Many years ago a new form of training for middle and long distance events
was developed in Northern Europe which only recently has found its way to
this country. The terms "speed play" and interval training have only been
used for the past 30 to 35 years in this country for training human
distance runners. My high school track coach was a pioneer in this field.
He later went on the Villinova and developed one the greatest track and
field program in college history. During the early 60's he was the only
coach in Indiana (high school and college) to use these techniques. In
college the coaching staff was experimenting with these techniques and
consequently we were monitored very closely. That means we gave a lot of
blood for analysis - not fun.
Speed play is a form of training where a runner trains by doing a mix of
slow, medium, fast running and sprinting for a long distance - say 5 to
10 miles. This mix depends on a lot of things but all speeds will be used
many times during the workout. Intervals are just that - sprints with
jogging for recovery between the sprints. The goal of both methods is to
train the body to recover rapidly and to develop and efficiently use all
muscle types. This type of training has many physiological ramifications
- which I let someone else explain. It currently seems to be the most
successful method of training distance runners.
Back in my days of running, we didn't have HRM's we could easily wear, but
heart rate at fixed intervals after succession of hard exercise was taken
by the staff as part of the research effort into this type of training.
What was found then was that runners trained using these methods had much
faster recoveries to a pre set heart rate than distance runners trained
using more conventional (at that time) methods. By the way it was also
found that weight training produced a more rapid recovery.
While I don't run much any more - running and basketball destroyed my knees
- I still have a keen interest in the sport. An old teammate and friend
from both high school and college is now a research physiologist whose
prime interest is long duration suboptimal exercise - i.e. distance
running. I have tried to get him interested in endurance horses but to no
avail. While drawing blood is still a mainstay tool, there are many new
instruments that give the resercher more data than before - one being the
HRM. In a recent conversation he told me that one thing that has come out
of this research is a much better understanding of the "anaerobic
threshold". It turns out that is varied much more between runners than
first thought. In humans there thought to be one magic number. That is
not the case at all.
It also turns out that in humans recovery after exercise is more important
than the exact numbers of the anaerobic threshold. The development and
use of all muscle types is very important to the distance runner. What we
learned in the field in the 60's turns out to be provable scientifically
today. Most track programs now have active efforts to develop the sprint
speed and strength of their distance runners. I think this is what Tom
Ivers was referring to in an earlier post.
Does this apply to endurance horses - probably somewhat. I'll let the
experts on horse physiology discuss this. Take two horse A and B at the
same fitness level. If horse A can run at 170 for five miles and recover
to 64 within five minutes of stopping and horse B cannot recover to 64 in 5
minutes after running at 150 for five miles, I believe is safer to let
horse A run at 170 than it is to let horse B run at 150!
I think the key is to know your own horse and don't use someone else's
numbers.
Truman
Truman Prevatt
Sarasota, FL