Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk
Ahhh, finally, a posted comment on my Blog worthy of it's own Blog! It doesn't get any better than this. Someone left the following comment on my preceding Wet and Wild Blog...
Anonymous said... In your piece you say it was almost impossible to keep people below 70-75%. How do you know that? You've never run a 3:45 marathon yourself. Maybe you are too slow to be a 3:45 pace leader, did you ever consider that?
Isn't that great! I love it! You can almost hear the indignation in their voice. "Who the Hell does this Vince Hemingson guy think he is? Who died and made him the Pace God?"
To begin with, the writer is absolutely correct in pointing out that I have NEVER, not ONCE, EVER run a 3:45 marathon. That fact is, however, beside the point in this discussion. I have been a pace group leader a half a dozen times and I have run eight marathons and my best marathon time is only 3:52. But those are just numbers and don't really address the issue I was bringing up. Plus, I would argue pretty strenuously, that those same numbers give me pretty firm ground to stand on in making my observations about the pacing on Sunday. Some old homily about , "Experience is one of the best teachers... ", or something like that.
The Sunday Long Distance Run is part of a marathon training program that the Running Room subscribes to and offers, for money, I might add, to members of the public. It is assumed that if you pay your money to participate in the marathon clinic that you are also subscribing to the training regimen and philosophy put forth by the Running Room itself. If not, why the Hell did you pay $69? To see me in tights? I think not.
If you are in the Running Room Clinic you should be running at least four days a week and most probably you are running five. It is set out very clearly in the literature (I wonder if the person actually read the literature) that different days of the week call for different work outs. These work outs are specific to building your STRENGTH, STAMINA, SPEED and ENDURANCE.
And each of those work outs IS SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT!
This is the crux of what I am talking about! We run hard short distances, HILLS, short fast distances, INTERVALS, slightly longer race pace plus distances, TEMPO, longer RACE PACE distances, and LONG SLOW DISTANCES for our ENDURANCE RUN on Sundays.
Sunday's 32K run should have been run at 65%. Granted, some people, John Stanton among them, suggest a 70% pace or a pace that is X percentage slower than your planned marathon pace. But it should definitely have been slower than what it was. How do I know that?
I confess to being a Heart Rate Monitor and Data freak. I run with a bunch of engineers, physicists and chemists to whom I pale in comparison, but they can at least confirm my claims. And I know within a few percentage points, based on my heart rate and my experience what my level of effort is during a run. Yet despite all my experience I still need a heart rate monitor in order to be truly accurate.
I normally run Sundays at 132-136 BPM. That's about 65% for me. And that pace, as measured by my accelerometer, is only about two minutes slower than marathon race pace for a 3:45. On Sunday I was 142-148 BPM and for many stretches I was up to 150 BPM, which is 75% plus for me. And the pace? Barely a minute over and occasionlly LESS than a minute over the 3:45 marathon pace! That's when I barked. More importantly, if you have any experience whatsoever, you can tell with amazing accuracy just from listening to and observing people's respiratory rate, what their level of effort is. You should have heard some of the gasping on Sunday!
My good friend Seymour, with whom I have run hundreds and hundreds of miles together with, if not indeed thousands of miles, can painfully verify this. To Seymour's great disgust, all I have to do is observe him for a few moments and chirp up with, "What's your heart rate, Seymour?", for Seymour to look down at his heart rate and see that he is five beats per minute above what he should be.
Why does this matter? Because we are dealing with percentages in training for the marathon. The four different building blocks of training are ALL DONE at DIFFERENT LEVELS OF EFFORT! Many people, particularly those who are not experienced, run the entire marathon clinic at 75% effort. And then they wonder why they didn't make their time goal. Or why they faded at the end of the marathon.
Why!?! Because despite their perfect attendance and best efforts, they didn't receive all the benefits that come from training according to a proper training program. Their hearts and lungs and bodies and leg muscles didn't receive the full benefits of their investment of all those miles and hours, simply because they failed to maximize their efforts. It's not enough to just run hard to succeed in a marathon, you have to run smart, as well. The marathon is the thinking man's (and woman's, for that matter) race. It is about the careful management of scarce physical resources.
If you want to run a marathon simply to finish, that is an honourable and wonderful goal. More power to you. I applaud your effort. If your object is to run a time goal and you don't train according to how you are supposed to, you are wasting your time.
