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Are your feet moving fast enough to race well?

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Simple question: How fast do your feet need to be moving in training for you to race well?

For instance, if you’ve never done any training at mile pace can you expect to run a local road road mile well? Sure, you may have done 10 x 400m with 30-60 seconds recovery, but in that workout you’re probably running closer to 5,000m pace rather than mile pace.

The point I’m trying to make is simple: if you want to race to your potential, then you have to do some running that is as fast, or even faster than, the given race distance.

In Simple Marathon Training the assignments for strides are never faster than 5k pace. On Monday and Friday athletes are assigned five 20, 25 or 30 second strides with roughly 60-90 seconds of easy jogging between them. Makes sense, right? If you are going to run a marathon then you need to be able to run 5k pace, yet you don’t need to be able to run mile pace.

While the above no doubt makes sense to you, my guess is that there is a very good chance that you are not doing 30 second strides at 5k pace in your training. If this is the case, then remind yourself about the neuromuscular system and how it impacts training.

Neuromuscular means exactly what it sounds like it means. It’s the intersection between the nervous system and the musculature of the human body. A sprinter has a fantastic neuromuscular system because they not only have to react to the starter’s pistol, but they have to exert a huge amount of force into the ground.

A high school 1,600m runner needs to be able to run 100m strides at 800m pace, perhaps even 600m pace. This ability to run paces faster than the 1,600m will allow the athlete to both feel more comfortable running 1,600m, but also give them a chance to “kick” at the end of the race.

In my coaching, all athletes do strides, strides that are at a pace much shorter than their primary race distance. So the adult marathoner does strides at 5k pace. The collegiate 5k runner does strides at 1,600m or 800m pace.

John O’Malley, boys cross country and track coach at Sandburg High School simply says, “Our feet are moving fast every day.” He is one of the few coaches who has boys teams competing at both the national level in cross country, as well as in relays like the 4xMile 4x800m. His athletes have their feet moving fast every day; they are one of the best boys distance programs in the country because of this focus.

If you aren’t doing strides, you need to do them. If you aren’t doing fast enough strides, consider your primary race distance and do strides a bit faster than you want to run for that race. That’s it! Do strides and do them a bit faster than your primary race distance.

Need To Do’s

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The concept that there are “need to do’s” vs. “nice to do’s” in training is one that I learned by reading Vern Gambetta’s work. Vern is phenomenal coach and educator and his blog is a gem.

It’s a simple question, but one that many runners – especially well read runners who have a great deal of knowledge about training – don’t answer very well.

Let’s look at strength training.

For collegiate athletes, Strength and Mobility should come first, then, once they have a good foundation of general strength, they can move to things like kettlebells. After that, time to do some squats, weighted step simple leg step ups, dumbbell work, etc. They need to follow a simple progression of general strength to light external load (the kettlebells) to greater external load.

Those are “need to do’s” in my mind, assuming the athlete is motivated and there aren’t any odd injury patterns going into this type of training.

I think Olympic lifting is a “nice to do” for these athletes. If they a) have a coach who can teach them the proper technique and b) have the time in their day to get it in, then do it. But may college athletes lack one or both of these must haves, so Olympic lifting becomes a “nice to do.”

For the adult runner, an example of this choice is a speed development workout, which I wrote an article on for Running Times a few years back – article and video.

I currently only have two clients – both in their 20’s – for whom this workout would be appropriate. It’s a “nice to do” for them, and they’re young.

Could runners in their 30s, 40s or 50s do the speed development workout and get some benefit out of it? Sure, but for most busy adults with hectic lives, the speed development workout doesn’t fit due to time constraints. Also, this workout is only appropriate if the athlete has good levels of general strength before they tackle a workout with a lot of fast running.

Finally, for the adult running 5k, 10k, half marathons and marathons, race-pace work done at the end of the training cycle is a “need to do.”

5k race pace workouts are difficult and some people don’t want to do them, but you must if you want to race to your potential over 5,000m. Thus, race pace work is a need to do.

