Topic: 1600m: persuade me on mileage vs speed please!

[Thomas Edwards]

easy mileage

in my experience, mileage is never easy.  if you're actually concentrating on keeping a consistent pace, consistent breathing, perfect form, etc, it's actually a very challenging way to go.  or i dunno, maybe i just suck   but i guess i'm also used to all of my runs being tempo runs because i run with the varsity even though i'm slower than them. 

[chipset]

Easy means you don't puke in the end  But yeah, I'm breathing loud for most of my easy runs, even when I'm going as slow as possible, for some reason. I'm not getting winded but I do ventilate loudly and it can sound like I'm out of breath even on the easy runs.

[Steven Low]

Well, here's some of my proof in the form of a study (comparing high intensity vs. moderate vs sedentary). I don't like Vo2max as a measurable.. but I guess it works for whatever. Notice the other benefits to high intensity.. not just in Vo2max. Since these were non-exercising people beforehand you can tell why I don't like high mileage right from the getgo because it's not as effective as the bulk of a program compared to the higher intensity stuff like HIIT/metcon/etc.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15640382?dopt=Abstract

[chipset]

What's 80% of VO2Max? http://www.brianmac.co.uk/vo2max.htm tells me it is half-marathon speed.
I'd be positive that my HM speed rotates around 8 minutes (pace I'm doing my 6-7 milers at).
No one says very slow running is good (60%) unless for recovery. There should be aerobic stress. And your article proves it

For a sedentary man slow running would be like what, 11 minute miles?

PS. Broke 6 minutes on a course I've been generally referring to as mile (actually it's like 1580m) with hills

[Steven Low]

Hence, why I don't like Vo2max because it's different for different people. It's not necessarily 8 minute miles. For sedentary people 80% VO2max could be that slow. For El Guerrouj's 80% vo2max it could be doing 4:00 miles.

It's easy to extrapolate the gains through 100% Vo2max pretty much.

[chipset]

Then it's hard to understand what the study means under high intensity. But I do agree that slow running sucks. I myself am breathing hard during my runs and it takes effort to sustain pace. It's not like walking.

Then, I doubt that sedentary people could even run 8 minute mile. It's not as slow as you think for most of us although it certainly is effortless for Guerrouj.