Many men go fishing all their lives not knowing it is not fish they are after –Henry David Thoreau

Specialisation nowadays is a necessity. Modern exponents have raised the standard to such a height that nothing but intensive specialisation can put a fellow anywhere near the top. Before the 1914 to 1918 war, the marathon was considered an event for only the favoured few who had unusual toughness and stamina.
It takes anything from 18 months to 3 years to turn a novice into a first class athlete. You will have to drop the bulk of your present recreations and spend the time in training; anything from 2 to 3 hours a day will have to be set aside. Athletics must be your major engagement for at least two years on end, your business or means of making a livelihood being at all times of secondary importance.

What Newton anticipated has now come to fruition in the ranks of international competitors. It is inconceivable nowadays that anyone other than a full time runner would be able to win a big city marathon or a medal on the world stage.

However, what relevance do his ideas have for the keen amateur?

Specialisation is a key plank of Training Smart – to run your best 10k, you have to train and prepare to run 10k!! While many runners enjoy training and want to race two or three times a month over a variety of distances, they will never achieve their maximum performance until they specialise.

The other key truth for me in what Newton says is that it takes 18 months to 3 years to develop into a first class athlete. Many runners are prepared to do the work, they follow the 10% rule and adjust their training upward. This is a general rule of thumb is that it is safe to increase the amount of mileage run by 10% per week. However, for a runner starting at 30 miles per week and increasing by 10% per week, they would double their mileage in 8 weeks and increase it 4 times over running 120miles per week by week 15 – that is assuming that they were not injured prior to this. Many runners will be incapable of running 100 miles per week. For some, their optimum mileage might be 60 miles per week. It would be far better to take 18 months for our runner to progress to 60 miles per week than 8 weeks!!

Train Smart!

I decry such things as time trials..I am convinced that they are nothing more than a senseless waste of time and energy. They can’t tell you any more than the race itself could…Racing then, should be the only time-trials and should be run every two or preferably three weeks apart….six weeks between events would be more suitable for a marathon runner, but once every two months is probably better.

Newton is clearing stating that it is impossible to give your best effort every day - whether through racing or time trials. He also raises a couple of issues - time trials, yes or no and how often should you race?

Time trials

Time trials are efforts over a specific time or distances to assess the runner’s level of fitness during training. They are most useful when compared to previous time trials to determine a current level of fitness or potential race performance. Often, a runner will have a specific session in preparing to race that will be used to estimate race performance and provide confidence. What is essential to remember though is that the time trial performance is a controlled effort and not a flat out race. Arthur Lydiard used time trials with his athletes in his peaking phase but commented ‘Remember that when you are doing time-trials you are still training hard so good times cannot always be expected. You cannot train hard and perform well simultaneously.’
Time trials can be a useful confidence booster prior to racing and can be used as a substitute where no suitable tune up race is available.

How often should you race?

It is now widely accepted that damage is caused to the muscle during races, espeically where the distance exceeds 25k. A general rule of thumb is to refrain from hard training or racing for 1 day for every mile raced - so 6 days following a 10k, 13 days for a half marathon. It is probably only possible to achieve a peak performance at two marathons in one year. Many club runners race two or three times a month. If the aim of the runner is to enjoy their running with ultimate performance being of less importance then this is fine. However, in order to achieve an ultimate performance, a race has to be special, different, unusual. In a training programme there is space for tune up races to determine an appropriate race pace and to practice specific strategies for the goal race. But ultimate performance results in a total fusion of body and mind. And if the race is not special, the mental side will not be there. The best compromise I’ve used is a non linear periodisation of a four weekly cycle with the fourth week designated as a racing and recovery week. I’ll describe this system in detail in a later post.

So, my feeling is to pick your races and make them special and only use time trials in a correct atmosphere for a specific purpose.

Train Smart!

This is another law that has been included by Noakes although it wasn’t one of the original laws set out by Newton. I remember having a very animated debate in a running forum over exactly this point. I am strongly in favour of what Noakes is saying however unpopular it may be among some members of the running community.

