Five-Pace Training Program

Reading time: 11 min

Five-Pace Training involves, you guessed it, five different training paces. It is also known as Multi-Tier Training. I first read about Multi-Tier Training in coach Joe Vigil‘s book Road to the Top. Vigil referenced the book Better Training for Distance Runners by physiologist David Martin & coach Peter Coe as the source of the idea. And Coe credited the development of the system to coach Frank Horwill. You can read a selection of Horwill articles HERE.

Joe Vigil, Peter Coe and Frank Horwill are BIG names in the world of running coaching. It is amazing how one referenced the other who referenced the other regarding Multi-Tier Training.

What I present here is a generalized version of Multi-Tier Training which I call Five-Pace Training. The small tweaks I have made allow the concept to be applied more widely. Multi-Tier Training was designed for middle-distance runners. But the fundamental idea does extend to long-distance running as well. Here we go!

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Coach Vigil’s Fulcrum

Reading time: 7 min

It has become clear to me that we must view a training program as a balance with the aerobic phase, the Fulcrum, and the anaerobic phase

Coach Joe Vigil

Coach Joe Vigil is a living legend. He is a scientist and coach whose unique combination of physiology and sports science with motivation and decades of experience have produced incredible results.

Here is a shortlist of his coaching accomplishments:

  • Coach of Meb Keflezighi, Deena Kastor and Brenda Martinez to name a few famous American runners.
  • 20 different medalists at the World Cross Country Championships
  • 19 NCAA and NAIA collegiate team championships
  • A perfect score at the NCAA Cross Country National Championships which means that the runners on his team finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th
  • A meet-winning percentage of 94.2 percent with over 3000 wins
  • Coach of the US Olympic Team, twice. And was named to the coaching staff of the World Cross Country Championships, the Pan American Games, and numerous other international coaching staffs

If you’d like to learn more about Coach Vigil, Spartan Life did an excellent profile on him which you can read HERE. If you’ve never heard the name Joe Vigil before today, make sure you read the profile!

The focus in this post is how Coach Vigil transitions his runners between the aerobic and anaerobic phases of a training program. In earlier posts, we learned about the methods used by Arthur Lydiard and Jack Daniels. Coach Vigil calls this phase the Fulcrum, and he describes the concept in his book Road to the Top.

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Of Records & Races

Reading time: 3 min

On the track or road, when a runner sets a world record, often he or she is far ahead of any rivals. The record becomes a time trial more than a race. Once the pacers have completed their duties, there is nothing to feed off other than the clock itself.

Time Trialling to a record is an incredible accomplishment. But when a record comes down to a drag race between two or more runners, the excitement you experience while watching is palpable.

In the runners’ attempts to outdo one another, they are each elevating each other’s performance. The result is a race that is “greater than the sum of its parts.” The results achieved are beyond what the runners could have done alone racing against the clock.

I love that.

There is a comradery underlying the machismo of racing for the win, the gold or the money. There is a tie that binds runners chasing mastery of their sport at the highest level – the spirit of competition. Aiming to be the very best a person can be. We are going to watch two such races today.

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Jack Daniels’ Phase II

Reading time: 8 min

Sometimes picking up the pace in a race feels better than staying with the same pace; always try speeding up before you drop back from a tough pace

Coach Jack Daniels

In the mid-90s, editor-in-chief of Runner’s World magazine Amby Burfoot called coach Jack Daniels the “world’s best running coach.” Burfoot, an accomplished marathoner from the late-60s and early-70s, believed so strongly that he “plastered” the phrase on the cover of the magazine.

In 2009, Burfoot posted on the Runner World blog a point-by-point account of why he believes so strongly in Daniels‘ coaching abilities. If you are not familiar with Daniels, take a moment to read the post.

As I mentioned in the post on Fast but Not Hard drills, Daniels’ Running Formula was the first full-length running book I read when I first started. I implemented his program for several seasons. And I enjoyed it tremendously.

The way Daniels lays out the principles of training and simplifies the concepts down to specific pace ranges and workouts is impressive. If you’re interested in learning more about the nuts-and-bolts of running, Daniels’ Running Formula is a great place to start.

What we are going to focus on today is Phase II of Daniels training programs.

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The Forward Lean

Reading time: 7 min

Many articles on running cues or techniques discuss the Forward Lean. The fundamental idea is that by leaning the body forward, you improve your running technique.

