Tempoin Tuesdalies

Junk mileage or "no man's land" is the lonely place between different workout paces, such as tempo and easy (this scenario), interval and tempo, interval and rep etc.

well anyway my daily was

1m warmup
5x400's decreasing from 80 to 63
1.5 cooldown

6 miles easy. I ran past these three Middle Eastern or Indian people and randomly decided to sprint through them. They started talking really fast in some foreign language and I almost lol'd.

Update: I just learned that the dirt track I've been doing tempos on is 415 meters long....so my 6:20 tempos have been more like 6:08. that makes a lot more sense. i asked someone why there were no lanes and they said "well, since this track is about 415 meters it's not great for racing, and the elementary school doesn't have a track team, so it was built mostly for walkers and joggers to use". im gonna keep pretending it's a 400 meter track though so my races blow out my training

5.5 miles, slow because I was pretty tired today. Did some drills afterward, maybe I'll do core later.

Btw the term junk miles doesn't mean that at after a specific pace you wont get any benefit at all. An example of junk miles would be if you ran very tough workouts or races all week and are in a lot of pain and desperate need of a recovery day, but decide to run through the pain the next day longer than you should to keep your mileage up. Like if you decided to push yourself to run 10 miles the next day when maybe your body only needed 5 or even a rest day. It doesn't matter if those miles were run fast, they are junk because you are harming your body more than helping it.

2 mi easy, 2 hard, 2 easy (kinda like a fartlek)

2+2+2=6

FinishingKick wrote:

RawBeginner wrote:

sub16! wrote:9 miles at a 6:20 pace average. not quite tempo but still pretty fast. It was pretty nice outside today.

if you don't consider that a tempo, then you're in pretty legit shape right now...

As the username suggests lol.

yeah i was kind of surprised that it didnt feel like a tempo because the place i ran was pretty hilly. and hopefully i will be able to get the goal in my username haha

You guys have a lot to learn before you are going to start seeing those mass improvements you are looking for.

First off, tempo pace is ALWAYS the same. Do you know what tempos do for your body and fitness? It is not for the aerobic benefit, but to build lactic acid tolerance. Tempo pace is always the same because it is the equilibrium between building up lactic acid and disposing of it. By doing this you are sustaining a constant barrage of lactic acid to your muscles making them "tougher" so to speak. It is also defined as "1 hour race pace", or the fastest you could possibly run for 1 hour straight. If you are going for more than an hour on your tempos, it is way to slow. Which brings me to my next point, tempos should only last between 20 and 40 minutes. The 40 minute range more for marathoners, and the 20 minute range for 1 mile-5k runners. It is also wise to break it into segments, either 1 mile repeats at threshold pace or 5, 10, or 15 minutes segments (can also be an assortment of the aforementioned intervals). If you go too fast, you are not letting your body dispose of the lactic acid properly and you are delaying recovery. If you are too slow then you are just doing a recovery run that is harder than it needs to be.

Second, junk mileage is a pace or run that serves no particular purpose. If you are going a certain pace "just because you can", chances are that it is junk mileage. I train between 6:40 and 7:30 pace on all of my runs, and so does my friend who ran a 26:00 8k as a freshman (in college). If you are struggling on a recovery run, stop and ask yourself what the purpose was for that run in the first pace. If it was to recover, then you should be going recovery pace, or 90 - 120 seconds slower than 5k pace. If it was to do a tempo, then you should be running about 15 seconds slower than 10k race pace.

Keep this in mind when you are out there running your hardest every day with no rhyme or reason. You are not benefiting from the extra stress, but it is all just building up in your body waiting to burst out. As any elite runner will tell you, it is ALWAYS better to undertrain than to overtrain. Good bye, and good night.

did a mile warmup then all out mile. half mile cool down. then tonight i did a mile warmup mile with a junior high girl and mile cool down. so 6 total.

The Waterboy wrote:Btw the term junk miles doesn't mean that at after a specific pace you wont get any benefit at all. An example of junk miles would be if you ran very tough workouts or races all week and are in a lot of pain and desperate need of a recovery day, but decide to run through the pain the next day longer than you should to keep your mileage up. Like if you decided to push yourself to run 10 miles the next day when maybe your body only needed 5 or even a rest day. It doesn't matter if those miles were run fast, they are junk because you are harming your body more than helping it.

I know that they are junk in that case, but I don't think that's what bago was referring to. And I didn't say you wouldn't get no benefit at all, it's just not as good as doing a true tempo or a true interval when you go in between.

scratch my first post.

Turns out we had xc practice.. I went down to warm up on the track and a bunch of other people were there. I thought it didn't start yet but I was wrong, I feel so dumb =/

I missed the first part so I only got in 3 fast miles to catch up.
it was pretty close to my pr though =]

BagoXC25 wrote:You guys have a lot to learn before you are going to start seeing those mass improvements you are looking for.

First off, tempo pace is ALWAYS the same. Do you know what tempos do for your body and fitness? It is not for the aerobic benefit, but to build lactic acid tolerance. Tempo pace is always the same because it is the equilibrium between building up lactic acid and disposing of it. By doing this you are sustaining a constant barrage of lactic acid to your muscles making them "tougher" so to speak. It is also defined as "1 hour race pace", or the fastest you could possibly run for 1 hour straight. If you are going for more than an hour on your tempos, it is way to slow. Which brings me to my next point, tempos should only last between 20 and 40 minutes. The 40 minute range more for marathoners, and the 20 minute range for 1 mile-5k runners. It is also wise to break it into segments, either 1 mile repeats at threshold pace or 5, 10, or 15 minutes segments (can also be an assortment of the aforementioned intervals). If you go too fast, you are not letting your body dispose of the lactic acid properly and you are delaying recovery. If you are too slow then you are just doing a recovery run that is harder than it needs to be.

Second, junk mileage is a pace or run that serves no particular purpose. If you are going a certain pace "just because you can", chances are that it is junk mileage. I train between 6:40 and 7:30 pace on all of my runs, and so does my friend who ran a 26:00 8k as a freshman (in college). If you are struggling on a recovery run, stop and ask yourself what the purpose was for that run in the first pace. If it was to recover, then you should be going recovery pace, or 90 - 120 seconds slower than 5k pace. If it was to do a tempo, then you should be running about 15 seconds slower than 10k race pace.

Keep this in mind when you are out there running your hardest every day with no rhyme or reason. You are not benefiting from the extra stress, but it is all just building up in your body waiting to burst out. As any elite runner will tell you, it is ALWAYS better to undertrain than to overtrain. Good bye, and good night.

Jack Daniels:

"I believe in the benefits of tempo runs that are longer than 20 minutes and have designed two tables that alter the speed of the run a dictated by duration."

He says a 60 minute tempo should be about 6:15 pace for a 16:52 5k runner. Factor in the hills and sub16 ran a true tempo.

FinishingKick wrote:

The Waterboy wrote:Btw the term junk miles doesn't mean that at after a specific pace you wont get any benefit at all. An example of junk miles would be if you ran very tough workouts or races all week and are in a lot of pain and desperate need of a recovery day, but decide to run through the pain the next day longer than you should to keep your mileage up. Like if you decided to push yourself to run 10 miles the next day when maybe your body only needed 5 or even a rest day. It doesn't matter if those miles were run fast, they are junk because you are harming your body more than helping it.

I know that they are junk in that case, but I don't think that's what bago was referring to. And I didn't say you wouldn't get no benefit at all, it's just not as good as doing a true tempo or a true interval when you go in between.

I would also consider those junk miles too though, I just didn't state that in my wall of text.