Post
by iain » February 21st, 2023, 4:29 am
At the elite level 1-2% is all that is available! I have read that sessions around an hour or more are required for your aerobic fibres to fatigue sufficiently that you are forced to recruit the anaerobic fibres at steady state (eg Mike on the WP thread). Whether this induces adaptions not brought on by longer harder intervals I cannot say. I definitely feel that something gets harder 40-45 min in even when I was trained for ultra marathons. Fitness advice for the sedentry is to get the HR raised for 20 min+ at a time, so as HR takes several min to adjust at slower paces you wouldn't even be meeting that, so I assume that longer is required.
The other changes that happen overtime include a shift to higher fat burning that I believe takes 20 min or so to click in, although as this is insignificant for any TT below FM, it may not be important for your goals. Personally I am yet to see convincing evidence that the predominantly slower training adopted by elite athletes is appropriate in a less intensive training program. Many quote that peripheral adaptions (eg increased capilliarisation of muscles) only occurs through slower training, but I am yet to see the research that backs that up. Yes slower training is sufficient to allow this to occur, but regular hard sessions might be as effective. Certainly the main explanation for the elite training is that it allows a greater training volume and the body to recover from the hard sessions to train harder for key sessions. However this can be achieved in a less frequent training program by limiting hard sessions to 2 - 3 per week rather than the 20% (less than 1 per week for some of us) that is often quoted. I would be very interested in any research that contradicts this.
Finally, metabolically between the initial sugar fuelled work and the introduction of fat burning the body needs to adapt to longer term exercise by releasing more sugar from the liver to supplement reserves in muscles as well as the lactate shift to allow the products of anaerobic fibres to be used by the aerobic ones. I don't know how quickly these click in, but they will be important for 5k+ if not before and I assume that this needs to be trained.
All that said, I still think that a lot of training is done above the neck and so as MPx says, it is imperative that race distance is seen as a short workout. We all know how long a 2k seems to drag out. As it is not advisable to do regular all out 2ks, getting used to pushing on for mins on complaining muscles when your body is claiming to be suffocating gets easier when you have pushed through many similar periods at lower intensity in training (generally long intervals). I find that long slow sessions help to push the long intervals harder by making the distances involved appear modest as you get used to pushing the pace when you "only" have 10 min to go regularly, seeing 1200 of a 2k left seems more manageable. Finally, there is a lot of research showing that the "grey zone" training most of us would naturally settle into is much less effective than training that allows some sessions close to maximal (by allowing recovery) and that I for one see both power and endurance drop off when I train at higher paces more than a couple of times a week. A 20 min session without pushing into the grey would not feel like a decent workout for me, so I will continue to do 1 hr+ sessions whenever I can fit them in! But the long and short of it is that there is not the resources to study training effects in the reasonably fit, all the money is for those saving lives by addressing couch potatoes or creating prestige with the elites! So we will always be a little in the dark!
56, lightweight in pace and by gravity. Currently training 3-4 times a week after a break to slowly regain the pitiful fitness I achieved a few years ago. Free Spirit, come join us http://www.freespiritsrowing.com/forum/
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