[Scott Johnston]

Hey Todd:

Great questions.  I hope I can do them justice with my answers.

#1 The Mihaly Igloi story.  I think Igloi was simply making the point to my friend that when he had the aerobic work capacity to be able to run 10 miles a day for a month, my friend would be ready to start training with Igloi.  The implication is that the hard work needed this big base of support.   I do not think he was making any sort of comment about how my friend would arrive at the fitness where he could run 10 miles/day for a month. He was just stating, and could have been using a bit of hyperbole, that my friend would need to have that level of aerobic work capacity before he could be ready to train with Igloi’s guys.   I would say that most people would need to use modulation in their training to accomplish the level of aerobic work capacity to be able to run 10 miles every day.  Keep in mind that 300 miles/month is not at all outside the normal range for an elite distance runner.

#2  I would make the same prediction.  However, 21 weeks of that much intensity would go well beyond a normal duration of a training mesocycle, and I wonder if the result for both would be staleness or even overtraining in some of the subjects.

I use the Astrand quote to illustrate the idea that there is no one way to add high intensity to your training.  Coaches tend to favor methods that have worked for them and their athletes historically.  This stuff is not like developing an aerobic base for an aerobically deficient person.  There is a great deal more nuance when it comes to applying high-intensity training to increase an athlete’s specific endurance.   There is a huge variation in methods that have resulted in success with athletes.  Here the coaches lead the scientists, and training fads come and go.

Something to keep in mind with the Seiler study:  I have not seen very many athletes that can maintain consistent power/speed output doing 4x8min or even 4x4min.  Yes, a world cup cross-country skier might, but most amateurs will get slower with each repetition due to the power limitation imposed by local macular fatigue.  This is why we almost always do a block of ME training leading into a block of more conventional HIIT.

Referring to the other post where I showed an example week for Tom leading into Western States:  An elite athlete like him can run very fast (like 10x1km @ 3min/km pace) while keeping lactate levels low.  This is clearly high intensity in terms of speed. But it does not fit into the classic HIIT paradigm where fast equates to high metabolic load and high lactates.  Tom’s glycolytic metabolism was contributing a huge percentage of the ATP required for that workout.  No one is running that fast for that long on predominately fat.  But because his aerobic base is so big, like what Igloi was requiring, the vacuum cleaner is so big that lactate levels remain low.

Moving fast with low lactates should be the goal of ALL endurance athletes.  Once you can do that, you have a great deal more flexibility in choosing training methods like interval protocols like you refer from the Sieler study.

In the last book club session, I also quoted Canova talking about the great Ethiopian distance runner Haile Gebreselassie having a 60 story house of fitness. When he goes and fiddles around with different intensity methods, it’s like he is just rearranging the furniture or changing the drapes.  Recall my podcast with Kilian after he published his training for the last year. and everyone got excited that this was the NEW best thing?  He very wisely published his training volume history for the past decade or more at the beginning of the article. BUT…. how many readers really understood that he was just rearranging the furniture inside his skyscraper of fitness?  I doubt many got this. Certainly, several of the podcasters he spoke with didn’t get it at all.

I hope this makes sense.  This last point about Tom is the reason I often say that amateurs should not try to copy the training of the elites.  If I knew more details about Kilian’s training, I am 100% confident that I could have said the same thing.

Scott