The Two Types of Training

[jliddil]

The reason ranger and (me/myself/and/I) got as far as we did was not because we stayed sharp are whole lives.. It's because we did the steady work which developed our VO2 max "gifts" in early life...
You can't do that at age 60.AFAIK....

(I look for more information from anyone here to better educate me on this.
The main reason I was once able to run 24 by 1 mile at sub 5' in one day was because as a kid I went hiking for days in the mountains... Not mainly because I could also do 20 by 1/4 mile w/a 110 jog avging 60-65 sec.... That kind of work was, after all, done v. infrequently....

So there's my authority... based on experience and trial and error... Naturally I'm shading this towards me (an error) but since I'm a slow-twitch athlete, I speak primarily about slow twitch athletes.)I was a 31 10k guy (on the roads) a 2:26 marathoner, a 4:25 miler. Now I'm a 16,130m/hr rower, and a 6:45 2k erger. in my late 50's)
I've seen many people with talents similar to mine fall short w/short cut training that burns them out

Yes your childhood played a role but you have a certain set of genes others do not. And yes you are using an N=1. Hiking in mountains does not necessarily equal ability to run mile repeats. You did not do a double blind controlled study.

True you can't really regain the lost fitness when you start form a couch potato at 60 but research does show people can make big gains. You, from what I have gathered, start exercising early in life and have done it all your life. And since you have done this I imagine you aren't a party animal and you probably eat a reasonable diet and don't smoke.

You seem to maintained a consistent training approach and yes you can't take short cuts. But your ability to work hard all your life is due to your genetics, physiology and psychology. But this is true of most things in life and what talents and abilities you have. And 2:26 for a marathon is nothing to sneeze at.

[mikvan52]

auswr:

You've got stellar times in your signature. Perhaps you might pick a topic and start a thread elsewhere on the forum where we'll be less apt to dicuss what certain people DIDN't do today, yesterday or in the last 7 years.

Huge Note on auswr: LP: 1:09 | 100m: 14.5 | 500m: 1:18.2 | 1k 2:54.0 | 1500 4:24.5 | 2k: 5:57.5 | 6k: 19:14.2 | 30 r20: 1:42.5 | 30 mins: 8996m (r24)

2k on water: 6:58 1x, 6:30 2x, 6:36 2-, 5:55 4-, 5:48 4x, 5:38 8+

[ausrwr]

Balls, I thought I'd altered that signature. Makes me look even more of a tool than I actually am!
And a lot of them are old times that I haven't gone near for a few years.

[ranger]

auswr:

You've got stellar times in your signature. Perhaps you might pick a topic and start a thread elsewhere on the forum where we'll be less apt to dicuss what certain people DIDN't do today, yesterday or in the last 7 years

What "times" you have for various distances is your racing.

How much you race need not have anything to do with how much or how well you train.

When I took up rowing, I didn't time anything.

I just rowed for an hour or two a day, working hard.

I rowed by the calorie counter.

I didn't even know what a "pace" on the erg was.

After a couple of years, I was amazed to find that people raced on ergs, so I sharpened for a couple of months and raced.

I was 52 years old.

When I went to my first race venue, I had only rowed two hard 2Ks, both at home.

First Race Result: 6:27.5, four seconds under the 50s lwt WR at the time.

For the last decade, I have averaged 15K or so a day on the erg.

I always work hard when I erg.

I row every day.

I often cross-train for as long, or during racing racing season, for twice as long, as I row.

I have also been rowing OTW for six or seven years.

That's quite a lot of training.

50 million meters?

I am on my third erg.

I wore one out and broke another.

Over the last few years, I haven't been training to race.

Therefore, I have been doing 2Ks about 25 seconds slower than I might, if I were fully trained (i.e. sharpened to race, etc.).

Nonetheless, this year, no one my age and weight (or older) came within twenty seconds of my 2K times.

Give or take a bit, both this year and last, I raced at right about WR pace, without even preparing for it.

RANKING RESULTS 2010

Indoor Rower | Individual and Race Results | 2000m | Men's | Lightweight | Custom Age Range (59–70) | Current 2010 Season

1 Rich Cureton 59 Ann Arbor MI USA 6:41.4 RACE
2 Hugh Pite 65 Sidney BC CAN 7:02.7 RACE
3 Robert Lakin 61 Wichita KS USA 7:03.6 RACE
4 Gregory Brock 62 Santa Cruz CA USA 7:03.9 IND
5 Rolf Meek 59 Oslo NOR 7:05.4 IND
6 Jerry Lawson 62 USA 7:06.0 RACE
6 Gerald Lawson 62 Winona MN USA 7:06.0 IND
8 Leif Petersen 64 DEN 7:08.5 RACE
9 Peter Francis 61 Denver CO USA 7:09.3 RACE
10 Roger Prowse 65 GBR 7:10.3 RACE

I have been working on technique for the last few years, and my project is just about complete.

