by Ader on Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:23 pm
My understanding is that the Swedes used fartlek training (don't recall when but some time ago) in the build up to an olympics and their ong distance runners had great success.
As I said before, fartlek, as originally used, was quite unstrctured, but the concept post the games in question was taken up elsewhere and inevitably people decided to do stuff that was more structured - Not surprising a structured training day is much easier to get your athletes to do and you can also use a structured approach to guage prgress better than an an unstrutured approach - Other than results in an actual race itself - So the structured approach inevtiably became the norm and the original fartlek felll out of fashion - But off season, fartlek is great fun!
Using speed work of any kind will help get you used to lactic acid build up both psycoligically and, more importantly, the body's ability to buffer the lactic acid chemically. - If you've ever had real lactic acid tie up at the end of a race - 400m - 1500m are the worst imo - you'll understand why you need to train your body to buffer it as much as possible.
As generally this type of training regime wasn't used before the Swedes did it, it's no wonder their athletes had a lot of success - Whether or not they understood the actual mechanisims as to why it worked or not, I don't know - my guess is not as my recollection is advances in understanding all that came somewhat later.
____________________________________________________________________________
Don’t let the sets last much longer than ten seconds, total. Kinda like sex with a hot chick, hit it hard for ten seconds.
