walk breaks - experiences?

Dot dot.h@#duh?att.net said:

I guess it depends on what you call a race or what's being discussed
here.

I'd call them all a race, though different kinds of races.

Quoted message said:

If it's only a race when you're going all out and anything else is
economy and survival, then anything over about 10 sec is economy and
survival.

Yes, of course. I suppose the difference is that the systems that need to
be kept more or less stable change depending on the race duration. For a race
between 800m up to 10k, you're burning fuel rapidly, and your blood lactate
levels are increasing (how quickly depends on which race, but all are above
LT).

In the marathon, you don't get rapid lactic acid accumulation any more, but
you can run into problems with cooling, and hydration. But at the marathon
distance, most people chew through fuel very quickly.

In a 24hr race, you need to be in some sort of steady-state fuel usage, just
like you need to be at some sort of steady-state lactic acid level when running
a half marathon.

If one were to make longer events, of a week duration or more, people would
probably need to take *sleep* breaks.

As the race time increases, the number of variables that you need to keep at
a steady state (or at least, a fairly controlled state) also increases.

Quoted message said:

I don't watch much on tv, but I've seen a number of 100-m
sprinters die before the line. Terry has described how difficult it is
to survive 800-m races (I think I got the distance right, but somewhere
in the x-m range). Lyndon may have thoughts here.

I've raced the 400, 800 and the mile. In these you're fighting lactic acid
buildup. Anyone who's run these events will know why they call it "the bear
jumping on your back". Especially with the 400 and the 800, it can hit you
very suddenly, almost like being struck by a bolt of lightening. That's why
you'll sometimes see people in these races die in the last 20m or so.

I haven't done <=200 sprints, and don't completely understand why people slow
down in the 100m.

Cheers,
--
Donovan Rebbechi
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/

Donovan Rebbechi said:

If one were to make longer events, of a week duration or more, people would
probably need to take *sleep* breaks.

Here's an interesting bit about this year's winner of the Race Across
America. Check out the quote from him at the end 🙂

Hundreds of people gathered in Kennedy Plaza to welcome men's solo
winner, Juré Robic, across the finish line. Robic, a four-time national
road champion from Slovenia, trained to win this race and, at one point,
was on pace to break the current average speed record of 15.40 mph set
in 1986 by Pete Penseyres. Robic's fast start out of San Diego smoothed
out when it was realized that second place Michael Trevino was less of a
threat, but then slowed down farther east perhaps due to rain and
thunderstorms. His solid form revealed nothing about his mental state
during this year's race and this afternoon, a haggard but unusually
lucid Robic graciously answered numerous questions about his reasons for
doing RAAM.

"I asked myself about this many times… when they put me on the table
like a baby and spread my legs like a pregnant woman, then said you must
sleep like this for 45 minutes and then wake up and ride. I asked
myself, is this worth it?"

Slovenia's Juré Robic finished the 2,959-mile 2004 Insight RAAM at 8:05
p.m. in eight days, nine hours, 51 minutes with an average speed of
14.66 mph.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road.php?id=road/2004/jun04/RAAM04/RAAM049

-J

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I believe that if you are undertrained, you can use Galloway to go

further
than you would if you were to just run stright through. If you are
adequately
trained to run the entire distance, though, I don't think that there's
anything
to be gained through walk breaks.

Here's the big thing: if you're going to need to walk at some point anyway,
you're going to be a hell of a lot faster if you take the walk breaks before
you *have* to. For example, staggering the last 4 miles is
going to be a lot slower than walking the same 4 miles in small chunks
throughout the race, since you'll walk faster *and* run faster that way. <<

Absolutely. I didn't differentiate clearly enough between scheduled walk
breaks - which, as you say, should be evenly spaced throughout the race and not
backloaded - and walking at the end because you have to.

Mike