When it is, I will again sharpen hard for my races and therefore race fully trained.

When I do, my times will be _much_ faster, and my racing, much more consistent.

Unless something changes radically, as far as I can tell, my racing should continue to be about twenty seconds faster than my closest competition for as long as I want to continue to race on the erg.

I think that I should be racing until I am at least 90, so that is 30 more years.

I am happy with that.

ranger

P.S. My father was still setting age-group swimming world records when he was in his middle 80s.

[ranger]

Balls, I thought I'd altered that signature. Makes me look even more of a tool than I actually am!
And a lot of them are old times that I haven't gone near for a few years.

For a signature line, your age and weight is also crucial, no?

Erg times don't mean much without this information.

ranger

[ranger]

[quote="ausrwr""]There is no way in the world that you are anywhere near 1:42 at threshold. You don't have any evidence to show that you know what your AT is. A 5k time of 1:40-ish might suggest you have a 1:42 threshold pace. A 2k of under 6:10 might be an indicator. Your 6:41 is nothing of the sort. A 17:18 in 2002 is nothing of the sort.

But again, your machine is not going to see a 16:40 5k unless someone else does it for you.[/quote]

Just more nay-saying, for which you have no evidence.

I think I am indeed heading toward a 16:40 5K, perhaps 16:30.

As a result of my work on technique (primarily work on how to use my legs), the 9 SPI @ 30 spm that I pulled at my anaerobic threshold back in 2003 is now 11 SPI @ 30 spm.

Nice improvement.

60 watts

Evidence for this?

There is only one way of providing evidence, and you folks have certainly been pointing that out.

Distance trials.

That's what I am preparing for.

Riding right along at my anaerobic threshold, again, as I did in 2003, I'll do 30 spm for 60min, whatever that comes out to be in terms of pace.

The high rate is no trouble at all.

I'll do 32-34 spm for 5K.

ranger

[bloomp]

Are you asking me to find several other sources that prove my point? VO2 max is a very small part of the equation for elite athletes. If you cannot operate at a lactate threshold that is 85-90% of your VO2 max, you will get curbstomped regardless of your VO2 max. The whole reason that a technical sport like OTW rowing is ruled by those that have rowed for years is because it requires efficiency both in the motion OF rowing to not waste energy and not offset the boat; and efficiency in the cellular sense.

No I'm not asking for more sources I am just making the point that there are many views on all this and it is easy to oversimplify this whole discussion. I did research for longer than you've been alive so I know how anyone can use selective sources to make their point.

Diet has nothing to do with it (sadly). Look at Phelps. He had to eat ~12000 kCal/day just to maintain weight. He threw junk down his system (I was hearing a whole pizza every day). Sleep, yes sleep is a negative factor for performance but it has no bearing on your VO2 max and lactate threshold. Sleep loss brings in a whole new set of physiological factors that negate any fitness gains. I looked at sleep loss and heat acclimatization in the research I was helping with last semester, and it seemed that the acclimatization worked well to stop the negative effects of sleep loss.

Just to be fair, you brought up a lot of short-term performance inhibitors. I'm thinking about the long term training that makes one an elite athlete.

First we can not ignore genetics. People like Phelps, Mike ranger, lance have a distinct genetic advantage. To ignore genetics is just ignorant. Diet is important. When we are talking 100s or 1000s of a second what you eat can give you that edge. Dara Torres eats right and has great genetics and pure mental focus. I really am referring more to long term physical fitness maintenance. Over the long term diet can make a difference. Look at the tour de france guys. Phelps also supposedly smoked bongs. The guy has superior genetics and trains hard.

My real point is that certain factors play a bigger role than others but it is the sum of all the parts that make great athletes who can maintain their winning ways through out life. Wait until you are 50 and try to party all night and perform at your peak in sports or your job the next day.

Ok not to offend you, but you're using the word 'genetic' very loosely. Did Mike vB have parents, uncles or grandparents that were exceptional athletes? And as smart as Rich's father was, he was not a superb athlete. Now, the fact that there is a mutation in one of his cells is a possibility (but to find the same mutation in all his cells? unlikely). The entire "genetics" hubbub is pretty unreasonable though. You need mutations to accumulate over GENERATIONS not just over one persons lifespan (or at birth). I can't furnish proof of this other than my knowledge of genetics but it is the same reason that the obesity epidemic is because of environmental factors, not genetic responses to food/etc over the last few decades decreasing leptin production.