So the important question is, what will your “need to do” list be this year and what elements of training will you put in the “nice to do” category?

6 Ways to Copy the Offseason Breaks of Elite Runners

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Taking a break from structured running is a fundamental aspect of sound annual training cycles for runners. A great article in the Wall Street Journal following the 2012 London Olympics shared how three of the best American male distance runners took complete time off after their last races. While this may sound unreasonable to those who are accustomed to working out every day, the following tips provide insight into how to take an offseason break, why it’s beneficial to your next training cycle, and why failing to take a break can lead to fatigue and potential injury if you immediately resume training after completing a goal race.

Run, Don’t Rest, The Day(s) After the Big Race
In the immediate days following your goal race, you should jog easy for at least one or two days. Why? When you run, you pump oxygen-rich blood to muscle tissue that has been damaged on the cellular level.

Running easy in the days after a big race can be hard to do, especially if your last race was a marathon, but it’s what is best for your body. Plus, you’ll get some information about what next steps you should take during the offseason. For instance, if your plantar fascia is sore during these easy runs, then you should visit a soft-tissue therapist (physical therapist, chiropractor, massage therapist or Active Release Therapy [ART] professional) as soon as possible so that when it’s the right time to resume serious training, you’ll be ready.

Then, Take Several Days of Complete Rest
When you tell recreational runners they should do nothing for a few days at the beginning of their offseason after one or two days of post-race jogging, some may respond: “There is no way I could do that. I have to work out.”

But if you pose the same question to an elite runner, he or she may simply ask, “How many days should I take off. A couple or a whole week?”

Rest and recovery are fundamental to sound training, yet so many runners think that if they take a day off they’ll lose fitness, or they’ll have a guilty conscience about not working out. Your body needs rest. It doesn’t need months of rest, but a few days of complete rest are extremely helpful when you transition from that racing season to the offseason. Again, the best runners in the world take complete rest between the end of their racing season and the start of their next build-up, so you should be willing to do the same.

If You Can, Invest Some Money in Yourself During the Offseason
The offseason is a great time to see a soft-tissue specialist—a physical therapist, chiropractor, massage therapist or ART specialist—who can not only give you an assessment of how strong or weak your body is, but can also work on any problem areas.

It’s rare that runners feel 100-percent healthy all of the time. Yet when you’re in the middle of training mode, it’s hard to rationalize taking a few days off to see someone and let the body heal itself. That’s why the offseason is such a great time to take care of aches, pains or imbalances.

If you don’t have someone to see, visit your local running shoe store, and someone there should have a couple of good recommendations for you. Finally, go out of your way to find an ART therapist. I’ve found that a good ART professional is worth his or her weight in gold.

Everyone’s Offseason Break Differs
There is nothing set in stone about what activities you should complete during your offseason break once you’ve taken a few days of complete rest. While this work could be considered cross-training, I prefer to call it aerobic work—workouts that are completely fueled by the aerobic metabolism.

I live in Colorado, and at every point in the year, hiking is an option (although you might need snow shoes in certain places in the winter); I encourage runners to take advantage of the trails. Walking up and down trails strengthens the muscles and tendons in the ankle, knee and hip joints, and can help improve “joint integrity,” which is beneficial for all runners.

If you live in the flatlands, try a brisk walk, swim laps, or try aqua jogging. The key here is to do it gently—the goal is to get a small aerobic stimulus that doesn’t put much stress on the ankles, knees and hips.

Options abound. Nordic skiing is easy on the joints and a great way to build aerobic fitness. Bikes and elliptical machines are available at most gyms, and are good options as well. Remember, when you first get back into the aerobic work, keep things gentle. You aren’t trying to gain fitness for your run training, but rather getting in a few weeks of aerobic stimuli before you resume running.