My problem is that on Sunday, those people who were running too fast were not only wasting their time, they were endangering the running goals of other people who were actually following the training program. There were people I was running with who simply could not carry on a conversation. Translation for the people who still don't get it - THEY WERE GOING TOO FAST FOR AN ENDURANCE RUN! Many of the people who ran on Sunday ran too fast and hence they overtrained. The consequences of their actions means that their bodies will not be fully recovered by Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. So their Hill and Tempo training for the coming week will be compromised. What's so smart about that?
Marathoners are competitive people, and the long endurance runs are rife with potential danger. Part of being a pace group leader is thinking of what is best for the whole group. And that means not letting the Sunday run turn into a potentially injury-inflicting exercise because a few individuals have neither the self-control nor the self-discipline nor are smart enough to know how to train properly. It's the job of the pace leaders to set the pace. If you are not smart enough to understand that, you should be training on your own.
Plus, Sunday runs should really be an enjoyable experience. Let's not lose sight of the big picture here, folks. I want everyone to achieve their marathon goals. To run to the best of their ability and maximize their potential. And the marathon is a big, long, tough race. You have to respect the race and you have to respect the distance. And if you are training with a group, simple courtesy suggests that you should respect the group. Save the total effort for the Marathon, because that's when you'll need it!
Final Note - As for me being too slow to be a 3:45 pace group leader? I'll bet anyone who cares to, subject to me remaining injury-free, that in my next marathon I will break 3:45 (And I'll bet I'm a damn sight closer to 3:30). Standing bet is a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.
Anonymous said... In your piece you say it was almost impossible to keep people below 70-75%. How do you know that? You've never run a 3:45 marathon yourself. Maybe you are too slow to be a 3:45 pace leader, did you ever consider that?
Isn't that great! I love it! You can almost hear the indignation in their voice. "Who the Hell does this Vince Hemingson guy think he is? Who died and made him the Pace God?"
To begin with, the writer is absolutely correct in pointing out that I have NEVER, not ONCE, EVER run a 3:45 marathon. That fact is, however, beside the point in this discussion. I have been a pace group leader a half a dozen times and I have run eight marathons and my best marathon time is only 3:52. But those are just numbers and don't really address the issue I was bringing up. Plus, I would argue pretty strenuously, that those same numbers give me pretty firm ground to stand on in making my observations about the pacing on Sunday. Some old homily about , "Experience is one of the best teachers... ", or something like that.
The Sunday Long Distance Run is part of a marathon training program that the Running Room subscribes to and offers, for money, I might add, to members of the public. It is assumed that if you pay your money to participate in the marathon clinic that you are also subscribing to the training regimen and philosophy put forth by the Running Room itself. If not, why the Hell did you pay $69? To see me in tights? I think not.
If you are in the Running Room Clinic you should be running at least four days a week and most probably you are running five. It is set out very clearly in the literature (I wonder if the person actually read the literature) that different days of the week call for different work outs. These work outs are specific to building your STRENGTH, STAMINA, SPEED and ENDURANCE.
And each of those work outs IS SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT!
This is the crux of what I am talking about! We run hard short distances, HILLS, short fast distances, INTERVALS, slightly longer race pace plus distances, TEMPO, longer RACE PACE distances, and LONG SLOW DISTANCES for our ENDURANCE RUN on Sundays.
Sunday's 32K run should have been run at 65%. Granted, some people, John Stanton among them, suggest a 70% pace or a pace that is X percentage slower than your planned marathon pace. But it should definitely have been slower than what it was. How do I know that?
I confess to being a Heart Rate Monitor and Data freak. I run with a bunch of engineers, physicists and chemists to whom I pale in comparison, but they can at least confirm my claims. And I know within a few percentage points, based on my heart rate and my experience what my level of effort is during a run. Yet despite all my experience I still need a heart rate monitor in order to be truly accurate.
I normally run Sundays at 132-136 BPM. That's about 65% for me. And that pace, as measured by my accelerometer, is only about two minutes slower than marathon race pace for a 3:45. On Sunday I was 142-148 BPM and for many stretches I was up to 150 BPM, which is 75% plus for me. And the pace? Barely a minute over and occasionlly LESS than a minute over the 3:45 marathon pace! That's when I barked. More importantly, if you have any experience whatsoever, you can tell with amazing accuracy just from listening to and observing people's respiratory rate, what their level of effort is. You should have heard some of the gasping on Sunday!
My good friend Seymour, with whom I have run hundreds and hundreds of miles together with, if not indeed thousands of miles, can painfully verify this. To Seymour's great disgust, all I have to do is observe him for a few moments and chirp up with, "What's your heart rate, Seymour?", for Seymour to look down at his heart rate and see that he is five beats per minute above what he should be.
