where we're accessing our aerobic system and have higher aerobic demands versus the non-oxidative process, which is simply fast burning fuel, where you're literally just a moments away from sort of falling off of the performance cliff. Okay? Now, how do we go about doing this? I talked a little bit about developing speed. Frankly, we don't need to spend a ton of time talking about doing traditional speed work, in other words, sprint work. Why we're simply not using that system a lot, running most of the races that the viewers of this podcast are going to be training for anything from the mile up to the marathon. Yes, I said it. Even the mile, when you look at the percentages of the time during that race where you are actually accessing a certain system and you're using a aerobic energy is still gosh, in like the 70 to 75% range, some estimates even up to 80. Even in the mile, mile. Okay. So when we get to the marathon where it's 99% aerobic in its composition as far as the energy system we're using, we simply don't need to spend a whole lot of time running 150, 100 meter reps. We don't spend on need a whole lot of time sprinting until we have blood squirting out the corners of our eyes, right? Because that is not the system that we're going to be utilizing. You don't need to spend a whole lot of time trying to do long division. Okay. When the test is calculus, so make sure that what you're doing is that you're training matches the race that you're training for. Speedwork is important. I do have my runners do some what we refer to as neuromuscular stimulus work. Okay. And when I say neuromuscular stimulus, typically what I'm talking about is anaerobic workouts of anywhere from 15 seconds up to possibly 45 seconds up to 60 seconds at a time, but really nothing longer than that. Strides, maybe eight times a hundred meter strides, a hundred meters fast, you know, after an easy run twice a week, maybe on a Friday. And I know that many of you, maybe if I've worked with you, coached you or provided you some advice, know that a lot of times maybe on a Friday, I might interject eight or 10 times 100 meters with a jog in between, or maybe we'll interject small little surges, 15 to 20 second surges, multiple times a mile, or maybe 30 seconds once per kilometer in the middle of an 11k run, or a couple of times per mile in the middle of a seven or a nine mile run, maybe on a Thursday or a Friday. Just pow, hit it fast, then slow back down. That's plenty of neuromuscular stimulus typically when we're trying to run distances that take anywhere from 45 minutes up to three hours, four hours to raise, okay? How do we start prepping our bodies though to start handling, you know, the rigors of running fast? First of all, let me point this out, I was reading a really fascinating article the other day, where the author made it clear that you have to earn the right to train fast. What does that mean? Basically what it means is that if you are new to running, or you are coming back from a long layoff from running, or if you are simply coming out of a phase where you've done a whole lot of just slow, what we I think commonly refer to as zone two running, or just let's just call it generically really easy running. You have to be careful jumping right in to doing hard, fast interval training, tempo running, whatever you want to call it, okay? You have to earn the right to go fast. You've got to go slow first, you've got to build a reservoir of fitness, you've got to understand, and I've said this before, maybe on other podcasts I've been guest on, this is a turkey baking sport, okay? In a microwave dinner world, we want a microwave, everything, and we want it now. You have to earn the right to train fast, and so you earn that right, and I don't mean it from sort of an a haughty sort of exclusionist sort of perspective. What I mean is that you have to be careful with your body and not overload it, so you have to earn the right to train fast by equipping your body with the ability to handle the rigors of harder training. Run more. Become what I refer to as running competent. When I say running competent, people go out the door every day, be able to handle running five, six days a week, 30, 40, 50 minutes a day, right? Four, five, six days a week, where you're just comfortable with it. Some of the most satisfying messages I get from some of the people I coach, I got one in the middle of the summer from one of my athletes, and she hadn't been sort of banging away at it and it had been tough and she didn't sort of beat her head against the wall, and not feeling like she was feeling great every day. And then sometimes it just clip, right? I got the text messages, hey coach, I felt running competent today. And I'm like, yes, yes. And so the point is we earn the right to train fast by just simply feeling sort of running competent before we delve into the complexities of structured interval training and tempo running and all that. How do we do that on a front end? I love to incorporate fart like work. Most of you might be familiar with the term fart like it's just the sweetest word for speed play. Okay, speeding up, slowing down, speeding up, slowing down. Now, what I try to encourage people to sort of think about when they go into fart like training is not this sprint die dichotomy, right? Where it's you sprint like your hair is on fire, and then you're literally gulping air, begging for a mercy killing after whatever the assigned segment of fast running may be, whether it's 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes, three minutes. And so I tell people it's like this, when I assign a fart like workout to you, or if you're performing a fart like workout, the spin assigned to you by your coach or advisor, it might be say, I don't know, 10 times 30 seconds fast, a minute and half easy, or 10 times two minutes fast, two minutes easy, or you can get super elaborate with it, you know, five times a minute fast, mean to easy, two, 10 minutes sort of tempo sections along with another five times a minute fast, mean to easy and let Dylan, I mean, there are innumerable ways to do fart like don't overrun it, don't overrun it, don't fall prey to the one at all, and I want it now. So I'm going to go and act like this is like two a days of football where you're getting yelled at, the coach is hucking his shorts up and screaming at you, you know, and all that. We don't need to approach it that way. We can let the fitness sort of creep in almost insidiously by just pulling off, keeping it moderate and doable so that like I like to tell people, so you don't feel like you're gasping for air, you feel like you have to stop and walk during your recovery. What I like to do on fart like training is make it continuous