Make General Strength and Mobility Gains
There’s no better time to make gains in General Strength and Mobility (GSM) than during the offseason break. I prioritize this work over aerobic cross-training during the offseason. I would rather see a runner complete 30 to 40 minutes of GSM—this could include some Active Isolated Flexibility work, also known as “rope stretching”—for a few weeks, then start running, than see someone in the pool every day, do no GSM, and then jump into their run training.

The bottom line is that all runners—from the most elite athletes in the world to people just off the couch and training for a 5K—can get stronger and use GSM to prevent injuries. I’m a big believer in runners doing non-running work because it allows them to run more miles more intense workouts. GSM work greatly decreases the frequency of injuries for those runners who do it daily.

Can you run injury-free and not do GSM? Sure, but why risk it? Said another way, think of GSM work as an insurance policy against injury.

The problem with GSM work: Most people find it less enjoyable than running. You’re not moving from point A to point B, but rather doing work at the gym or at home before and after your run. I get that; I really do. But trust me on this—if you do GSM religiously for two or three weeks, you’re going to feel different in your hips, and your posture will improve. You’ll feel stronger and more powerful when you walk. Then, when you resume your run training, you’ll be ready to handle all of the running that you want to do safely.

Make Sure You’re Bored Before You Resume Running
There’s an interesting phenomenon that occurs among the best runners in the world. They don’t exactly know when they’re ready to come back from their offseason break, so they simply wait until they’re bored. Their breaks could be as short as 10 days, or as long as a month. For most elite athletes, the offseason break consists of one week of nothing, one to two weeks of cross-training and some light GSM (since they will usually complete a great deal of ancillary work once their training resumes), and then it’s time to get back to running.

My experience reveals that recreational athletes wait until they’re bored for an hour, and then decide to go for an hour-long run. Better to be bored for several days, then start with an easy 30-minute jog. Even then you might say, “I still want some more time off.” Remember, the body needs to rest and recover. If you don’t give your body a break now, you run the risk of becoming overly fatigued during your serious training, or getting injured because your bones, tendons, ligaments and muscles haven’t recovered from the last race—especially if that last race was a marathon.

So be smart about your offseason break. Make sure to start a daily GSM routine, and then wait until you’re really bored before you resume serious training.

Anatomy of an Easy Day

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Most runners know that they can’t run hard every day. These runners know they need to recover from workouts and long runs with easy days. But what should an easy day look like? Is there a specific pace you should run? Should you run strides on easy days? Should you do core strength and stretching, and if so, how much?

To answer these questions, I’ve come up with my ideal model of an easy day.  

  1.  Warm-up

The warm-up is the first thing you do when you get out of your house or get out of your car. You want to get yourself moving in all three planes of motion for two important reasons. First, you’ve likely been sleeping or sitting prior to this run, so you need to remind your body that it’s athletic and can move in all three planes of motion. Second, even though running is primarily a sagittal plane activity, athletes who are capable in all three planes of motion are going to have fewer injuries. The Lunge Matrix (LM) gets you moving in all three planes of motion effectively and quickly, taking just 3.5 minutes to complete. Click here to see the Lunge Matrix. Following the Lunge Matrix you should do Leg Swings (LS). Click here to see the Leg Swings video. These two elements take a total of 5 minutes.

  1.  Easy Aerobic Run

This is simple. You want to run easy because you need to recover from a workout or long run. When in doubt, go slower than you think you should. You get the same aerobic stimulus running 9-minute pace as you would running 8-minute pace, but at 9-minute pace you recover quicker and are better prepared for the next hard day. While 8-minute pace and 9-minute pace are just examples, the overall point is that you can and should err on the side of running slower on your easy days.

Easy runs are important because you get oxygen rich blood to muscle cells that need to repair from the previous hard workout. Running easy helps you to maintain the aerobic fitness you’ve gained in the workouts. More importantly, it adheres to the Law of Specificity, which says that if you want to become good at a skill, you need to practice that skill. So to be a better runner you need to run. While there is a place for cross training in a sound running program, the majority of the time you want to go for a run on an easy day.

