[the most successful amateur runners] did about 25% of their training at a moderate pace, where an athlete can speak but only in short sentences, and just 5% at high intensity, where an athlete is not able to speak in sentences and breathing becomes quite laboured.
This differed from the so-called 80/20 training approach reported in elite runners, where 80% of running is at a low intensity and 20% is high intensity, with very little in the middle ground.
It’s an observational study, so difficult to draw causal links. But interesting nonetheless.
It seems like the core of this is more miles will get you in better condition, and if you slow down you can get more miles done without injury. I could put the same effort into a fast 10k or a slow 10 miles, but the slow 10 miles would give my muscles more work and also be easier to recover from.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. My thought process was if we go slow just to get harder workouts in, why go slow if I’m not going to do those workouts? So I started adding some random fast pace intervals to a run once a week.
This lasted about two weeks before I started to notice excess fatigue in my hips. I realize now that by adding the faster runs when I was already at my highest ever mileage, I was doing too much. I’m taking an easy week next week and an extra rest day today. I’m not opposed to workouts or speed work, I just have a better appreciation for the stress they put on our bodies. I’ll try adding it back in once I’ve settled in at my current mileage.
Yeah absolutely. Which also goes some way to explain the pros’ 80% when amateurs end up more like 60%. When you’re doing more total ks, the ones you add need to be easier on average, because you’re already doing as many hard Ks as you can.
It does make sense, but I’ve also read elite runners talk about cutting back on “junk miles” (example).
Junk miles aren’t easy, they’re in zone 3. Sometimes called “comfortably uncomfortable”. Too hard to be low impact and facilitate doing harder runs later at full intensity, but too easy to get the benefits of doing a really hard session. Elite runners polarise training to 80% zones 1–2 and 20% zones 4–5.
Haha you mean where I do most my running 😶
