Positive or Negative Splits...which is best approach?

shazkea

Just curious on people's experiences of which is the best approach across all distances - positive, negative or even splits. Should your strategy change depending on the distance; say between 5km or marathon.

Reading Running Through the Wall at the moment (great book!) and see many ultra-marathoners actually walk the first few miles. I've also heard that many 5km runners start out really fast and would prob slow down by last km. Or should you aim for same pace through out the race?

ecoli

shazkea wrote: »

Just curious on people's experiences of which is the best approach across all distances - positive, negative or even splits. Should your strategy change depending on the distance; say between 5km or marathon.

Reading Running Through the Wall at the moment (great book!) and see many ultra-marathoners actually walk the first few miles. I've also heard that many 5km runners start out really fast and would prob slow down by last km. Or should you aim for same pace through out the race?

My advice regarding this would be down to where you are coming from racing wise. For 5k or other shorter distances there no reason not to try push it from the word go and see how you feel but that is because if you blow up you dont have to wait atleast a couple of months to have another crack as you do with marathons and longer distances.

Recently I approached a 5 miler come from just mileage and strength building. Ran my first race of the year and had no expectations so I said go out hard and see how i hang on. It worked because my training was coming from strength rather than speed so i wasnt worried as much about blowing up but rather than i wouldnt be fast enough if i had something left in the tank to make it count.

If you are building towards a marathon or other longer distances and are worried you dont have the strength put it to be totally confident in not blowing up i would run even pace or even start off slow and build into it as if you do blow up it easier to make up time than it would be to hold on when you are spent

Choose your tactics to suit you and the race your doing rather than running a certain way to suit the tactics. If you know someone in the race of a similar level (friend etc.) think how best to run to make sure you beat them and then apply them tactics

--amadeus--

Metaphor time

Imagine an empty barrel that has a valve at the bottom. If you pour water in at a rate slower than / at the same speed as the valve drains then the barrel won't fill. Pour faster than the valve drains though and the barrel fills. If you pour for long enough (or fast enough) the barrel fills and overflows. And here's the thing - even if you slow down the rate of pouring to match the drainage the barrel will continue to overflow. You need to pour slower than the drainage to stop the overspill.

What am I talking about? Your muscles are like the barrel and the water is lactic acid. If the race is short enough your muscles won't fill with acid no matter how hard you run (gross oversimplification but you know what I mean) - no matter how fast you are pouring you stop before you reach the top of the barrel. Or if you're pouring for a long time you can keep the pour rate below the drain rate and again you'll never overflow - keep the pace below your lactic threshold and you can run forever (again a gross oversimplification).

So in terms of pacing the ideal strategy will depend on you and your physiological makeup. Shorter races allow you to pour faster, running harder from the gun - even if you overcook it (the barrel overflows) by the time that happens you're close enough to the end to just tough it out. Longer races though you can't take that risk so you should - IMO - start conservatively to ensure that you have the power to push hard at the end.

gerard65

No matter what distance your running (over 250m) even paced is the way to go. Ever watch a 400m runner run flat out for the first 300m and completely die over the last 100m being caught by at least half of the field? 'Go out hard and hang on' - my hole, never works. Your actually better starting off slower and building the pace as the race goes on, allowing your body to continuely adjust to the increasing strain. And certainly never take advice from a marathon runner about shorter distance's, that lot havn't a clue what their on about.:p

--amadeus--

gerard65 wrote: »

No matter what distance your running (over 250m) even paced is the way to go. Ever watch a 400m runner run flat out for the first 300m and completely die over the last 100m being caught by at least half of the field? 'Go out hard and hang on' - my hole, never works. Your actually better starting off slower and building the pace as the race goes on, allowing your body to continuely adjust to the increasing strain. And certainly never take advice from a marathon runner about shorter distance's, that lot havn't a clue what their on about.:p

Pffft, I keep forgetting people do short stuff! Yea I was really only talking about 5k. I agree though, negative is perfect but I always plan for even. That said if you always pace conservatively how are you ever going to make a breakthrough? Isn't the only way you can find out how fast you can go to go out hard?

shels4ever

Depends on your standard too, the better you are the more chance of positive splits in my books. If your in a race to win you need to out hard and be in the race, you dont really have the option to let people get too far inforn and hope they die. The whole race or pace debate is another story

Timmaay

From a physiological point of view I find running negative splits work better, in particular when you are running in a large field. You are passing people in the 2nd half of the race, and have less people passing you out then if you ran positive splits.