running, right? So instead of sprint, die, sprint, die, how about speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, almost like taking your car onto the inner state and going between 50 miles an hour and 75, 75, 50, 75, 50, not 90, 10, 90, 10, not that I were ever advocating, driving 90 miles an hour. We want to get speed tickets, but we only want to get speeding tickets on the race course when we're running, not on the freeway, okay? So speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down. And what fart like training does is it provides both psychologically and physically less stressful way of introducing pace work. Why is that? Well, because I don't assign times or paces typically for a scribe distance, pre-prescribed distances, excuse me. So I don't say, all right, go run 14 times 400 meters in a minute and a half apiece with 45 second recoveries. That's not what we're doing. How about let's go do 14 times a minute quick tempo, a minute easy, a minute quick tempo, a minute easy. And what it allows you is for the runner to regulate their own pace, feel their way through it. I'm regulate their effort in a way that's not psychologically stressful or as physically stressful because you're not given some arbitrary time. It's been written down on a training plan a piece of paper where all of a sudden you get into this sort of success fail mindset where it's like, oh my god, I was one second off. Doesn't matter. Speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down. Just use your sort of your athletic intuition. And I always tell people, here's the rules. Once again, I will reiterate this for the third time. No gasping for air, no begging for a mercy killing and you're probably doing it right until until I tell you, hey, I want you to sprint all out. And this is going to be really hard. And I need you for whatever reason might be. I need you to embrace the suck on this day. Very rarely would I ever prescribe that because what we're trying to do is gently bring you from running easy and it running faster. Now, once we get to that point, right, then we can start doing some very pace-specific stuff. We can sort of start prescribing, um, um, repeat sessions or tempo run sessions. Now, when we think of speed work and I see people who are referring to their quote speed day, I completely understand the usage of the term because it is a big bucket for running that is either hard or is faster than prescribed race pace or just faster than easy run pace. This podcast and this episode does not meant for sort of some sort of sort of snobby sort of gatekeeper approach to running terminology because that's just so off-putting. But what I want to make sure is that we really, really understand the dynamics of the paces that we're running and the system that we're working and how much speed we're trying to squeeze out of the turn up on this particular day. All right. And so when you look at the training levels, so to speak, Max VO2 has sort of been this goal standard. It's sort of been this term that just taken on a lot of its own over the last 40, 50 years. MVO2 basically is the maximum amount of oxygen that we can absorb during strenuous running. Okay. MVO2 pace, um, has been debated and frankly, you know, there are some people, that may say that Max VO2 pace goes all the way up to 5K pace and I really, really take issue with that because even the best runners in the world, you're looking at 12 and a half to 13 minutes is there all out 5K pays. And then frankly, that's even outside of the time frames that most exercise physiologists would agree is what MVO2 pays is. What is it? It is the pace that you can sustain running all out for about eight to 12 minutes. So me being the non-mathematician that I am, I decided to go ahead and take the laser way out and call it, let's call it 10 minutes. It's how fast you can run all out for 10 minutes. Now I take issue with the, with climbing the MVO2 pays can be 5K pays because that means literally the fastest man in the world, okay, runs the 5K in 12, 30, 12, 40, right? And then all the way up to, you know, 30, even 32, 33 minutes, right for the 5K, for age groupers. That's not MVO2 pays, okay? MVO2 pays is going to be in that 8 to 12 minute range, all right? Now it's difficult pace. It is a fast pace. If we all think about, if we had to go and run an 8 minute race or a 10 minute race, how hard would we be running all out for that time period? Extremely hard. It is in some of the more elite athletes, something that's akin to their 3K or two mile race pace, right? And so when you look at this pace, you have to do it in very, very measured amounts. You have to be really measured in your approach because it is very fatiguing. It is stressful on your connective tissue, your fascia. You can't do a ton of it all the time. I would say that the upper limits is probably maybe 7,000 meters of work, you know, at MVO2 pace, probably maybe 8,000, but typically anywhere from 4 to 6, 7,000 meters of work. Now I think we're all familiar with the concepts of interval training. And typically MVO2 pace running is done in a repeat session. MVO2 pace running is so stressful that you really don't want to do more than 3 to 4 minutes of it at a time without taking a break. And when we look at these breaks, typically you're on a 1 to 1 ratio, okay? Because that is how much time it's typically going to take to clear enough lactate from your blood to be able to get back to the starting line. Some of you who may have trained for marathons are familiar with the workout called Yasuo 800. To be honest with you, I feel really bad. But suffice it to say, Yasuo 800s are essentially just MVO2 800 meter repeats. Why? You do a 1 for 1 recovery on it, okay? And typically you're done in, you know, increments of 8, 10, 12 repeats with 1 to 1 recovery. So if you do your 800s in 3 minutes, you get 3 minutes recovery. And people assert that if you could do that, whatever your average is for those, then you're capable of running a marathon on that. So if you do them in 3 minutes, then you can run a 3 hour marathon. If you do your Yasuo 800s in 250, you're capable of running a 250 marathon. For various reasons, I don't necessarily agree with that because we got to look at so many other factors, guys. Are you running 40 miles a week or 80 miles a week? Are you doing lots of other types of training such as lactate, threshold training, aerobic threshold training, critical velocity work? I'm going to discuss all that in a few moments. So I'm not sure that the Yasuo 800s are necessarily the greatest predictor of your marathon time. But for the purposes of this conversation right now, those are MVO2 reps. Frankly, where you're running so hard that you need to take a full recovery that's equal