When talking to people about training I have a hard time trying
to summarize what I think is the essence of training in a nutshell. Here are some of the things I wish I would
have told them when they asked (though they might have been sorry they asked …).
Basically,
1.
Training (improving your fitness) requires some physical stress. The amount of training effect is a function
of training duration and intensity - how long and how hard you train. Adequate recovery time has to follow training
stress to allow your body to adapt in response to the increased stress and
prepare for the next workout.
2.
There is a definite work-reward relationship in running. As long as you avoid overtraining, the more
work you do, the greater the potential benefit.
 |
| work - reward |
Those two basic principles could inspire
volumes. Here are a few comments in the form of Q and A. I should point out that this may be somewhat
opinionated, so feel free to disagree with any of the following …
Q: How many miles should I run?
Recently I’ve been reading about more studies finding that a few short and
relatively high intensity workouts (on the order of 30 minutes a few times a
week) provide a great deal of benefit.
This really isn’t surprising, and is consistent in fact with the simple
graphic above. As you start to workout,
you can quickly receive benefits. While gifted
runners have performed very well on very little training, you can easily find that
‘real runners’ do a lot more in their training.
Many elite runners regularly run well over 100 miles a week in training.
They are at the extreme right side of the cost benefit curve, doing a lot of
additional work to eke out the last small increase in benefit (and incidentally
incurring a greater risk of over-training and injury).
Noakes (“Lore of Running”)refers to a table showing the number of
training hours required to compete at various levels: ‘beginners’ run <4 hours per week, average
runners <6, good runners <8, top amateur runners <10, with elite or
world class runners training 10 to 14 hours or more per week. To some extent you need to be able to assess
how many hours you are able to train before building or committing to a
specific training plan.
Q: What is good running form?
Running seems as simple as putting one foot in front of the other. But, there are a lot of potentially
contradictory and confusing, schools of thought on the dynamics of good running
form. For some examples (hopefully good!) take a look at the videos I’ve linked
to in earlier blogs. I feel better when
I’m having a hard time trying to resolve apparent disconnects between examples
by remembering Ryan Hall’s comment that we’ll finally see perfect running form
when we get to heaven.
It’s
hard to change your form. First you have
to form a good mental model of what you are trying to do. Second, you need to be able to accurately
assess what you are actually doing. I
know from seeing video of myself that what I think I am doing is sometimes not
what I am really doing. Finally, you
need to change what you are actually doing to match what your ideal form is,
and then continue doing it the new way without reverting to something that you
have in effect practiced wrongly for so long.
Good luck with that.
I
think the good news is that over time, some running form ‘defects’ that hurt running
efficiency are almost naturally eliminated.
Keep your stride rate at 180/minute.
Keep your head up, keep your body aligned. Avoid unnecessary tension. Run straight ahead.
Q: Should I run barefoot?
No. Well maybe a little.
Q: How should I train my child?
In
my opinion (and I am not a parent), parents should strive to give children the
opportunity to experience a lot of activities.
When children demonstrate an aptitude for something, whether it is
sports, music and the arts, academics or whatever, it’s natural for the parent
to encourage and find ways to develop those skills however possible. However
the child may be motivated as much by his need for parent’s approval and
attention as he is by actual enjoyment of the activity. So as with a lot of things, it’s a question
of balance, of taking advantage of developmental opportunities and learning
lifetime skills while being alert to the possibility of overdoing something.
Small children should not be doing endurance training.
Consider the evidence that the best runners in any age group will not be
the best runners in later years – if you peak before leaving high school you
might just be the subject of a Bruce Springsteen song (cue “Glory Days”).
Q: How should an older person train?
In
an older post (June 11, 2011) I talked about six time Hawaiian Ironman winner Mark
Allen’s advice for training older (age 50+) runners. He would rely solely on an endurance base built with
long runs at relatively low heart rates. I adopted this approach – I lost
weight, my running improved, I avoided injury.
How could I complain? Well, I
think age 50 is too early for many runners to concede higher intensity training
phases. The fall-off in running performance seems gradual until into the 70’s. Go for it.
Q: What if I'm not a 'natural' runner?
First
of all, all humans are natural runners.
It’s just that some of us are more proficient. We can become better runners by improving
fitness as well as form.
Some
people are ‘gifted’ runners, in the sense that they have a greater innate capacity
to do work than others. While we can all
improve our fitness levels and body makeups, there may be genetic factors that
place an upper limit on measures like VO2 max.
In
addition to having great physical capacity to do work, great distance runners
are very efficient. They move faster and
farther while doing less work than many slower runners. Running efficiency is a function of good running
form as well as body makeup.
Q: What is the role of a running coach?
Coach
Jack Daniels talks about runners with different levels of ability and
motivation – the best case being a runner with lots of ability and great
motivation. There is actually not much a
coach can do to ‘coach up’ natural, god-given ability. A good coach can and will support and
motivate runners, but if you don’t have any problem staying motivated, what’s
the benefit of having a coach?
There is a big gap between the basic
principles at the start of this posting and determining what an individual
runner should be doing this week to move him closer to his running goal. A coach can help. You can certainly read a good book like “Daniels’
Running Formula” and build your own training plan. But I’ve quoted Amby Burfoot in an earlier
posting (“ … if you want to know the truth, workouts are like peanuts
at a baseball game. Everyone's got them, and they're pretty much the same. Salazar's workouts are no more magical than
those doled out by Terence Mahon, Greg McMillan, the Hanson brothers, the
supposedly high-concept Italians, or the low-concept, high-success coaches in
Kenya and Ethiopia."). A coach can
help a runner distill all the available guidance into best mix of training
activities - the optimal mix of exercise intensity and duration and
recovery.
When
discussing running form, I mentioned the problem with not being able to
accurately ‘see’ what your own running form really is – a coach’s observations
(or good video) can really help.
Perhaps the best reason to find a coach is that there is a learning
curve associated with running. Ultimately,
I am working with a ‘sample population’ of one person, me – a coach will have
had the benefit of working with a lot of runners for years, and will have already
learned lessons and (realized a lot of his mistakes) that I learn and make every
training cycle.
Q: How should I train for _______ (distance
or race)?
Ask
your coach.