When Newton was running, there was little or no information about how other runners trained. Nowadays, there is a huge amount of information – how accurate it is can be a matter of debate. Recreational runners see the schedules, and more particularly the mileage, that elite runners are covering and think that this is the best way for them to train too.

There are several crucial factors they have disregarded:
• Elite runners have a genetic predisposition to run long and fast – that’s why they are elite
• Elite runners have, in most cases, spent many years building up to running 100+ miles a week
• Elite runners do not have jobs that conflict with their running
• Elite runners can adopt nutritional and recovery strategies to enable them to train longer and harder

I am not saying that it is not possible for a club runner to develop into an elite athlete. I can think of several British examples from a few years ago – Paul Evans, Dave Long, Keith Anderson, but all of them developed late in life, after years of training.

Many runners keep increasing mileage month on month aiming to build up their mileage to whatever point they think will result in a PB (PR for our US friends). Whether this is 50, 70, 90 or 120 miles a week, the likelihood is that if they continue to increase their mileage by 10% a week (as is recommended in many running books) within two years they will be injured. By applying this rule, the runner would only increase mileage once they stopped improving at their current mileage. When this happens, increase mileage by 10% and see what happens. If, after a month at the increased mileage, there is still no benefit in performance and provided there is no injury scare, increase again. Once an increase in performance occurs, maintain that mileage until another plateau is reached before increasing again.

Following this strategy will decrease the amount of time you are injured and increase your running longevity.

Train Smart!

This was not one of Newton’s laws but has been introduced by Noakes. There is the temptation just to pile on the mileage and that fitness will increase as mileage does. Even those runners with perfect running form who are remarkably resilient to injury will find that there diminishing returns with this approach. The point at which this occurs will be different for each runner but it is safe the say that once past a certain point, each additional mile run will not accrue the same fitness benefits.

By alternating hard and easy training, it is possible to keep pushing fitness limits during the hard sessions. The danger with this law though is in the interpretation. There is a tendency to interpret it as 1 hard day, 1 easy day and so on ad infinitum. I would use training and recovery as more appropriate descriptions. Dependent upon the severity of the training depends upon the nature of the recovery. For a masters runner, it might be that a speed session requires three days of recovery.

For some runners, it might be that they get more benefit from back to back hard sessions followed by a longer recovery eg tempo session followed next day by a long run and then three days recovery. It is also important to consider alternating hard and easy training when considering an annual plan – building in recovery weeks and low keys races.

In conjunction with law 4, I would generally identify the keys sessions for the week and give the athlete the flexibility to incorporate them into their own life. For some athletes it might be two sessions a week, for others, three. In addition, the recovery sessions need to be sufficiently easy to allow recovery. One of the biggest faults many runners make is to train too hard when they are supposed to be recovering. This goes not induce an additional fitness benefits and hampers the benefits that could be achieved from harder training.

Train Smart

Don’t set yourself a daily schedule; it is far more sensible to run a weekly one, because you can’t tell what the temperature, the weather or your own condition will be on any given day.

You don’t know what the weather will be like on race day. You don’t know how you’ll feel. You don’t know what the temperature will do. If every time you encounter anything inclement, you fail to train then you are depriving yourself of many opportunities to develop mental and physical toughness. There are some runners I know (and I had a tendency towards this too!!) who will grab any excuse to postpone a training session. This is a charter for doing so!!

However, there is also a sensible side to the law. There are runners I know who become so obsessive that they will continue to push on no matter what. This type of runner is probably in the majority – most runner I know have at some time or another ended up injured because they were training when they should have been resting (and that’s a group that I can include myself in too!)
The sensible line is somewhere between the two. When I’m writing a training schedule for a runner, I will usually write the keys sessions for the week in detail and then give general advice about any additional sessions. This gives the runner the flexibility to perform those key sessions on the most suitable day. Part of that flexibility is also to choose when to take a day off.

So, I’ll agree with the general principle that setting daily training in stone can be detrimental, I would also add the caveat that training hard in poor conditions can prepare for racing in difficult conditions and can improve confidence for race day.

Train smart!