to the amount of the work about that you just hit. Now, what's great about MVO2 training? It trains our system to be able to process lactate more efficiently and we run aerobically for longer periods of time the more we do it. The problem is it's stressful enough that you can't do a ton of it. And so we also know other ways and other systems that we need to train to really build this massive aerobic engine. And so when we start looking at other types of training, you sort of start going up a ladder, both in the amount of volume of it that you do, how often you can do it, but then we actually ratchet back the actual pace is that you're training at. And so when we end up looking at other types of training, it's interesting because you can get to lactate threshold. But in between lactate threshold and Maxfield 2 pace, there's this sort of magical pace that trains almost two systems at one time. And it's commonly referred to as critical velocity pace. Okay? Now, it's funny because when I was training high school runners for a long time and I still do train several high school runners, I started looking at ways to sort of conquer the beast so to speak. Cross country for boys in the fall in high school is 5K in every state in the country. Cross country in the fall for high school girls is three miles or five K in almost every state in the country. There's a few who still run some 4K races and there's a few divisions in some states, even like in Texas, in the 3A and down to 1A, which is our smallest classifications here in Texas, where they still run two miles. But nonetheless, we're looking at racing cross country distances from two miles up to 5K, which is 3.1 miles, right? And then on the track, you're limited to the 1800 to 1600 in the 3200 at the high school level. There's a few special meets where they run 5K, but 5K is not actually really a contested distance on the track in either the boys or the girls divisions in any state at the highest levels for their state championships, so to speak. And so when I was coaching here for years and years in the state of Texas, I started trying to figure out what is the best way to get these young men, these young women super fit. And so I started noticing there was this pace where we could do fairly high volume of it. They didn't seem completely wrecked when they were done and we were able to come back and feel pretty good the next day, knock out a nice fairly high volume day of running without people complaining about being achy, exhausted, lacking in motivation. And so I started having people train at these paces. And for lack of a better way of putting it, I stumbled upon some literature where I started reading and I thought to myself, "Hum, you know, and listen, I'm more of a butter knife. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, okay? I'm a JD. I'm a doctor of jurisprudence. I'm not a PhD. I'm not an MD. I'm not a DO, right?" And so a lot of the stuff that I have learned has been through both some study by getting on the old computer and reading articles, but also field research guys. You look at what worked and look at what different. And then I started noticing this critical velocity pace. What is it? It's commonly referred to as the pace between between what? Then MBO2 pace, which I just described to you guys in relative detail, and then lactate threshold pace. Lactate threshold pace is the fastest pace that we can run, right? While being able to not go lactic. And when blood lactate starts building and it is accumulating in our bloodstream faster than we can clear it, right? That's when we've sort of reached our lactate or anaerobic threshold. Lactate threshold, anaerobic threshold, same terms. And you may have heard them. They could be used mostly interchangeably for all intents and purposes, okay? What is that? That's 10k pace. For some people, you're mostly people up to half marathon pace, but maybe like 10k pace, up to like 10 mile race pace is sort of your lactate anaerobic threshold pace, okay? Now, what's critical velocity pace? It's a pace that's between MBO2 pace, which is how fast you can run all out for 10 minutes, lactate threshold. Let's call it 40 minutes to an hour, okay? Critical velocity. 20 to 30 minutes, maybe 25 minutes, the pasty you could hold if you were running all out at that pace. Here's what's so awesome about CV is what I call it. You can do lots of it. You could do it relatively frequently, typically you do it. I would say in high doses, sort of 12 weeks in to your goal, 10k, 5k, half marathon marathon. This pace works well for developing everybody. I would even pop. And I've used it successfully even for 800 meter runners 800 meters is a half mile, right? But really well for the mile the two mile the 5k 10k half marathon marathon why It is the single pace in the single intensity Right that recruits those type 2 a fibers and pulls them the direction of These type 1 red fibers critical velocity pace Really works those malleable fibers malleable means changeable malleable from a volitional intentional approach you can change how those muscle fibers work CV pace magic CV pace Engages in the fractional utilization of MVO2 in under words, it's not at MVO2 pace. It's at about 90 to 95% of your MVO2 pace is CV scientifically Dr. Vee Hill God rest of soul just passed away recently is one of the great pioneers in running in the United States one of the greatest coaches of all time and one of the great Exercise physiologists of all time and Dr. Vee Hill says that In CV pace is anywhere from about 88% up to like 94 95% of MVO2 Sometimes you see it as expressed as 90% up to 95 I'm even willing to push it up to 96% of MVO2 and you're still not going over that cliff Where you start running anaerobically and you basically just fall apart, okay? And so CV pace engages in the fractional utilization of MVO2 because it's close enough to it that you can actually improve your MVO2 without having to run at MVO2 pace for the entire workout It also chips away at your lactate threshold so it chips away at lactate threshold and can improve your lactate threshold It engages in fractional utilization MVO2 to the point where it can improve your MVO2 and so it's the pace between What does it look like workabouts anywhere from two and a half to three minutes up to five six minutes at a time? Right I've had workouts where I prescribe multiple repeats of 1500 Down to 1200 down to 1k down to a maybe four times a 1200 four times a 1k four times and 800 We're talking about big voluminous workouts for a runner who's maybe less experience who can't Train with as much volume it might be six or eight times 800 meter repeats Now the recovery on these is very different from MVO2 work Because you are running slow enough even if it's