Why does this matter? Because we are dealing with percentages in training for the marathon. The four different building blocks of training are ALL DONE at DIFFERENT LEVELS OF EFFORT! Many people, particularly those who are not experienced, run the entire marathon clinic at 75% effort. And then they wonder why they didn't make their time goal. Or why they faded at the end of the marathon.
Why!?! Because despite their perfect attendance and best efforts, they didn't receive all the benefits that come from training according to a proper training program. Their hearts and lungs and bodies and leg muscles didn't receive the full benefits of their investment of all those miles and hours, simply because they failed to maximize their efforts. It's not enough to just run hard to succeed in a marathon, you have to run smart, as well. The marathon is the thinking man's (and woman's, for that matter) race. It is about the careful management of scarce physical resources.
If you want to run a marathon simply to finish, that is an honourable and wonderful goal. More power to you. I applaud your effort. If your object is to run a time goal and you don't train according to how you are supposed to, you are wasting your time.
My problem is that on Sunday, those people who were running too fast were not only wasting their time, they were endangering the running goals of other people who were actually following the training program. There were people I was running with who simply could not carry on a conversation. Translation for the people who still don't get it - THEY WERE GOING TOO FAST FOR AN ENDURANCE RUN! Many of the people who ran on Sunday ran too fast and hence they overtrained. The consequences of their actions means that their bodies will not be fully recovered by Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. So their Hill and Tempo training for the coming week will be compromised. What's so smart about that?
Marathoners are competitive people, and the long endurance runs are rife with potential danger. Part of being a pace group leader is thinking of what is best for the whole group. And that means not letting the Sunday run turn into a potentially injury-inflicting exercise because a few individuals have neither the self-control nor the self-discipline nor are smart enough to know how to train properly. It's the job of the pace leaders to set the pace. If you are not smart enough to understand that, you should be training on your own.
Plus, Sunday runs should really be an enjoyable experience. Let's not lose sight of the big picture here, folks. I want everyone to achieve their marathon goals. To run to the best of their ability and maximize their potential. And the marathon is a big, long, tough race. You have to respect the race and you have to respect the distance. And if you are training with a group, simple courtesy suggests that you should respect the group. Save the total effort for the Marathon, because that's when you'll need it!
Final Note - As for me being too slow to be a 3:45 pace group leader? I'll bet anyone who cares to, subject to me remaining injury-free, that in my next marathon I will break 3:45 (And I'll bet I'm a damn sight closer to 3:30). Standing bet is a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.
posted by Vince Hemingson at 9:30 AM
5 Comments:
Awesome. Loved your response.
FYI: The 4:30 group smoked past the 4:15 group within the first 10 minutes of the run on Sunday.
Vince,
As somewhat of a techno-geek myself (and en route to being a USATF level 1 coach), I have no doubt that what you're saying regarding a too hard long run not benefitting your body as a long run should, is correct. (Man that's an awful sentence...edit time!)
Retry -
As somewhat of a techno-geek myself (and en route to being a USATF level 1 coach), I have no doubt that a too hard long run does not benefit your body as a long run should, is correct. If I understood your original post correctly, you were leading a group from a number of stores. I think that any finger of blame must be pointed at the instructors of those groups, as they have a responsibility to educate their students why you need the long run, why the pace work is there, and why speed and strength work matter. In my mind, you're in the clear.
Defend your stance, perhaps the uneducated may drink from the trough of knowledge.
Man I nearly peed my pants when I read through this string of comments and blogs.
Does anyone piss off more people than Vince?
In Vince's defense, i learned more from him in one clinic than I did in fours years of previous training.
He really does know his stuff. A long run with Vince is like running with a set of Encyclopedias. But it does feel like you're back in high school sometimes. Remeber that really obnoxious kid in biology class who was always right?
Still, I wouldn't bet againest Vince. He does hate to lose.
To the author of the final posting on the 'Wet and Wild' blog, who implied that Vince is setting the pace too slow in the 3:45 pace group long runs:
The point that Vince is making is not his own, but rather comes from training principles developed by the likes of Jeff Galloway, Jack Daniels and Frank Shorter. To argue with him is to argue with some of the greatest marathon coaches of all time. They are all proponents of the same principle of training for endurance: one long, slow run per week at an effort significantly less than your race pace.
Whether Vince has run a 3:45 marathon is an irrelevant point. As a new marathoner, I have not yet been fast enough to beat 3:45 myself. But I am a smart enough runner to read the literature on marathon training, and draw on the wisdom of those who have gone before.
"The long run is what puts the tiger in the cat."
- Bill Squires
Rachel, you are a doll.
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