The world’s fastest miler, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, doesn’t train above 87% of max (Eliud Kipchoge, history’s greatest marathoner, said in an interview that he infrequently did anything more high intensity other than endurance pace in practice)
Jakob estimated that he seldom pushes himself beyond 87 percent of his maximum effort in workouts — yes, 87 percent — so that he can preserve the best of himself for race day. He compared training to gardening: If you harvest your vegetables too early and toss them aside, they’ll rot.
“It’s a family thing,” Jakob said. “We believe in our vegetables. And we won’t pick them until the day we’re competing so we can see, ‘Oh, this is a good vegetable!’ ”
Here is another quote of his, which reminds me of something similar LeMond said about training not getting easier, you just go faster: “The biggest problem for me is that training doesn’t get easier when you’re getting better,” Jakob said.
And: “If people manage to study at training camp while they are also doing two sessions a day, they’re not training as they should be,” he said. “You have to sleep and then be doing something brain-dead to keep yourself prepared for the next session.”