only at 95% of MVO2 when you actually run the math on that The paces are actually significantly different Typically one minute of recovery per thousand meters run works really really well on CV pace You clear enough lactate to be able to get to the starting line. Okay, and then hit the next rep You can do it fairly frequently you can do it in robust amounts and it builds out the oxygen delivery system In a way that a lot of other repeat sessions don't and it's so effective for just generic aerobic fitness It's utilized for the 800 meters all the way up to the marathon All right, all right everybody want to take a break for just a second to talk to you about one of my favorite VPN products I'm a running coach at the end of the day I'm coaching performance and I'm looking for the perfect fuel for my athletes G1M sport fits that bill You can use it as a pre-workout or pre-race and also use it in for workout in inter-race Why? Because it uses cluster-dection which is a super GI friendly car and still packs a nice punch of 50 milligrants or sodium it comes in four really really nice flavors and it will literally fuel your workouts and fuel your races Better than any other product on the market my runners use it. I think you should use it too Go to VPNsubs.com and pick up your canister of it today Every runner should have this in their repertoire. You won't regret it now The next pace and the next sort of system and the next intensity that you look at is the anaerobic threshold lactate threshold as I described it Lactane threshold anaerobic threshold is typically one of the more difficult Areas of people to train and it's one of the most often neglected why? Because it ain't a lot of fun for a lot of people This is where we get into the dreaded tempo runs, right? And I find that I get a lot of young athletes who are A bit of verse to it only because it's really difficult. It requires an incredible amount of attention And sort of dialed in-dness is dialed in in this a term. I think I just made it up Where you got to really be focused. We're talking about workabouts anywhere from 15 minutes up to 40 minutes at a time and practice It's fast It's taxing right we're talking about work that could be For some elite runners. I mean, we're talking about their 10k pace, right? I'm all the way up to some really really elite runners who run a half marathon in 60 minutes 62 minutes. It's all it's those paces. It is intense, right? But builds massive massive mitochondrial density and mitochondrial respiration. I'm going to get into that very very briefly explain what that is. Okay At the end of our discussion, but suffice it to say it's really really good at building out this oxygen delivery system It's building the byways and the highways to get oxygen to working muscles and that's the name of the game Because the person who starts going lactic last who runs anaerobically last or the latest in a race Often as the person who's gonna end up being able to prevail or finish extremely high. All right Now you can look at a Robic threshold and that's what's interesting is there's two thresholds when people say I'm gonna run this workout at threshold pace Or I'm doing threshold repeats Typically what's being referred to is lactake threshold slash anaerobic threshold. Okay 10k paced repeats half marathon pace repeats or maybe 10 mile race pace repeats, right or shorter faster tempo runs, right? If you're doing like lactake threshold paced Re-peaced anaerobic threshold pace repeats. I might use mile repeats 2 mile repeats 2k repeats it's pretty typical for that kind of pace because you can do longer reps because the pace isn't as severe So you're not accumulating nearly as much lactating or blood so you can go farther At that pace because you've dial it back just just just a smidge, right? aerobic threshold. What is that? Some people who are quite elite Refer to it as marathon pace. Why because it's a pace that typically you can hold from anywhere from two to three hours So you can imagine marathon pace, right? I mean, you know for somebody running two hours two oh five in the marathon is the elitist of the elite in the world Up to three hours you're still in the realm of elite when we're talking about marathon times because you're gonna be in the upper one percent of all marathoners in the world If you can break three hours in the marathon statistically, okay? So aerobic threshold pace is Typically marathon pace or a little bit under marathon pace aerobic threshold pace Typically is used almost exclusively in my world for tempo running or extremely long repeats Anywhere from two mile three mile four mile repeats might be what we do if we're doing a quote-on-quote repeat session for aerobic threshold Okay, maybe down to two K if we're trying to keep it super moderate Super aerobic and not have people stressed out neurologically, okay? Typically doing aerobic threshold pace for 400 600 800 meters at a time You're not committing any crimes, but I don't find that to be perpendicularly effective because you're not running fast enough At aerobic threshold pace to warrant running repeats that are that short Because you're not really gonna get a robust aerobic stimulus from that because it's not stressful enough to have to stop and either jog or Stop and walk after running three or four minutes typically, right? Now how do we put all this together? How do we make it make sense in the context of what when do I do it? Why do I do it? I Combined paces a lot and I think a lot of coaches Might do this too and I've seen a lot of people everywhere from a lot of the professional teams that we've heard of Who are out there training at a high level with Olympic level athletes post collegiate professional athletes? I'm combining paces, right? You might do a lactate threshold paced tempo run of three months 4 miles, maybe even 5 miles if you're really, really sticking the nails to it, right? And then drop down and maybe run some critical velocity, paste repeats when you're done. You might go and run a 4 mile tempo run, right? At something akin to your 10 mile or your half marathon race pace and then drop down and then run 5 or 6 times 800 meter reps or 1K reps at your critical velocity pace, which is going to be faster, right? And then you can even build in maybe some active recovery for instead of doing 1 minute, per thousand meters run walking, you can go and run some 1K rep, and go and jog for 2 minutes. Listen, there's no specific rule book to this, right? Or on tempo days, might we combine some marathon paste work or just faster than marathon paste work, which is still a rubric threshold work, right? Maybe the pace that you can run all out, say for 80 or 90 minutes, that's faster than a rubric threshold, which is then going