As for nutrition, sure if you're not getting a balanced diet in you will have performance issues. But a multivitamin and some supplements is enough for most younger athletes to get by. And yes, if you want to maintain fitness into old age then behaving like Dara is perhaps the better way to go. But we're not talking about that, we're talking training. And contrary to what Rich believes, he can still improve his fitness at his old age. Why did he do so much rowing if not to improve his fitness? There is no 'skeletal-muscular' component of it. You can either do the proper motion or you can't. And what determines how fast you do that motion is three things: respiratory efficiency, lactate threshold and maximal oxygen consumption. If you have two people that haven't slept in 24 hours, the one that's better trained will perform better. If you have two people on a terrible diet, the one that's trained harder or in a better manner for the respective race will win.

Once the study I assisted with is published, I'll message an abstract to you. Heat acclimatization and sleep deprivation, sort of the kind of performance inhibitors we're curious about. Does the positive effect of the acclimatization offset the problems of sleep deprivation?

[PaulH]

I think I am indeed heading toward a 16:40 5K, perhaps 6:30.

Just more yea-saying, for which you have no evidence.

[ranger]

The 6:29.7 I pulled in 2006 is more indicative of what I can do for 2K--unsharpened, although this was without hard distance rowing and distance trials, too, so is probably a little slow.

After a full array of distance trials, but still without sharpening, I think I can now pull 6:28 for 2K, my pb.

Then I get about a dozen seconds over 2K from hard sharpening.

ranger

P.S. This racing season, I think I frustrated my better technique by rowing at max drag (200 df?). This was a mistake. For someone my size, if you make good use of your legs, as I now do, even a moderately high drag (150-170 df.) is a mistake. I am now rowing on 135 df. That's much better.

[ranger]

Just more yea-saying, for which you have no evidence.

The unsharpened 6:29.7 2K I pulled in 2006 is the evidence.

So far.

Distance trials will be the next wave of evidence.

Things like 500r30 @ 1:30 and 1Kr24 @ 1:38, which I did just after I pulled that 6;29 2K in 2006, are also evidence, but of a different sort.

ranger

[ranger]

And as smart as Rich's father was, he was not a superb athlete.

Yes, he was--in multiple sports.

In fact, he was an athlete first, a scholar (of athletics) after.

And then an athlete again, in his 70s and 80s (after he retired).

He is in the Georgia Tech Swimming Hall of Fame.

http://ramblinwreck.cstv.com/ot/fame/ha ... .html#swim

He was a half-back on the Gerogia Tech football team.

He ran at Yale--cross-country and track.

ranger

[jliddil]

Ok not to offend you, but you're using the word 'genetic' very loosely. Did Mike vB have parents, uncles or grandparents that were exceptional athletes? And as smart as Rich's father was, he was not a superb athlete.

I'm not offended at all at least you will have discussion and not use a bunch of if/maybe/might...

Yes I am using genetics very loosely. If we go back to basic pop psych 101. There are two components which largely influence our development. Genetics and environment. You are born with a given set of genes which control how you develop. It is why I'm 6'5" and others are height challenged. Unless I cut you legs and insert jacks to part the bones slowly so new osteoclasts grow you aren't going to be as tall as I am.

The same "general"principle applies to your physiological abilities. Take thirty kids, train them all the same way etc. They will not all be great at sport X. Again it is how the soviet block, east germany china did it for years for their athletes. And while we are at it lets practice eugenics. (ok a joke if you take offense)

Regarding mike we would need to do genetic analysis of mike and his living relatives. They may have not been great athletes but maybe they never trained to develop the skills. Maybe they were poor working class folks? Since I'm also into genealogy it would be easy enough to have a place like ftdna analyze dna and look across families.

My point being that despite what some may say you can have a will of steel and train as smart as you can and you aren't going to be lance.

[bloomp]

And as smart as Rich's father was, he was not a superb athlete.

Yes, he was--in multiple sports.

In fact, he was an athlete first, a scholar (of athletics) after.

And then an athlete again, in his 70s and 80s (after he retired).

He is in the Georgia Tech Swimming Hall of Fame.

http://ramblinwreck.cstv.com/ot/fame/ha ... .html#swim

He was a half-back on the Gerogia Tech football team.

He ran at Yale--cross-country and track.

ranger

Oh great, now the half-wit interjects!

We are talking world records here, not some hall-of-fame at a university. Note, there are over a thousand schools that offer varsity athletics, all of which having 'halls of fame' and provide plenty more people the chance to be a "hall of famer" than the opportunities to be a world champion/Olympian Did he swim competitively at an international level? Did he run competitively at an international level? Genetics has nothing to do with your situation.

[ranger]

We are talking world records

Why?

Genetic endowment is partial and indirect.

Human reproduction is not mitosis!

The number of world record holders with parents who set world records in the same sport, I would presume, is _very_ small.

ranger

[KevJGK]

Hey ranger, how come you didn't do any of the timed pieces you said you were going to do and verify in the ranking this month?

Do you ever tell the truth?