Luke - 10

10mi, 74:00 (7:24)

Started the longer loop of Pre's Trail but it was closed for construction, so I did the 1.4-mile loop twice, in 10:13 and 10:21, followed by two miles (14:30) of barefoot running on the grass, which felt nice.

I read an interview last night that I liked; here is a long quote from it:

Here’s the big thing: I think a lot of people are focused on speed and plyometrics. But the quickest way for U.S. athletes to get good is that they have to run a lot. They have to run aerobically at high intensity and have quite a lot of accumulated mileage. That is the only way we are going to catch up to the Africans, because they are so far ahead of us. So it’s got to be large volume, but not just that; it has to be long, hard stuff that raises threshold. Look, it’s no secret that in the fall Teg runs 140-mile weeks. So you can say that I am a huge proponent of developing that aerobic system. We are behind everyone in the world. Most American runners, a lot of the naturally fast guys don’t realize how aerobically fit they have to be. Look at Kenenisa Bekele, he runs 11.6 seconds for his last 100m in the final, but you have to understand he runs 150 miles a week as well. You have to have everything. For 18 months, Dathan did no speed work--zero--other than some drills and strides. He couldn’t do it because of a calf problem. I thought he was in 27:25 shape before the marathon--maybe even better. And that’s with zero speed. I think speed is so overrated. Yeah you need it at the end, yeah you got to sharpen up. I watch all these people periodize and they are so far behind on their aerobics that it never works., because they don’t have a base to bring it in. You don’t periodize as much, because we are behind aerobically. A younger athlete is so much better off working on higher threshold in order to get that good base underneath them.

If you want to read the whole thing, it's here.