to improve your aerobic threshold by training just to smidge under aerobic threshold, but you can go and run 6, 7, 8 miles at a time, like that possibly in practice. Go jog, grab a sip of water, spin down, maybe do some lactate threshold paste intervals, or even come all the way down to doing maybe some CV paste intervals. So you don't always have to train in the same zone, the same intensity in the same pace is for the entirety of where we work out. You can successfully sort of mix training zones, right? You could even do critical velocity paste work, right? And then have your athletes especially if you're trying to sharpen up for a 5K, sharpen up for maybe an indoor 3K race, if you're going to run some indoor track, spin down, do some reps at just under max VO2 pace, right? With jog recoveries or walking recoveries, you know, going run, you know, 6 times 1000 meters, or 7 or 8 times 1000 meters, a critical velocity pace, spin down and run a set of 6 times 300s, or 8 times 200 meters, just maybe 105%. Just a little faster than VO2 pace, boom, perfect workout for maybe running a 5K, prepping for a 10K. One thing that you have to understand though is that high end aerobic fitness has to be the centerpiece of every training program, racing the mile up to the marathon. And depending on what your training background is, depending on what your skill set is, I would even argue that running the 800 meters requires an immense amount of high end aerobic work that is quote, "nonspecific." So when we talk about specificity, I tend to look at it in terms of, is this the exact pace that you're going to be running in a race? Marathon specificity, if you're a 3 hour marathon runner, is 645 to 650 pace. It's very specific to what you're doing in a race, right? If you are a 31 flat 10K runner, then running race pace, which would be 5 minute pace, essentially on the nose per mile, that would be very, very race specific stuff. So what's really, really nice that you can do is do the generalized aerobic work, which is applicable to every distance, okay, from 800 meters to a marathon, but then do specificity. One of the best high school boys who I ever coached, right? Invested in critical velocity training that I had him do in tempo running. So we would do one lactate threshold workout per week, and because he was running lower mileage, I would do maybe two workouts a week, and then we would do critical velocity work followed by some MVO two work, or even some flat out speed work, maybe just four times a 200 and maybe 29, 30 seconds, okay? On the tail end of a workout where he might run 8 times a thousand meters at 5 minute or 5, 10 mile speed, right? So we get to the end of the season, and he said, Coach, I really, really want to dial in these next two and a half weeks, three weeks, so that I can really, really chase down my fastest mile of my high school career. He was a senior, and that was the plan all along. We literally injected only, oh my gosh, guys, I'm not lying to you, two actual speed workouts, meaning 300 meter repeats, 400 meter reps, 200 meter reps, where he was running down at sub four minute mile speed. Keep in mind his personal best was 413 at the time, right? And so we went out there, and he never even ran under 60 seconds for a 400 meter lap at any point in the last two years of his high school career, goes out in closest in 59. Seconds, the last lap of the mile down in the woodlands, Texas, and runs 411. And I was talking to somebody after the race, this is all, man, tell me about these speed workouts, I'm really interested, you know, and I said, well, he never ran under 60 seconds for a full lap in practice, two years prior to the race. And I got this for a proud, and I could tell the process it was working. And he says, I don't fully understand how is that possible because he just closed in 59, the last lap. And are you telling me he never ran a 59 second lap in practice? And I says, I am here to tell you, I promise, that's not what we did. Did we do some 300s down in the 43 to 44 second range? Sure. 45 seconds would be 60 seconds flat pays for a lap. Sure, we did that. Just a little bit. Because speed work is like cumin. Speed work is like cayenne pepper. Just a dash. A dash is going to do the trick. Now, did he do eight times a hundred meter repeat? Maybe two, three times a week for months prior to that? Sure, after an easy day. Did we maybe spin off after one of those critical velocity workouts that I told you eight times a K, spin off and run four times at 200, 28, 29 seconds? Sure. And what we refer to as the neuromuscular stimulus that you need to be able to stay in touch with those white fibers, those type 2B fibers, but you don't have it to do a whole lot to recruit them. You're born with a finite number of them. I will repeat, you're born with a finite number of type 2B pure white fibers that are just explosive fibers and they have, there's no aerobic component. They're very, very low and what we refer to as a mitochondrial density because mitochondria is what allows us to engage in the aerobic process and run aerobically. That's oxidative fitness. What you have to understand is that there is no aerobic respiration going on with those white fibers. So you just do enough to recruit them. They're there. You just bring them to the surface. They just spin in the wheels fast. A few very, very specific times. You can do it relatively regularly year around, but just tiny, tiny doses of it. When out, 59 seconds, people say how do you do it? The answer was five mile, four mile lactate threshold sessions. Typically once a week, once every 10 days, maybe once every 14 days when we got to the end of the seasons, okay? Robust critical velocity sessions, building that massive aerobic engine, okay, where we were spending time pulling those top 2A fibers, pulling them away from their white fiber explosive roots, okay, that left untrained was just going to make them good for sprinting and dunking a basketball and we pulled those top 2A fibers, okay. Where he was able to go out and run for 30 pace for his 2 mile personal best, right? And so when you start looking at combining paces, these are the things you can do to sharpen up, but you have to be careful not to overdo the fast stuff, okay, because the cornerstone of everything that we need to do is emphasizing building out this massive oxygen delivery system. All right? Now, when you look at the composition of different races that you run, I think this really, really can elucidate the point. And I think that when people say I want to run my fastest race, then the natural inclination, and it completely makes sense, which is I got to spend a whole lot of time running really fast to do that. The answer is, hmm, probably not, probably