Quality X
Sasha Pachev:
For those of you who missed it, there we had a discussion on my blog today that resulted in a new term:
Quality X
I thought it deserves a couple of paragraphs on the forum. Brief introduction to the train of thought. If you've ever been beat by a minute in a 5 K by somebody running 40 miles a week while you were consistently running 80+ for years, if somebody who just barely started running 60 miles a week after graduating out of high school training blew by you in a half and left you in the dust, you know exactly what I am talking about. There is an aspect to distance running performance that is not connected with endurance, and can be present in the same quantity in somebody who is undertrained in the endurance aspect.
Some people call it speed. This is misleading enough for me not to want to use the term. You cannot get it through speed work. Others call it "natural ability". I do not like it either. It implies that you cannot develop it, therefore it implies surrender. For lack of a better term I decided to call it Quality X.
A good measure of the Quality X for an individual of optimal weight is how fast he can run a 5 K off 6 months of training at 40 miles a week. A clearly slow-twitch runner of optimal weight can also measure his Quality X by running an all-out 100 meters.
More discussion to follow...
Sasha Pachev:
The promised follow-up, finally.
Quality X can be compared to the aerodynamic/tire/weight distribution/transmission/etc qualities of a car. If two cars of equal weight are given the same engine, and one is faster than the other, we will say that the faster one has more Quality X.
Why all this Quality X discussion? Overtime some things have become clear to me. For a true slow-twitch guy, top end speed very reliably predicts what is he going to do in all distances from the 5 K to the half marathon when properly conditioned. 9 times out of 10, if you find two equally conditioned runners whose best distance is the half-marathon, and one beats the other in the half marathon, he will proportionally beat him in the 100 meter sprint! In the marathon, the top end speed very reliably predicts what you will not be able to do. It does not very well predict what you actually will accomplish because marathon has a much higher chance of crash-and-burn, and individual resistance against crash-and-burn varies a lot. But, once you have become resistant to crash and burn, your marathon can be very well predicted from your 100 meter sprint if you are true slow-twitch. Interestingly enough, Ron Hill observed the same thing and talked about all out 100 meter sprint as a measure of running talent.
For somebody who feels tempted to challenge the above. Find somebody for whom the following is not true:
best marathon time in minutes >= 100 meter sprint time in seconds * 10
best half marathon time in minutes >= (100 meter sprint time in seconds * 5 - 2)
So the above says that 12.0 100 meter runner will not break 58:00 in the half, 13.0 will be stuck at 1:03, and 14.0 will be stuck at 1:08 unless he runs Hobblecreek. Note that it DOES NOT say that a 12.0 100 meter runner will necessarily reach 58:00 in the half with proper training or even get anywhere close. It says that if you want to run 58:00 and your 100 is only 12.5, it will not happen until your 100 somehow gets to 12.0, and even then, it does not necessarily mean that you will run 58:00 in the half. 12.0 100 is a necessary but not sufficient condition for running 58:00 in the half marathon.
What is the point of the above formula and discussion? Suppose your best 100 is 15.0, and you want to run a 2:20 marathon. You can try high mileage, and if you do it perfectly, you will run 2:30. But not 2:20! OK, right. I am going to hit the weight room, I am going to hire a sprint coach, I am going to do drills, starts, jumps, whatever else the sprinters do so I can run the required 14.0. You do that, and all that gives you is 14.7 because you do not have much fast-twitch fibers! And by the way, your marathon potential has not moved at all. OK, so the reason I cannot run 14.0 is because I am a slow-twitch guy! Wrong! Do you think Haile is not a slow-twitch guy? Yet he can run 14.3 15 times back to back in a 1500 meter race, he can close a 10,000 meter race with a 53.0 lap, this is 4x100 in 13.25 strung together! We make a big mistake by explaining away our slow 100 meter times with the lack of the fast twitch fibers. You need a lot to run 10.0, you need some to run 11.0, you do not need more than most of us on this blog do to run 12.0 if you are a guy! You do need lots of Quality X to run 12.0 if you are a natural distance runner, though.
As I stated earlier in my blog comment, Paul, Nick Miller, Nick McCombs, Sean, and possibly Logan have enough Quality X to hit the new marathon OT standard of 2:19 on a record-eligible course. The rest of us have no chance unless we do something about our Quality X!
What can we do? That is the question I do not have the answer for. This is something that needs to be thoroughly researched and understood. I believe we can find a breakthrough and answer it. But the first step, and the purpose of this post, is to convince our runners that this is a critical issue that something needs to be done about, or no Olympic Trials for you.
Jon Allen:
Sasha- I am going to go run a 100 meter. I'm darn sure that I will be able to do it faster than 15.2 seconds. We shall see.
Sean Sundwall:
perhaps a dumb question, but an important one....does the 100m time test proposed above need to be done from a dead stop or a running start? There's a big difference in times. The example you used with Haile obviously includes 14 of 15 100m segments at a running start.
Craig Green:
I was doing 10x200 meter sprints a year ago and had someone timing me. I was coming in at 28 seconds at the end, so I would assume I can bang out a 13-14 second 100 meter sprint.
That being said- I haven't broken 1:16 in the half marathon or 2:47 in the marathon. Of course, I've never put in more than 40 or 50 miles a week leading up to a marathon (which I will be changing this year). I think what I'm reading from this thread is that I have some potential here that I haven't reached due to my lack of training, lame diet, etc.
Anyway- what is interesting is that Bill (aka "Coach" Bill) was talking about hip movement and how that is something that you lose as you get older, and something that helps with sprints and faster running. So I'm thinking hip movement could be one of many Quality X factors.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page