Ok enough bad Jamaican accents, I'm talking about Roger Bannister, who, for those of you under the age of ME, was the first human being to officially break the 4-minute-mile barrier in 1954. He did this against popular opinion that 4 minutes was a mark that the human body could not physically perform under (total crap now since the WR mile is about 3:43, and also since his own record only lasted about a month), and not only that the son of a bitch did it on a dirt track. Can't even picture how fast a young Roger would be now with super-light shoes, an aerodynamic uni and an all-weather track. Stupid fast, most likely.
At any rate, the reason why he's famous is not just for being first, but for the methodology he cooked up to get there (detailed in his book "The Four Minute Mile"). Basically, his philosophy was that if you want to hit a certain pace, that you should be training at that pace as much as possible. Now physically, it would be a bad idea (if not impossible) to continually run a mile at 100% race pace, the wear and tear on the body would be far too much - especially if you're pushing to break past a mark which you may or may not be capable of doing.
His solution was the forebear of today's interval training - he decided to break the distance down into smaller portions, each run as close to full pace as possible with a rest break in between. The idea was to do enough of these intervals that when combined, the total distance run at race pace during training would equal more than the eventual goal distance. In Roger's case, he wanted to run a mile in 4 minutes or less, so he broke that distance down to 440 yd (400 m) intervals run at 60 seconds or less each (4 x 440 = 1 mile). He ended up being able to do 10 of these intervals in a row with two minutes' rest in between, which if you've ever done a sub-60 400 is just...insane. I don't think I could rip off ONE now. But 10 of these together would be 2.5 miles at race pace, and indeed over time he was able to comfortably run a constant 3/4 mile in 3 minutes flat (comfort...it seems....is very relative). And obviously it worked.
Now...I harbor no illusions that I'm anywhere near Mr. Bannister's company as a runner, but this got me thinking about that attempt I made a couple weeks ago to run 1.5 miles in 10 minutes. To make that goal, I'd need to hold a 9 mph run for 10 minutes straight - and as it turns out I could only hang on to that for about 7 minutes before my body just began to shut down. So to apply Roger's method, I decided to break that 10 minutes into 4- and 2-minute pieces run at 9 mph with equal-sized rest breaks over a period of 30 minutes (to start - see the breakdown below). I did successfully make it through this workout once, but oh man did it SUCK. Not hyper to do that again this week, but we'll see if by repeating this over time if I see any benefits when I get around to attempting that 10-minute dash again.
In the meantime here's the recap from the past 3 days :
Diet for Tuesday 10/13/09:
Breakfast
- Fiber One original w/fat-free milk
- 4 oz orange juice w/vitamins
- Big cup of coffee
- 2 pieces wheat toast w/yogurt spread
Lunch
- Turkey sandwich on wheat w/fat-free cheese
- 3 large carrots, raw, peeled
Dinner (went out to Applebee's with mom, Ness and the kids)
- Chips w/spinach dip
- Grilled chicken breast w/two-cheese topping
- Garlic mashed potatoes
- Steamed vegetables
- Two pretty damn big beers (Sam Adams)
Dessert
- a slice of leftover birthday cake
Exercise for Tues 10/13/09:
- Rest day
Sleep for Tues 10/13/09:
- 6 hours
Diet for Wed 10/14/09:
Breakfast
- Cheerios w/fat-free milk
- Big cup of coffee
- 2 pieces wheat toast w/yogurt spread
- forgot to take my vitamins
Lunch
- Turkey sandwich on wheat w/fat-free cheese
- some Baked Lay's potato chips
Dinner
- leftover London Broil w/blue cheese sprinkled on top
- 2 cups of mashed potatoes
Dessert
- fat-free chocolate frozen yogurt w/Hershey's lite syrup
Exercise for Wed 10/14/09:
- 5 min warmup @ 3.5 mph
- 10 min stretching
- 20 minutes "pyramid" interval training on treadmill (1% grade)
- 5 min @ 5 mph
- 30 sec @ 10 mph
- 1 min @ 4 mph
- 45 sec @ 10 mph
- 1 min @ 4 mph
- 1 min @ 10 mph
- 1 min @ 4 mph
- 90 sec @ 10 mph
- 1 min @ 4 mph
- 1 min @ 10 mph
- 1 min @ 4 mph
- 45 sec @ 10 mph
- 1 min @ 4 mph
- 30 sec @ 10 mph 2 min @ 5 mph
- 1 min @ 10 mph
Sleep for Wed 10/14/09:
- 6 hours
Diet for Thurs 10/15/09:
Breakfast
- Cheerios w/fat-free milk
- 4 oz orange juice w/vitamins
- Big cup of coffee
- 2 pieces wheat toast w/yogurt spread
Lunch
- Tuna sandwich on wheat w/fat-free cheese, fat-free mayo and mustard
Dinner
- Subway foot-long roasted chicken breast on wheat
- about 1 cup of Baked Lays potato chips
After-dinner
- one glass red wine
Dessert
- one 100-calorie cup of Jello chocolate pudding
- a few red vines
Exercise for Thurs 10/15/09:
- 5 min warmup @ 3.5 mph
- 10 min stretching
- Hybrid intervals for 30 min ala Roger
- 4 min @ 9 mph
- 4 min @ 4 mph
- 4 min @ 9 mph
- 4 min @ 4 mph
- 4 min @ 9 mph
- 4 min @ 4 mph
- 2 min @ 9 mph
- 2 min @ 4 mph
- 2 min @ 9 mph
- 5 min cooldown - 1 min @ 5 mph, 1 min @ 4.5 mph, 1 min @ 4 mph, 1 min @ 3.5 mph, 1 min @ 3 mph
Sleep for Thurs 10/15/09:
- 10 hours YEEEHAW gotta love days off
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