not, not a lot. I will get into this, you know, in other conversations, and I've had other conversations about this, but I mean, at the max, 25% of the running that you are doing in your total volume needs to be faster than easy. And frankly, all the way, especially if you're running really, really high volume, it might only be 10, maybe 15% of the total running that you do is anything faster than easy. Easy? What are we talking about? Zone 2 type running, right? And so when we start looking at the concepts of mitochondrial density, distal capillarization, so to speak, what are we talking about? Now, this is where I want to say thank you to my high school biology teacher, Carolyn Schofield, in Tyler Texas, because when I took your last biology to exam in the spring of 1993, all right, I never, for the life of me ever thought, I was going to be on a podcast at the age of 50 talking about mitochondria, all right? But here I sit, thank you, Ms. Schofield. Mata-contrial density, all right, is built by doing tons of easy running that is harder than sitting on your butt in a chair that's harder than walking, but nothing that approximates hard running. Mata-contrial density basically is building more mitochondria, and stimulating the growth of more mitochondria, which is, and I know this, it's not completely accurate, but for the purposes of this conversation, it's basically the end of the mix to sell go, okay, for the purposes of this conversation. And aerobic respiration is the way this occurs. Mata-contrial density is built by doing a lot of running. You can take somebody who's walking down the mall, headed down the clairs to go and buy themselves a $3 pair of earrings, okay? And you can take the same person, same height, same body build, who might be out running 40, 50 miles a week, okay? And you go and you buy off see their muscle. And you will find that the mitochondrial density could be double, triple, quadruple, the person who lives a sedentary life. And the mitochondrial density basically is how many mitochondria are jammed into those red fibers in your muscles that allow those muscles to be super, super efficient. And be able to allow for long lasting high-end aerobic work, okay? That is done by running more, not less. Now we can talk about the upper end of what reasonable is as far as quote unquote over training. And that could be a separate podcast in and of itself, right? But typically if you're smart about the way you build your volume, more running is what gets you more mitochondrial density, which then means that your body has the capability of running farther and faster. Low volume, marathon, half marathon plans are typically not the best and they don't work the best. Why? Because you literally are not able to build the mitochondrial density that is the prerequisite for being able to be good at the very thing you're trying to be good at, which is distance running. Now, mitochondrial density is different from mitochondrial respiration. And I'm getting a little sciency here, but I'm doing this for you, a misgote field, okay? Well, I'm with the science, but we got to understand what we're doing here. So we don't fall prey to the American shortcut. What's the American shortcut? It's, I'm going to microwave it in a world. So I'm going to microwave this thing and I'm going to try to figure out how to spend the least amount of time on this, how to do the least amount of work that I can get away with and the hopes that I'm going to be able to fake my way to some sort of performance that's personally satisfying, notable, or elite. And the answer is, guys, we got to bake the turkey, okay? And then let's save all the microwave dinner, hot burning, fast satisfying stuff for your Instagram reels and all this other stuff that we do, right? Train more, more mitochondria. And that's more zone two running, okay? And maybe zone three running, but you're going to be in a bad spot if you spend too much time there. I'll talk about that in a little bit. Now, mitochondrial respiration, that actually means getting the mitochondria that we've now built out that are there and available for use. Now let's put them to use and how do we get the mitochondria to perform really, really well, okay? And allow us to run aerobically versus anaerobically for longer period of time because at the end of the day, like I said, it's he who's running anaerobic last, who ends up running the best race because if you're in the throes of what we call it, I refer to is oxygen debt, that's what being an anaerobic distress means. Typically when glycolysis, that means that you're burning sugar for your energy, okay? So, this is using oxygen to generate ATP, which is energy. Once glycolysis starts, you've got one to three minutes of being able to sustain pace before you fall off the cliff, okay? I had a 200 meter, 400 meter sprinter who clearly had an immense amount of ability, okay, at the longer distances and I had to coax him, I had to coax him out of this because he was, he was good. He had 50 seconds for 400 meters, okay? And I said, you're going to be a good 800 meter runner, you're going to be a good miller and I can even turn you into a good cross country runner. And he was reluctant at first and I said, just just just just follow my lead, hop on hop on coach Jeff's crazy crazy crazy train, get on get on get on the flat bed back here and I'm going to I'm going to take you I'm going to take you this way. He's okay coach. So we started doing just a little bit more distance running. Not a little bit more amount of control density because keep in mind, 240 running, you're just over here in white fiber heaven, just freaking blasting stuff, right? Those top two a fibers were just all the way functioning the same with the top two b fibers. They were over there in their corner, just fast burning, you know, 20 second 30 40, 50 second races, boom done. Train them up just a little bit. Train them up a little bit more. And I go to runs of 16 37 5 K senior year of high school and cross country and he's kind of looking around going, this is interesting, right? And he wasn't out there running 70 80 miles a week, just young guy, you know, was 40 45 mile a week runner, right? Started getting better and better. And I said, listen here, I said, you're the fastest guy on this race flat out foot speed. But that's not the definition of a good kick. Dominic Donald, one of the greatest coaches in the history of the NCAA, when multiple national championships at coaching at the University of Arkansas, one of the great coaches of all time. One said that the definition of a great kick is not the person who can sprint 400 meters the fastest. The definition of a great kick is a guy who can run 400 meters the fastest at the end of a grueling 10 