The caveat in most articles is that the forward lean must come from the ankles and not from the waist. What does it mean to “forward lean from the ankles?” It is perhaps easiest to understand by experience.

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Peter Snell: Athlete

Reading time: 3 min

As a teenager I had no idea that I had the potential to win an Olympic gold medal and my athletic career developed only by lucky circumstances

Peter Snell

Peter Snell was a natural athlete. He excelled at rugby, tennis, cricket and golf among other sports. It just so happens that one day, coach Arthur Lydiard spotted the 19-year-old Snell run an 880-yard handicap race in 1957. Lydiard was impressed by Snell‘s natural speed and convinced Snell to drop his other sports and pursue track. The rest we shall say is history.

Snell’s impressive resume includes all of the following:

  • 800m gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympic games
  • 880y and Mile gold medals at the 1962 Perth Commonwealth games
  • 800m and 1500m gold medals at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics games – a feat that has not been replicated since.
  • World Records in the 800m, 880y, 1000m, Mile and 4 x 1 Mile relay
  • Voted New Zealand’s Sports Champion of the (20th) Century

There is a lot to say about Peter Snell. But here are just two tidbits about the 1960 Olympics and his 800m world record.

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Lydiard Hills

Reading time: 8 min

If you want to be a successful runner, you have to consider everything. It’s no good just thinking about endurance and not to develop fine speed.

Arthur Lydiard

New Zealand’s Arthur Lydiard is one of the outstanding running coaches of all time – possibly the greatest. He dramatically changed the sport of running in two significant ways: training and popularity.

First, Lydiard developed and spread the idea of a periodized running program. He started runners with aerobic running up to 100 miles per week – that many years of trial-and-error lead him to believe was the sweet spot for aerobic development. Then he would progressively transition runners toward more anaerobic training specific to their target event. He did this before the words aerobic and anaerobic were popular training lexicon.

His program was so successful that, incredibly, Lydiard sent three local athletes to the 1960 Rome Olympics: Peter Snell (800m), Murray Halberg (5000m) and Barry Magee (Marathon) and all three made in on the podium! Snell and Halberg won gold and Magee a bronze. Four years later at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Snell would win gold in the 800m and the 1500m – a feat that has not been repeated at the games!

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Two Keys to Coaching

Reading time: 1 min

I said it was simple. Not easy.

– Dan John

Coach Dan John has many memorable quotes. And for good reason. Dan has over 40 years of coaching experience in throwing events and weight training with athletes of all ages and levels. Plus, he is an accomplished discus thrower, highland games competitor, Olympic weightlifter and holds the American record in the “weight pentathlon” (discus, shot put, hammer throw, javelin and weight throw combined).

From a coaching standpoint, below are two Dan John quotes that really stand-out to me. I have burned these two quotes into my brain and continually come back to them when reviewing my own training or that of my athletes.

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Running Base Building Program

Reading time: 4 min

Build a foundation of running fitness AND a foundation running technique as part of your Running Base

You’ve learned about Base Runs. You’ve learned about Fast but Not Hard drills. The good news is that the combination of Base Runs plus Fast but Not Hard drills equals a solid running base building program. Building a firm Base is all about building a foundation of running fitness and a foundation of running technique.

Base Runs will develop your general endurance and allow your body to strengthen running muscles and tissues gradually while running. Further, if you follow all the Base Running suggestion, you’ll practice your nasal breathing, run on variable terrain, overcome any over-emphasis on GPS-based paces and learn to direct your focus inwards. Fantastic!

Fast but Not Hard drills develop your general speed with a particular focus on technique. You can implement Rule #1. And work your way through the different Cues to learn more about what works and what doesn’t for you. Super.

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How to Run a Turn

Reading time: 2 min

It is a powerful feeling to sense an acceleration out of every corner just by positioning your body correctly.

Imagine you are riding a bicycle at a decent speed. You come to a left turn. What do you do to take the corner? Do you turn handlebars bars to the left?

The answer is No. You lean the bike to the left and countersteer the handlebars to the right.

You don’t turn the handlebars to the left going into the corner. As you come out of the corner though, you may make a small correction to your trajectory by turning the handlebars slightly. But to get through the corner, you lean and countersteer.

When you run a turn, your hips are the bike, and your shoulders and sternum are the handlebars.

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