Strategy for 24 hours

"Robert Grumbine" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quite simple. Run it balls-out from the word 'go'. This will
comprehensively mess with the heads of *every* other team. Do not
underestimate the importance of breaking the morale of your opponents early
in any endurance race.

Assuming your 10 guys can pop in 5 min-or-thereabout 1600m stints, they'll
only have to run hard once every 45 mins. I'd suggest this is more than
do-able for about the first 6 to 8 hours. After that, based on your
observations of the strategies employed by the other teams, you may wish to
revise your plans.

My only other comment would be to suggest that you gear your team to press
particularly hard during the hours 03:00 - 05:00. Again, the psychology of
pushing your opponents during a time of day that humans are at their most
vulnerable is usually profitable.

Psychology, not running talent, will win this race.

Robert Grumbine said:

Reflexes need to be readjusted somewhat. The 24 hour race in question
is a relay being done in 4 lap (1600 meters) legs through a team of
(up to) 10. Now, if it were a straight run of 24 hours, I think I have
a notion of the proper strategy. And if it were 10 people, each running
2.4 hours, that, too, would be fairly easy to plan.

But it's 1600 meters at a time, in fixed sequence, with anybody who
misses a turn not being allowed back in. Given that, does anybody have
any experience to suggest what sort of paces or effort levels we should
be aiming at, and how to decide or adjust?

(Obviously we're going to do what we do, and it's on our own heads.
And of course we have some ideas as to what it'll be. But more ideas
are always better than fewer ideas.)

Here's a report from a teammate on a 24hr relay he did sometime back. The
author of the report ran a 2:28 marathon 4 months later.

----
I'm now recovering from that 24 hour relay that I did this weekend. At
this point it's still a struggle to stay awake, and that walking thing
isn't= so easy, but that's okay 'cause it went really well. The relay
ended up having= 2 distinct parts. The 18 pre-flood miles, and then the
rest, which were in torential rains. We were booking for the first
18. My average was probably about 5:10 with 5 sub 5 minute miles thrown
in as crowd pleasers. But then sometime around two in the morning, the
rain hit, and it hit hard. The track turned = into a swimming pool and
our scorers tent fell victim to the storm. At that point = we had two
guys quit. So the rest of us, water logged and fearing the effects of
the unaviodable cold rains and the diminished rest went into survival mod=
e. i churned out the next group of mile between 5:30 and 6:10. And then
as the= sun rose and the rains subsided, I sped it back up to a 5:07
25th mile final= e.
----

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

"Terry R. McConnell" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Strategy here involves picking the best number of runners in addition to
the proper pace.

McNonsense, McConnell. Even weak runners will be useful, if only to give
your stronger guys more time to recover.

Quoted message said:

I say try to find 8 3 hour marathoners and run marathon pace (or fewer
runners if you can only find slower marathoners.)

Yeah, and try motivating them at 04:17 on a cold morning when the lead team
has several dozen laps on you. It's a *race*, goddamnit.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Robert Grumbine said:

Reflexes need to be readjusted somewhat. The 24 hour race in question
is a relay being done in 4 lap (1600 meters) legs through a team of
(up to) 10. Now, if it were a straight run of 24 hours, I think I have
a notion of the proper strategy. And if it were 10 people, each running
2.4 hours, that, too, would be fairly easy to plan.

Strategy here involves picking the best number of runners in addition to
the proper pace. At first glance one might think the more the better,
i.e., you should try to find 10 runners, but remember that the team is only
as strong as its weakest link. I'd have a much easier time finding 5 people
I'd be willing to spend 24 hours with under difficult conditions than I would
finding 10 such people.

I say try to find 8 3 hour marathoners and run marathon pace (or fewer
runners if you can only find slower marathoners.) The reason being that
marathon pace is familiar to all and known to be sustainable. Pick up
the pace in the last few hours if you have something left.

Good luck. Sounds like an interesting event.
--
************************************************************************
Terry R. McConnell Mathematics/215 Carnegie/Syracuse, N.Y. 13244-1150
[email hidden] 229B Physics Bldg http://barnyard.syr.edu/~tmc
************************************************************************

Robert Grumbine said:

Reflexes need to be readjusted somewhat. The 24 hour race in question
is a relay being done in 4 lap (1600 meters) legs through a team of
(up to) 10. Now, if it were a straight run of 24 hours, I think I have
a notion of the proper strategy. And if it were 10 people, each running
2.4 hours, that, too, would be fairly easy to plan.

But it's 1600 meters at a time, in fixed sequence, with anybody who
misses a turn not being allowed back in. Given that, does anybody have
any experience to suggest what sort of paces or effort levels we should
be aiming at, and how to decide or adjust?

(Obviously we're going to do what we do, and it's on our own heads.
And of course we have some ideas as to what it'll be. But more ideas
are always better than fewer ideas.)

Some observations from the physiology side:

(1) As long as you can maintain adequate glycogen (muscle storage plus
replenishment), endurance events tend to be limited by accumulation of lactate
(or more precisely H+) and pain tolerance thereof.

(2) The body can clear lactate in muscles in 60 minutes or less. If you have
less than 30 minutes, you can clear the lactate by a slow jog of 1-3 laps: Jog
just until you can go clearly faster at the same effort.

(3) If you run hard enough so that the lactate system is completely spent (as
would be the case in an all-out 400 or 800) the accumulated lactate levels can
be so high that muscle fiber is damaged by acidosis even before clearance can
begin after the event.

Given these considerations, I would do the following:

Run at 2K/3K race effort. The body can run at roughly VO2max pace for 6-10
minutes (individual variations), thus the lactate level for a mile at this
effort would not be so high as it could not be clearable without a lot of
accumulated damage.

Do an active recovery of roughly a 2 lap slow jog between efforts to clear
lactate.

Figure glycogen replenishment. You need something in excess of 100 cal/mile
(don't forget recovery/warmup jogs) plus 40 cal/kg/day for the basal rate.

Creatine *may* be helpful. It is most helpful in repeated sprints. Don't know
if it works with repeated VO2max efforts. You can use about 2g/day over 2-3
weeks, which avoids the weight gain associated with heavy 20g/day loading
rituals.

Lyndon
"Speed Kills...It kills those that don't have it!" --US Olympic Track Coach
Brooks Johnson

In article <[email hidden]>,
Lyndon <[email hidden]> wrote:

Thanks to you all for your suggestions. I'm keeping everything, but
thought a brief summary on the paces was interesting:

2-3 K race pace (Lyndon). This is probably what the race's record
holder for average pace (4:42 for his 29 miles), was doing.

10k-ish pace, with excursions to 5k-ish, but MP or slower if
the weather gods interfere (Donovan's club-mate who ran a 24 hour
relay).

Run at MP, with however many runners would finish in 1 hour, then
repeat (Terry). (Also: beware of uncongenial people, as 24 hours
can get awfully long as fatigue sets in and people clash.)

That's a goodly spread, but the reasoning is interesting, as I'd
hoped. I'll be passing along your (all of you) thoughts, including
on the points beyond pacing, to the rest of the folks on our team.
I feel good about the 4 already registered and 2 soon-to-be-registered
we already have in hand doing well with each other for the 24 hours.
We're a small club, but a pretty friendly bunch. (We'll also need
more than our current 6 to take a marathon-paced cycle up to 60 minutes.)

--
Robert Grumbine http://www.radix.net/~bobg/ Science faqs and amateur activities notes and links.
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences