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Running Speeds

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Re: Running Speeds

#21

Post by vjk800 »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #11

I used to like watching the Special forces selection process TV shows. They would claim that mostly people failed due to mental fortitude. The problem was repeatedly in these shows you would see people who weren't fit enough, whose muscles were not capable of the physical strength and stamina necessary to push like this. Many had trained very hard and were in very good shape but they just couldn't sustain it in the c…

It's much easier to maintain mental fortitude if your body is only 90% worn down instead of 99%.

Re: Running Speeds

#22

Post by crooked-v »

OJFord wrote: post #19
wjnc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say I’ve worked through four of his books from front to cover. You’re right. The learnings are on top of (some) math. In my case actually quite a lot of math post-high school. But I think a 14 year old could finish the books as well, or at least 90%. My eldest is 10. He is good at math because we do math games all the time. I can’t get algebra to sink in properly yet. Doesn’t really click in the time we have an…

> can’t get algebra to sink in properly yet. Doesn’t really click in the time we have and with the teacher he has (me). But in Python he is giving variables a name all the time. Perhaps there is something about programmatic math that helps, not hinders education. On the hinders side though, I can understand it being confusing to try to grasp: y = x + 2 As being sort of 'constantly updating', referring to x in abstrac…

As with a lot of things, the answer is Excel.

Re: Running Speeds

#23

Post by ImPleadThe5th »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #15
PaulKeeble wrote: post #11

I used to like watching the Special forces selection process TV shows. They would claim that mostly people failed due to mental fortitude. The problem was repeatedly in these shows you would see people who weren't fit enough, whose muscles were not capable of the physical strength and stamina necessary to push like this. Many had trained very hard and were in very good shape but they just couldn't sustain it in the c…

Yes, the mental fortitude is much overblown aspect. Yes, there is this thing as mental fortitude and you can even train it to persist to run hard, especially when you "kick" at the end of a race. But this only helps to a very small degree, the most of the result is due to more mundane aspects like your experience with running, your running efficiency, your aerobic capacity, your additional fat you are carrying with y…

> 10 miles every morning

Holy cow! That's pretty impressive, I run only like 35 miles a week during the peak of my marathon raining blocks.

Re: Running Speeds

#24

Post by vjk800 »

leto_ii wrote: post #9

I'm not sure this analysis is as surprising or meaningful as it might seem at first sight. In the end I think what this tells us is that in the general population there are many distinct subpopulations with different distributions of running speed. I would expect that if you start conditioning on things (e.g. gender, age, level of fitness) things start looking a lot more normal, rather than log-normal. You might not…

I think the point is that all these traits are multiplicative, not summative. Your maximum running speed at the age of 40 is maybe 0.8 times what it was when you were 20, not your running speed at the age of 20 minus some. And when you have several multiplicative traits like age, gender, training history, all different aspects of genetics, etc., you get a lognormal distribution instead of a normal distribution, and with it a much larger variance between individuals.

Re: Running Speeds

#25

Post by orthoxerox »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #11

I used to like watching the Special forces selection process TV shows. They would claim that mostly people failed due to mental fortitude. The problem was repeatedly in these shows you would see people who weren't fit enough, whose muscles were not capable of the physical strength and stamina necessary to push like this. Many had trained very hard and were in very good shape but they just couldn't sustain it in the c…

Except a 200m sprint is over before you even tap into your stamina. It certainly takes serious mental fortitude to stay several hours on the racetrack, doing your 200m sprint again and again, trying to perfect every aspect, but if you can't perfect one of them due to your natural limitations, you aren't becoming a champion runner.

Re: Running Speeds

#26

Post by onetimeuse92304 »

ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #23
onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the mental fortitude is much overblown aspect. Yes, there is this thing as mental fortitude and you can even train it to persist to run hard, especially when you "kick" at the end of a race. But this only helps to a very small degree, the most of the result is due to more mundane aspects like your experience with running, your running efficiency, your aerobic capacity, your additional fat you are carrying with y…

> 10 miles every morning Holy cow! That's pretty impressive, I run only like 35 miles a week during the peak of my marathon raining blocks.

It is less impressive than you think. I run slow all the time (zone 1/zone 2) and only very occasionally do tempo/threshold/intervals. I only add those in my marathon training block.

The distance is only one factor, the other factor is intensity. If you keep intensity low you can increase the volume a lot.

Most untrained people get their heart rate up to zone 2 by just walking a little faster or in more difficult terrain. But they can easily walk fast for an hour or two. The only difference is that I have to be running to get to the same level of exertion.

My runs are all easy and enjoyable and I don't have to fight myself to go out and I feel perfectly fine right after the run. I run 10 miles because that's about 1h 15-20 minutes which is the most I can pack into my busy morning. I am using that time to rethink some stuff, listen to the news or audiobooks so not all time is lost.

An interesting feature of running is that if you do it correctly you can be quickly progressing to doing things that couple of months ago you thought impossible. For example, what once was a very strenuous run was an easy stroll couple months later, if I did things correctly inbetween.

Another example, for years I had trouble with my Achilles tendon which would flare up every time I reached particular weekly mileage (about 20-30 miles). For many years I thought I am never going to be good at this, but then I got an advice from my physiotherapist to do some strength training and calisthenics targeting my Achilles and my problems suddenly went away. From then on I understood it is all about problem solving and I am a nerd.

Re: Running Speeds

#27

Post by underdeserver »

Before I was injured, I used to run 8 km (about 5 miles), three times a week. I maintained about 5:30 minutes/km, and I would sprint the last 200 or so meters at the end.

I measured the speed - the run was mostly around 10-12 km/h, the sprint around 18 km/h. I'm not a fast sprinter at all, but I was in my late twenties and maintained this schedule for a while and figured I might be average or better.

To put this in perspective, a marathon at 18 km/h is about two hours and twenty minutes. The world marathon record has been below that since the 1930s. There are lots of people who can run for two and a half hours faster than I could sprint.

Re: Running Speeds

#28

Post by ramraj07 »

underdeserver wrote: post #27

Before I was injured, I used to run 8 km (about 5 miles), three times a week. I maintained about 5:30 minutes/km, and I would sprint the last 200 or so meters at the end. I measured the speed - the run was mostly around 10-12 km/h, the sprint around 18 km/h. I'm not a fast sprinter at all, but I was in my late twenties and maintained this schedule for a while and figured I might be average or better. To put this in p…

I was once biking at what I considered acceptable pace on a long empty road in Texas one fine Sunday. Slowly I approached a kid like maybe 15-16, running. While biking without exerting myself, I was only able to approach him slowly. He was shirtless so you could se he was toned and perfectly executing every step as if it’s a prerecorded NPC. A body perfectly tuned to do that one operation, with hours going to that preparation every day of their life.

Why would anyone be surprised they do so much better?

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