kilometer cross country race, right? So what I told this young guy who I brought from running the 200 400 is sort of an unwilling participant in the mid distance races at the high school level was all I have to do is get you to where you can run aerobically for the first three and a half minutes to three, now to maybe first three minutes and 15 seconds of the race. Get you to the last lap and then once you start running anaerobically, right? And it's your full scale glycolysis, right? And there's no more aerobic running done. We've got a minute to a minute and a half to get to the finish line. And so that's what ended up happening. The guy goes out and runs for 15 and the mile. Okay. As a senior in high school, having never raced the mile in any serious way in any track meet officially in the history of his high school career goes his senior year and high school goes from having never done it to running for 15. Why? It wasn't even perfect. I would give him a three mile lactate threshold run that you would hit in like 1730, 18 minutes, but it was enough building that aerobic engine where I was able to get him to the last minute, minute, half of the race. And then suddenly it's like, oh, I can kick now, right? And the night he ran for 15, he closed in 61 seconds. The last lap ran 44 seconds. His last 300 meters, guys, right? And it was because he went lactic late and that was because we spent time at lactate threshold and a ton of critical velocity work over the winter and he didn't like it because he wanted to go run 150 and 200s. I had him running 800s and 1K reps and the dark of winter in December and January. Okay. Now, when you start looking at all of this, we can get mired in. the data, mired in the numbers, mired in the details. Okay. Many times good enough is good enough. This is not perfection. Okay. This is an imperfect approach. All right. And so don't get so mired in the numbers that you strip the joy of the running. That you're so beholden to pays and so beholden to the numbers that you lose some of the flow, some of the joy, some of the ability to pivot. Okay. So just doing more of each one of these higher-in aerobic types of training and understanding the basic doses to do them and how to structure your workouts, which I'm going to get a lot more into, probably in some other conversations, it's going to be beyond the purview of this conversation. You're going to be okay. Right? Now what's really interesting is, is, for instance, one of the great coaches in the world, one of the great marathon coaches in the world, Ronaldo Canoba, Italian coach, right? Coach has many marathoners to run down, you know, 202, 203, 204, the marathon. He actually doesn't spend a whole lot of time from my research and looking at the way he does, actually talking about training in terms of lactate threshold, aerobic threshold, critical velocity. He is a marathon coach, half marathon coach, specialist, not that he doesn't have people running world-class 10 cases. Well, where he speaks a lot in terms of pace is relative to marathon pace, right? What we know for his runners, marathon pace is aerobic threshold. Aerobic threshold might be still a little faster to marathon pace, not much. So, you know, Coach Canoba talks about things relative to marathon pace, a little slower in marathon pace, at marathon pace, a little faster in marathon pace. What's faster than marathon coach, pace can be, well, if it's significantly faster, that's really lactate threshold training. So, he's doing lactate threshold training, aerobic threshold training, but may not be calling it that. And so, it's okay when we say, hey, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna do some work that's both good from a specificity standpoint from my marathon pace or half marathon pace. But also is in that zone of sort of being between lactate threshold and aerobic threshold, which is massively beneficial, okay? Doing more work like that would be a far better approach in your training if I was forced to choose than spinning out ripping 200 and 400 meter repeats if you're a 5K, 10K, half marathon runner, given the choice. You still need to do that kind of work, but if you wanted to air on the side of caution, more LT, more aerobic threshold, more critical velocity work, those three zones, okay? Also, when we start talking about doing this fast work, one of the things that I need to reiterate is that, 80, 85%, maybe it's little is 75% if you're in a lower volume program because you have health considerations, injury considerations, bandwidth considerations, or you just don't want to. If you're running maybe a lower volume approach, which is okay, no crime committed, you might only be doing 75% of your running at just a completely easy pace, conversational, typically known to zone two, right? Remember, that's the training where you get a huge bang for your buck when it comes to building out your mitochondrial density. I would also like to point out that that's also the running that's easiest to be the most consistent with. Consistency is the name of the game because mitochondria in a state of disuse, actually go away, shrivel up, they recede in numbers, okay? And typically that is between like seven and 10 days when you're looking at sort of the life of a mitochondria. So when you see people who train really intensely for 15, 16 weeks at a time, for a marathon, which is not a typical, but then sort of fall off the ledge or maybe go into a period of disinterest or maybe go into a period of altered focus where they may be doing almost no running, or very little running. Your body is not going to maintain mitochondrial density in a state of disuse, all right? It will dry up. It's sort of a, if you don't use it, you lose it, sort of concept here. And so my encouragement to everybody is, is be careful with too much hard running, but keeping in a fairly solid level of easy running as part of your daily program, weekly program, monthly program, for months on end and years on end is what is going to not only maintain mitochondrial density, but then with increases in volume is going to obviously ramp it up. Now, the fast running that we do, critical velocity, MVO2 work, like take threshold work, that actually increases mitochondrial respiration, not just that the mitochondria exists, but that the mitochondria actually performs super, super efficiently. But be warned, okay? And this is what I got to stress. Listen, man, just like a lot of things in life, too much of a good thing can be bad and can have deletious effects, okay? On whatever it is, we're trying to be great at, all right? When it comes to too much hard work, okay? We have to be careful not to get into a state of neuromuscular fatigue. Now, a lot of that comes with a ton of