"PEGGY DARLENE II"

OBJECTIVE: Power Endurance/Strength Endurance

Warm up: 4x Kettlebell Complex

TRAINING:

(1) 5 ROUNDS FOR TIME
" Run to Rock Gym (400m, with hill)
Row 500m

(2) 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
Dead Lift @ 55% 1RM
Kettlebell Swing x2
KTE

Comments:

Long, slow distance training is severly badmouthed in the hybrid strength and conditioning world. Many coaches argue that long, slow distance produces, weak, injured athletes, who have little power, and are simply slow.

To train the cardio vascular system, they advocate interval training, or multi-modal, crossfit-style circuits.

In general, there is a division between endurance coaches, and strength coaches - with each rarely stepping into the other's arena of expertise.

I can't afford this ignorance, and have been self-educating myself on endurance training, and formulating ways to mend it into the strength and interval training we do in the gym.

I'm not expert - yet - but here are a couple things my small mind has comprehended so far:

1) Interval-type training is effective in increasing the lactate threshold, allowing athletes to go harder, longer, without blowing up.

2) Long slow distance training is paced below the lactate threshold, and can be trained also, so the athlete can move faster, longer. Here the body uses fat for fuel, and an athlete must train this to become efficient in this energy system. This is called an "aerobic base."

Below is taken from a colum I found written my 6-time Ironman Triathlon winner Mark Allen on his experience with long, slow, distance training which illustrates this second point. For the full column, go to markallen.com:

"I came from a swimming background, which in the 70's and 80's when I competed was a sport that lived by the No Pain, No Gain motto. My coach would give us workouts that were designed to push us to our limit every single day. I would go home dead, sleep as much as I could, then come back the next day for another round of punishing interval sets.

"It was all I knew. So when I entered the sport of triathlons in the early 1980's, my mentality was to go as hard as I could at some point in every single workout. And to gauge how fast that might have to be, I looked at how fast the best triathletes were running at the end of the short distance races. Guys like Dave Scott, Scott Tinley and Scott Molina were able to hold close to 5 minute miles for their 10ks after swimming and biking!

"So that's what I did. Every run, even the slow ones, for at least one mile, I would try to get close to 5 minute pace. And it worked...sort of. I had some good races the first year or two, but I also suffered from minor injuries and was always feeling one run away from being too burned out to want to continue with my training.

"Then came the heart rate monitor. A man named Phil Maffetone, who had done a lot of research with the monitors, contacted me. Phil said that I was doing too much anaerobic training, too much speed work, too many high end/high heart rate sessions. I was forcing my body into a chemistry that only burns carbohydrates for fuel by elevating my heart rate so high each time I went out and ran.

"So he told me to go to the track, strap on the heart rate monitor, and keep my heart rate below 155 beats per minute. Maffetone told me below this number that my body would be able to take in enough oxygen to burn fat as the main source of fuel for my muscle to move. I was going to develop my aerobic/fat burning system. What I discovered was a shock.

"To keep my heart rate below 155 beats/minute, I had to slow my pace down to an 8:15 mile. That's three minutes/mile SLOWER than I had been trying to hit in every single workout I did! My body just couldn't utilize fat for fuel.

"So for the next four months I did exclusively aerobic training keeping my heart rate at or below my maximum aerobic heart rate, using the monitor every single workout. And at the end of that period, my pace at the same heart rate of 155 beats/minute had improved by over a minute. And after nearly a year of doing mostly aerobic training, which by the way was much more comfortable and less taxing than the anaerobic style that I was used to, my pace at 155 beats/minute had improved to a blistering 5:20 mile.

"That means that I was now able to burn fat for fuel efficiently enough to hold a pace that a year before was redlining my effort at a maximum heart rate of about 190. I had become an aerobic machine! On top of the speed benefit at lower heart rates, I was no longer feeling like I was ready for an injury the next run I went on, and I was feeling fresh after my workouts instead of being totally exhausted from them."

********

"Peggy Darlene II" is a demanding power endurance workout which, though longer, I found more "enjoyable" than rowing a straight 5000m. The transition from the rower to the run isn't fun, but bearable. Row hard, but smart. I was able to keep my rowing pace between 1:50 and 1:55 per 500m each round, and felt strong on the runs.

Many of my athletes have been pretty hammered by the run/row effort, and I've decreased the reps of the dead lift/swing/kte core circuit for some accordingly. Train smart.

- Rob Shaul

Steve, Avery and Myra tackle "Peggy Darlene II."