Quick side note: I think there is definitely a place for taking 2-3 weeks of “active recovery” once or twice a season, times where you would not run at all and instead hike, bike, swim, paddle, row, etc. for fun and recreation.

While most of my online clients have one day of cross training and one day where they go for a brisk walk, they also have easy running days assigned in their training.  

  1.  Strides

Strides are a “need to do, not a nice to do,” a term coach Vern Gambetta likes to say. Strides are non-negotiable in my training plan. You need to do strides on your easy days for several reasons.

First, if you do some strides at 5k pace the day before a long run or a workout at marathon or half marathon pace, your legs are going to feel better the next day at the start of that workout. There is a motor memory that your muscles have, and if you ask your legs to go faster the day before a workout, the pace of the workout will feel much more manageable. Your aerobic fitness should be high enough that the beginning of any workout should feel pretty good. However, if you don’t do strides the day before the workout or long run, you might feel sluggish, even if aerobically the workout should be easy. Said another way, we don’t want your legs to be the limiting factor on your workout day, so make sure you get in some strides the day before.

I like to see adult runners do their strides in the middle of their easy days. 5 x 20 or 30 seconds at 5k pace with 60-90 seconds of easy running between is the perfect stimulus to do two-thirds of the way into a run. If you’re getting ready for a 5k workout, then do the strides faster than 5k pace. That said, 5k pace strides are fast enough for most adults the day before workouts.

  1. Strength and Mobility (SAM)

Most runners aren’t as strong in their core and legs as they should be. Stronger runners are less prone to injury and strong runners can race faster. More over, doing some strength training immediately after running, which is called “concurrent training,” has been shown to improve mitochondrial density. So you’re becoming a better aerobic athlete when you do strength training immediately after your run.

Additionally, when you do strength work you get a hormonal stimulus that is different than you get running. Specifically, you upregulate testosterone and human growth hormone, both anabolic hormones. Anabolic simply means “building up.” Running is a catabolic, “breaking down,” activity. When you view running the through the anabolic/catabolic lens, it makes sense that you would want to do some strength training to complement your running.  

After each easy day I want to see athletes do Strength and Mobility work. What types of exercises should you do? That’s easy. Follow these exercises and you’ll gain strength and mobility – core strength, hip strength and hip mobility, aka Strength and Mobility, aka SAM.

Click here to watch SAM – Strength and Mobility – Core Strength, Hip Strength and Hip Mobility.

One question that I often get is “But won’t I be sore from doing this type of strength work on my easy days?” In the short term, yes. For a week or two you’ll be sore, both from the Lunge Matrix at the beginning of your run and from the SAM work. Soon, though, you’ll feel fine after this work on your easy days, although you may still feel soreness from the SAM work that you do after your hard days.

The mobility piece of SAM is simple – we want you to have good (great?) hip mobility. If you have a background in gymnastics or yoga, there is a chance that your hips are “hypermobile.” But for the vast majority of runners, their hips are tight. The SAM progression above addresses those issues. You’ll notice that the first part of each post-run SAM routine is challenging, as that’s the Core Strength portion. The next portion is focused on Hip Strength and that is challenging in the first few weeks, but will get easier as time goes on. The third part of SAM is comprised of easier hip exercises, which is the Hip Mobility portion. Most of the post-run SAM work takes 10 minutes and there is a gradual decrease in intensity from the first minute to the tenth minute.

Bottom line: If you do SAM work you’ll get stronger and you’ll have a lower risk of injury. Pretty good deal for adding just 10 minutes to your training.

  1.  Rope Stretching (aka – Active Isolated Flexibility).

I learned this approach to flexibility – rope stretching, also known as Active Isolated Flexibility (AIF) – from my good friend Phil Wharton.

The underlying principle is that all muscles work in pairs, so if you want to stretch the hamstring, you need to contract the quads. To do this properly you need a rope to assist you with the last few degrees of your range of motion.