fast running MVO2 work and of course pure speed work for sure, okay? And then lots of critical velocity, lots of lactate threshold work, lots of really, really hard sessions will be bang our head against the wall, week after week, month after month. Listen, four to six weeks of actual speed work, maybe it's a little is three, like I'm talking those fast 200, 300 reps, I was telling you about that high school mileer did, okay? A lot of times that's plenty. Once you get past about five, six weeks where you actually start like speed work where you're doing like dedicated whole sessions, you were running the risk of getting neuromuscular fatigue. If you go and you do a hard critical velocity session, okay? Or you overrun your critical velocity sessions and you end up really running more like MaxVio2 pace, but then still trying to do it on one minute recoveries between thousands instead of three or four minutes, you're running the risk over time of getting incredibly fatigue and then you actually could see a regression. I feel tired, coach. Why does it feel like that two months ago, I was able to hit these paces fine. And then now I'm really struggling. Now listen, there's other reasons for it, work stress. Your boss has been yelling at you all day, every day for two weeks. You got in a fight with your significant other because for the untie-th million time guys, you put the toilet paper on with it hanging down until the wall as opposed to way for the wall. Listen, there's other reasons why you're gonna feel bad. But if it's a recurring problem, one of the things could be this concept of neuromuscular fatigue, what is it? Two components. There's central neuromuscular fatigue, okay? And then there is peripheral neuromuscular fatigue, okay? Now central neuromuscular fatigue is a neurologic, basically brain centered, the signals, the electric signal is coming from your brain, okay? It's very easy to think about because central to the nervous system, of course, is the brain. The brain is the organ that basically runs the whole electrical circuitry that is your body. Brain fog, brain fatigue, muted, dulled electrical signals, which is what actual, the impulse is are from your brain when it says go fast. It's actually sending in electrical impulse, start becoming degraded, okay? And then suddenly you don't have that speed response. You don't have that what we refer to as snapiness sometimes, okay? And then when you look at peripheral, it's actually actually in the soft tissue, it's actually in the muscle, it's actually in the muscle fibers, right? And a lot of it has to do with the own release of calcium, for instance, calcium is absolutely vital. For muscle contraction, okay? An extension and for helping us generate foot speed. So when you have a muted electrical signal and then you're at the level of the muscle, the actual fibers itself, it's not quite, shall we say, clicking all of a sudden you have this neuromuscular fatigue. Gotta be careful. In short, it's called over training. That's what it is, it's called over training, okay? Cooked, fried, beat to hell, exhausted, flat. I mean, these are all things that we hear, okay? And that often is what part of the problem is. Now, there's a period of other explanation. to why you could be feeling bad, but I'll tell you what, this is epidemic. Boy, I'll tell you what, I was so fast in February or March, at the beginning of track season, or the beginning of my spring road racing season, just think how much better I'm gonna be by May or June if I just keep ripping 400 meter repeats, if I just keep ripping six to eight times a thousand at 100% of my envioletube pace. Right, I'm gonna go faster. I'm gonna run 105% of my envioletube pace, and I'm gonna beat my head against the locker, and I'm gonna impress everybody with how much blood I can splatter on the wall, 'cause I'm tough. Yeah, and then you get out there and you're like, why did I feel so horrible? Gotta be careful with it, okay? All right, and so these are the things that we need to be thinking about. Don't get stuck on the numbers. Trust your instincts, trust the way you feel. Understand that we need to train responsibly in these zones. Inject the speed work, okay? And we can divide the speed work into subgroupings of speed work, right? Which really is just fast or work, but keep in mind. Max-VO2 pace, critical velocity pace, lactate threshold, slash anaerobic threshold pace, aerobic threshold pace, or all working, you are aerobic system, and that's oxidative, meaning oxygen is used to generate energy ATP, and that is the way we try to run as long, as far as possible, we'll erase in these distances. Now, you may have a lot of questions about a lot of this, and I think that sometimes it's a lot to absorb when we're talking about these kinds of things. All right? I understandable, I've been coaching for what? 24 years now, and you're still tweaking your methodology, you're still doing your field research. You can do 70% and learn all of this, but the 30% that can't really be taught on this podcast, the 30% that can't really be taught in a USA track and field level one coaching course is the art of coaching. This is the 70% that I'm talking about today. These are my numbers, I don't have any empirical data to support this, but I theorize there's about 30% art. It's looking at a runner like I did, it practices it, it says, hey, you're done. Your hands were on your knees in a critical velocity session, and your hands were on your knees, meaning you've now exited this only one to be in, you're done, okay? But learning the 70% that is the science of it, then you can learn the 30% either as an athlete about yourself as a coach about your athletes, right? Is the way to get this done. Now I hope that you're gonna walk away from this, feeling like, okay, I got something from this. This guy with a bad accent and a pickup truck is out here talking about all this sciencey stuff. Hey man, listen, like I said, I'm a dull knife, we can all become sharp knives if we just learn this stuff because we can apply to our daily training. And it works for everybody, we're all homo sapiens, we all have the same oxygen delivery system that's been developing for thousands of years, okay? So whether you're a 205 marathoner or a 505 marathoner, you have mitochondria, you have, you breathe oxygen into your lungs and goes out through the pulmonary artery, we all do it the same, okay? And so within reason, all these concepts are largely applicable to everybody, and it can allow you to be the very, very best that you can be. Now I hope you all got a lot out of this. I really, really enjoy this, as you can tell, I can go on forever. But for now, y'all go be good, and more importantly, to be consistently good. (upbeat music)