80/20 Endurance Blog
The Other Pacing
“Life is full of little ironies,” he said. This wry observation was spoken by my father during a recent phone conversation between us. He’d called me to inquire about my health and to ask how my newly released book ON PACE: Discover How to Run Every Race at Your Real Limit was doing so far. […]
How Conservative Pacing Can also Be Aggressive Pacing
On June 6, 2021, Sifan Hassan of The Netherlands smashed the women’s 10,000-meter world record in the Dutch town of Hengelo, besting Ethiopian Almaz Ayana’s mark of 29:17.45 by more than 10 seconds. Two days later, the Ethiopian Olympic Trials Women’s 10,000m was held on the same track. Nobody expected the record to go down […]
Make Sure You’re Tired for Your Next Fitness Test
James Spragg is a young South African exercise physiologist who has carved out an interesting niche for his research. It is based on the idea that the fastest athlete on fresh legs is not necessarily the fastest athlete on fatigued legs, which is an important distinction, as in most endurance races, it is better to […]
The Results of the 80/20 Endurance Pacing Challenge Are In!
A few weeks ago, I invited readers of this blog to participate in what I chose to call the 80/20 Endurance Pacing Challenge. Here are the instructions I gave: First, determine your average pace per mile or per kilometer in your last half marathon. Next, go for a run. After warming up, run one mile or […]
How to Pace the Boston Marathon
In a recent post of mine—one that, like a number of my recent posts to this blog, dealt with the subject of pacing in running—I concluded with the following observation: “A masterful pacing performance like Scott Fauble’s 2:08:52 finish at this year’s Boston Marathon, which he achieved with dead-even 1:04:26 first- and second-half splits, are […]
Try the 80/20 Endurance Pacing Challenge!
Think about the last race you completed. Could you have gone any faster than you did? It’s a very simple question, yet a difficult one to answer in many cases. If you committed a major error in execution, such as running an entire track race in lane three, then it’s easy to answer in the […]
Why I Wrote an Entire Book on Run Pacing (and Why You Should Read It!)
I enjoy seeing any sport performed at an elite level—even golf, which I’ve never played. When I tune into a television broadcast of a professional golf tournament I am amazed by the players’ control of the ball. If a caddie tells a player they’re 185 yards from the flag on their second shot of a […]
Advancing in Another Direction: The Difference Between Retreat and Defeat
In late November 1950, at the height of the Korean War, United Nations troops under the command of Major General Oliver Smith were encircled and attacked near the Chosin Reservoir by a vastly larger Chinese force. Facing total annihilation if they tried to hold their ground, Smith’s men instead executed a fighting withdrawal, puncturing the […]
Is Lactate Measurement Essential for Endurance Training Optimization?
Lactate is having a moment. Our metabolite du jour owes its newfound celebrity largely to the hoopla surrounding the recent success of certain elite Norwegian endurance athletes, most notably triathlete Kristian Blummenfelt, who won the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Men’s Triathlon (held in 2021) and the 2021 Ironman World Championship (held in 2022), and who holds […]
A Zone By Any Other Name Would Be Complete
I recently had an e-mail exchange with an athlete regarding training intensity zones. He wanted to know how he could merge the industry standard Zone 1 definition of 50-65% of maximum heart rate into the 80/20 Endurance zones. This was news to me, because after more than thirty years participating in endurance sports this was […]
