Running and the 80/20 Principle
In 1997, Richard Koch wrote a book The 80/20 Principle. The gist of it is that 80% of the results in many endeavors come from 20% of the effort. Koch did not create this concept: the Pareto Principal, as it subsequently became known as, was borne out of research published by Vilfredo Pareto in 1896. Nevertheless, this concept picked up support in the 1900’s, especially in business and time management applications that compared inputs to outputs.
How might this play out in run training, especially as we age? Certainly, for an Olympic athlete to perform at 100%, their training effort is going to be close to 100% (in spite of the vernacular, we really can’t give more than 100%!) Yet, training at this level comes with risks of injury and other various tradeoffs. Even working with an experienced and reputable coach, an athlete has some upper limit of training capacity, above which they are likely to break down. This trickles down to all of us.
To apply this principle to running we have to first decide what is 100% and what is 80%. Let’s suppose a 61-year old male runner considers his potential for a 5K to be 20:00 minutes, or a 1:30 half marathon. This is an 80% age-graded result, which would establish him as a “national class” competitor. A significant achievement! For this consideration, let’s say this is his 100%. Then, is a 24:00 5K or a 1:48 half marathon, a 20% drop in pace this runner’s 80%? I don’t think so. This would leave him with a 66.6% age grading. While such a time might result in a high age-class place in a smaller, local race, I suspect this level runner might see something closer to a 21:00 minute 5K or a 1:34:40 half, which is a 76% age-grade result, as 80%. A strong but not top effort. And in light of family, work, and community obligations, maybe a reasonable goal. So, what would that mean for training?
If we assume a 76% age-grading is this runner’s 80% achievement (this may be confusing – there are two different pots of measurement here), it’s impractical to expect a 20% training effort, over an extended time, will drive a 76% age-grade result, this runner’s 80%. Let’s further assume that the training volume needed by this runner to achieve his 100% effort is 40 miles per week. Twenty percent of that, or eight miles a week, is simply not going to lead to an 80% achievement. Considering just this measure of volume, I suggest something in the range of 30 miles per week will be needed. Were these figures to hold, 75% of the inputs are needed to achieve an 80% result. A far cry from Koch’s 20%! These numbers are arbitrary, and maybe the inputs needed are 65%, or 70%. Still way outside the 80/20 principle.
Of course, training is so much more than mileage. We need to incorporate intervals, hills, tempos, and long runs along with plenty of stretching and strength training. It’s a package deal. At some point, we set goals we can reasonably attain, given various constraints in our lives. And while there might be a mathematical way of computing the training needed to achieve a particular level of achievement, for sure it is going to require a lot of trialing and erroring to find a workable balance.
This takes us back to the fundamental principle: Each senior runner is an “experiment of one.” One person’s 100% or 80% achievement is going to vary from someone else’s, as will the amount and mix of training stimuli needed to get there. It’s complicated. Thinking that training is just “getting out the door” is pretty simplistic. At some point, it comes around to the very first question: Why are we running?