A few weeks ago, I was talking with Jon about an upcoming workout. I had planned to run some fast 200m reps at the end of a quicker run and asked Jon how fast I should try to run them.

“Maybe, 31-32 down to 27-28?” I asked.

“Hmm… doesn’t 27-28 sound a bit fast?”

The truth was that – in the past – running 200m in 27 to 28 seconds wouldn’t have been that fast. When I was at the end of track or cross country season in college, I would generally be able to run 27.x running hard at the end of a workout – but not all out. It left me feeling fast and ready.

So, I figured there was no reason why I shouldn’t be able to run that same pace now. I’m in great shape, I thought. I’m healthy and I’ve been hammering workouts, so what’s a few 200s?

It turned out – as always – that Jon was right. When the day came, I was surprised by how hard it felt to run 30 seconds, let alone 27. On the penultimate rep, I decided to try and open my stride a bit more – reach a bit deeper into the well. I was sure that I just wasn’t used to this system and now I’d run a 27.

Nope. 29.5.

Sheesh, I feel slow.

 ***

This afternoon, I was talking with my friend David who’s currently teaching in Spain. David knows more about athletics and physiology than almost I know, so I’m always trying to pick his brain. When I regaled him with the tale of my struggling to break 30 seconds, his answer surprised me.

“That’s great news!”

“Um.”

“It sounds like your training’s going perfectly. Haven’t you ever read anything about elite marathoners and vertical leap?”

I hadn’t.

“There was a study that professional marathoners at their peak only had a vertical leap of like ten inches,” he explained, laughing.

I looked it up while we were on the phone and found an excerpt from Dave Costill’s Physiology of Sport an Exercise:

“When tested for vertical jump, the average, untrained individual can jump 20.9 inches, compared to a mean jump of 13.5 inches for a group of elite marathon runners.”

The more I read, the more it was reinforced. Even legendary Bill Rodgers – an American multi-time winner of the Boston Marathon – was quoted as saying that he felt his vertical jump was inversely proportional to his marathon ability. In his book, Marathon Man, Rodgers said:

“…loss of vertical jumping ability was a good sign for me that I was ready to run a good marathon. If my ‘hops’ were too good, I would lack endurance to finish the marathon strong.”

David explained that a measurement like vertical leap has a lot to do with how your fast-twitch (Type-II) muscle fibers (the ones you use for sprinting, jumping, etc.)  are acting compared to slow-twitch fibers (used predominantly in endurance). While your ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fibers is more or less set by genetics (note: the science is still relatively split about this), there is some variability in the actual numbers and even more variability in how they can behave.

“When you’re training for the marathon, the hard long runs and all that mileage forces your body into a state of adaption where as many of your muscle fibers as possible are acting like those slow-twitch, endurance fibers, burning oxygen. Not being able to run under 29 seconds is a great sign because it means that your fibers are all acting as slow-twitch,” David went on.

“So, lacking that top-end speed is actually a good thing?”

“Yeah!” he said. “If anything, coaches should talk about how to bring DOWN your vertical leap when you start real distance training.”

We both laugh.

“Okay, son, your intervals are going well, but you’ve really gotta bring that vertical leap down in the next few weeks…” Dave impersonates the overly-stern college coach. “But seriously, I think it’s only good news. And now you just get the added benefit of trying to think of Haile or Wilson Kipsang trying to dunk and getting like a foot off the ground.”

I’m glad there’s a silver lining.

“Or you could just contain them all in a space with a very low fence…”