Back in the day, the importance of a distance run was
thought to be that of putting constant pressure on the heart so that it will
adapt. In other words the theory went
that you wanted to keep your heart rate up for a prolonged period. So the logic went, the further we can go the
better.
What we now know is that adapting to training is a super
complicated process that involves numerous different adaptations on multiple
different systems. So is it as easy as
more is always better? I’ve delved into
this question many times in regards to doubles versus singles. By the old school logic, singles should
always be better. It makes logical sense
that 10 miles once is better than 5 miles twice. But as I pointed out before, that logic isn’t
always sound. It’s one of my favorite topics to delve into (more here)
and it’s always worth looking into.
An interesting new study came out where they took a look at
the effect of one 30min run versus 3x10min runs throughout the day in mice. It’s not quite your doubles versus singles
argument, but it’s an interesting concept.
What makes the research a bit more fascinating (and also
harder to translate to real world application) is that it was on mice, which
means they could dissect and analyze all sorts of things that we normally can’t
see. We get to see what is going on at
the cellular level instead of relying on crappy surrogate markers like VO2max.
What they did was take mice and stick them on an 8 week
treadmill training regime. Half the
group they had do 30min a day all at once 5x a week, while the others did 3x10min
split with 2 hours rest in between. Then
they measured all sorts of lovely signaling pathways activation to see what was
going on.
What did they find?