MrCreosote

I've just finished reading the books by the Science of Sport bloggers called The Runner's Body, and they had a little bit about pacing in it.

They graphed the average kilometer times for every world record for 5000m and 10000m available and it showed a fast first km, then a progressive slowing for each of the next kms, and a very fast last km (the fastest). So their summary was to try to start fast, try to hold the pace but expect a little slowing and finish all-out.

They did say that the most recent records don't show the slowing in the middle- they start fast, stay fast and finish even faster. But they didn't go into why this might be- better training, pacing methods or doping (most likely reason in my opinion)

Anyway not sure it answers your question but interesting nonetheless

BeepBeep67

^+1 In my PB's generally (10k or less) - I've found a fast 1st k/mile (ahead of average) while you get into position, followed by the middle section (behind average), when I'm fit I can maintain the pace in the difficult 4th k in a 5k example and then knock out a fast closing k.
In races less than 10k you do have to experiment and stretch yourself and as some above said, you'll get several chances throughout the year.
For marathons and I've yet to run one, the concensus seems to be that the race is only starting around mile 18, so sticking to tyour plan to that point seems to be the way to go and if you finish strong you can reset your plan for the next one.

RayCun

Pfitziger & Douglas advise a very small positive split - like if you're aiming for 3.58 do 1.58 followed by 2.00. Their argument is that in the second half of the race you are running less efficiently, recruiting other muscles in your run, so it would take more effort to maintain the same pace and it's best to plan for this slight falloff. But they're talking about a very small difference, not 'banking' five or ten minutes in the first half.

(I hadn't read this before the marathon, but that's more or less how it worked out for me.)

shazkea

Thanks for the responses - some interesting food for thought. Only running a little over a year now so looking to improve my times across the board. I think it will be trial and error for a few races but plenty of them around!

Interesting point about elite athletes not slowing in the middle these days; am curious now as to why that is. Have training methods changed that much over the years?

For those of you who pace for marathons & halfs, what strategy would you use in the different bands?

shazkea

shels4ever wrote: »

Depends on your standard too, the better you are the more chance of positive splits in my books. If your in a race to win you need to out hard and be in the race, you dont really have the option to let people get too far inforn and hope they die. The whole race or pace debate is another story

Sorry have to ask - what do you mean by this?

Enduro

shels4ever wrote: »

Depends on your standard too, the better you are the more chance of positive splits in my books. If your in a race to win you need to out hard and be in the race, you dont really have the option to let people get too far inforn and hope they die. The whole race or pace debate is another story

I completely disagree with that (and this ties in nicely with the mental toughness vs stupidity thread). If you run your optimal race to get your optimal time you will get your best possible result in that race, irrespective of what everyone else does. letting people away and hoping they die (metaphorically) doesn't need to come into it.

My best races have always been those where I've done the best negative splits.

MrCreosote

shazkea wrote: »

Interesting point about elite athletes not slowing in the middle these days; am curious now as to why that is. Have training methods changed that much over the years?

Going slightly off topic here, but this is an interesting graph lifted from a cycling (doping) message board. It might help explain that lack of slowing in the middle of races. It shows the 10k fastest time for each year with a massive improvement in the early 90s (as EPO was available and undetectable.) They dropped off in the late 90s when a test for EPO became available.

This improvement in times happened around the same time as the 10k pace graph flattened out, so there is a good chance they are linked



Not saying of course there aren't other reasons than doping- 10k is less prestigious now than say marathon so maybe the interest/reward for better times isn't there. People say "oh the early 90s was when the East Africans started entering races"- not quite true, but it was certainly when they started dominating.

Of course just because they're Kenyan doesn't mean they're not doping...

Maars

Lets say for the sake of simplicity there are only 3 ways to run your race:
1. Even pace all the way, no fast start no sprint finish
2. Fast start and try to hold on
3. Conservative start and wind it up at the end for a fast finish

We'll disregard the first option because its off-topic.

The second option involves you going faster than your ideal race pace at the beginning of the race, which means you produce all the nasty bi-products of going fast (usually come under the technically incorrect, catch-all phrase "lactic acid") and the subsequent muscular fatigue and ultimately poor co-ordination. The problem is you now still have half a race to go with your body screaming at you.

However if you do it the other way round - option 3 above - you run the risk of finishing and having something left in the tank and the subsequent sleepless nights asking yourself "What if..".

My own vote would be for a measured increase in pace...but jaysus knows I never had the maturity to race that way.

shels4ever

Enduro wrote: »

I completely disagree with that (and this ties in nicely with the mental toughness vs stupidity thread). If you run your optimal race to get your optimal time you will get your best possible result in that race, irrespective of what everyone else does. letting people away and hoping they die (metaphorically) doesn't need to come into it.

My best races have always been those where I've done the best negative splits.

I have found that my best races have come when I've gone out relaly hard an hung on and raced people, maybe its just a personal thing really.

Krusty_Clown

shels4ever wrote: »

I have found that my best races have come when I've gone out relaly hard an hung on and raced people, maybe its just a personal thing really.

You're talking about shorter distances though, right? E.g. 3,000m track, where that strategy might work and you might get across the finish line before the lactic acid forces you to walk off the track, feigning injury.

In longer races surging in the early stages of a race is really only for the top runners in the world, such as Wanjiru (as evinced in an article somebody linked recently), where the motivation is to win (beat your competitors psychologically), rather than to complete the race in the fastest possible time. I wonder if Wanjiru was aiming for his fastest possible time in ideal conditions, with no real competitors (like Gebrselassie in Berlin) would he surge, or try to run as evenly paced a race as he could? I think he'd drop the positive split like a hot snot.

shels4ever

Krusty_Clown wrote: »

You're talking about shorter distances though, right? E.g. 3,000m track, where that strategy might work and you might get across the finish line before the lactic acid forces you to walk off the track, feigning injury.

In longer races surging in the early stages of a race is really only for the top runners in the world, such as Wanjiru (as evinced in an article somebody linked recently), where the motivation is to win (beat your competitors psychologically), rather than to complete the race in the fastest possible time. I wonder if Wanjiru was aiming for his fastest possible time in ideal conditions, with no real competitors (like Gebrselassie in Berlin) would he surge, or try to run as evenly paced a race as he could? I think he'd drop the positive split like a hot snot.

Yep for me its only about the short races!. If I run a marathon again it would be negative splits all the way.

I see Ryan hall has changed his training so that he can deal with an uneven paces marathon now, for him is all about been able to stay close enough to the leaders, he's run well in boston the last few years and had he been a little more intouch would have picked up a few more scalps over the run in.

RayCun

shels4ever wrote: »

I see Ryan hall has changed his training so that he can deal with an uneven paces marathon now, for him is all about been able to stay close enough to the leaders, he's run well in boston the last few years and had he been a little more intouch would have picked up a few more scalps over the run in.

or if he'd tried to stay with the leaders, blown up and dropped out.

Oisin11178

For my next marathon in barcelona i intend to start 5-10 secs slower than pmp for a few miles then pmp for the bulk of the race, then empty the tank after 20 if i can. Might not work but ill give it a go. Current pb is 1 sec neg split:D

Krusty_Clown

Oisin11178 wrote: »

For my next marathon in barcelona i intend to start 5-10 secs slower than pmp for a few miles then pmp for the bulk of the race, then empty the tank after 20 if i can. Might not work but ill give it a go. Current pb is 1 sec neg split:D

Just remember, that the last 2 or 3 miles in Barcelona have some slight climbs. So save some energy! If I remember correctly (don't count on it), once you hit the cobblestones you're close to the home stretch and can let it rip.

thirstywork2

depends how strong you are mentally to go out hard.Pacing comes from training and knowing what pace you are runnign at and im not talking about bloody garmin watches.

On the track if you look at most of the records from 800m-1500m the world records or really fast times are run with the athletes following a pacer and hanging on the last lap or so.

With the marathon most are faster in the second half.