This work isn’t sexy, but it’s really important and I want to see athletes do this as the final element of their easy day. Phil has a flexibility DVD/Download that has all of the exercises in one 40-minute routine. But when Phil and I produced the videos we knew we needed shorter routines as well. So there is a 20-minute and 10-minute “Quick Release” routine that are really about 15 minutes and 7 minutes, once you learn all the exercises. In my mind, this work is really 7 minutes on your easy day. Visit WhartonHealth.com to get all of the videos.

If you want to be the best runner you can be then you need to do rope stretching. It’s binary – you either do it or you don’t.

“Do or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda (Star Wars)

  1.  The length of the easy day.

This is simple. If you normally run 60 minutes on your easy day, I’m asking you to change your routine.

0 – 5 min: Lunge matrix and Leg Swings.

5 – 30 min: Easy running. When in doubt, run slower than you think you should.

30 – 43 min: Continue easy running, and now do your strides as part of the run. Have fun in this portion of the run, and know that you will likely feel better having done the strides than you felt leading up to the strides.

43 – 53 min: Do the assigned SAM work. Click here for the videos.

53 – 60 min: 7 minute “Quick Release” routine.

That’s it – the anatomy of an easy day!

Finish Your Marathon Strong: Part 1

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A question that came up in my recent survey was “How do I keep from bonking between 18-26.2 miles in the marathon?”

Great question. It highlights the crux of the marathon for both recreational and very serious marathon runners.

As you probably know, the body doesn’t have enough glycogen in the muscles and liver to finish a marathon, so the body has to utilize part of its fat stores to finish the race. This means everyone running the marathon has to figure out the best way to both get to the line fit and have a body that can utilize fat (aka lipids) in the final 10k of the race.

So this is a great question for the marathon, yet the same idea applies to shorter distances. How do I run the last mile of a 5k or 10k without slowing down? How do I run the last 5k of a half marathon without slowing down?

What makes the questions about the 5k, 10k and half marathon interesting is that 90% of runners would say they felt well in the opening kilometers/miles of the race. It wasn’t until the end that they felt like they couldn’t maintain pace, let alone speed up.

Today let’s focus on the following question. What does a well executed race look like for a variety of distances? Then next week we can discuss what the proper training looks like for these various distances.

Sound good? Great! Here we go.

Any race can be executed as an “even split” race, where the pace is the same throughout the race.

A negative split race means the second half of the race was faster than the first half. I think a negative split race should be the goal of your racing, yet this may be unrealistic in the marathon and half marathon for some athletes.

I like to see 5k runners break down the 5k into five individual kilometers. My instructions are to maintain a solid pace for the first three kilometers, grind out the fourth to maintain the pace, then speed up in the fifth. You will likely be pleased with both your finishing time and your place in the race if you execute that race plan.

The 10k is similar, but you might want to use miles. Maintain for five miles, grind out a sixth mile at the same pace (and this is going to be really tough), then have a kick – i.e. speed up – the last 200m of the race for a net negative split race.

Half marathons should be run conservatively for 10 miles, then grinding out the last part of a run, a 5k, at a pace that is faster than the first 10 miles. Again, this gives you an overall net negative split race.

I’ve coached runners who have been able to run their fastest miles of the marathon in the final 6.2 miles of the race. Unfortunately, I’ve coached more runners who have failed to execute the race plan of feeling good through 20 miles, then speeding up, as they ran just 5-10 seconds a mile faster in the first 20 miles of the race than we had agreed.

If you run too fast in the early miles of a marathon, you pay the price in the last 6.2. Perhaps this could be part of the problem for the person who wrote in?

If you want to run a good marathon, you need to be right on pace for the first 20 miles. Make it a 20 mile race, then try to run 3 miles faster, 2 miles faster then 1.2 miles faster. Even if you can’t speed up in that last 6.2 miles of the race, having that mentality will often keep you on pace and allow you to finish a race having run even splits.

So there you go, four ways to run four different races. Keep your eyes out for How Do I Keep From Dying At The End Of The Race? Part 2.

To get Simple Marathon Training on Amazon, click here!

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