Cut out all racing… during the last month of your training: you will need certainly three weeks to put the finishing touches to your stamina and reserve energy. When you consider what a vast amount of work you have already gone through, you will admit that a fortnight or so longer is a relatively trifling matter. Endeavour to keep all your spare time fully occupied with reading, writing; anything that will keep you still, anything to divert your mind from harping on the forthcoming event.

Newton was certainly ahead of his time in recommending rest before a big race. There are numerous tales in athletic history of runners being prevented from training by illness and injury and then returning with a breakthrough performance. Prior to the 1950 European Games, Emil Zatopek trained so hard that he made himself ill and spent 2 weeks in hospital. He was released two days before the 10000m race which he won and lapped all the other runners in the process. He also went on to win the 5000m by 23 seconds. Carlos Lopez of Portugal was prevented from training by an accident for ten days leading up to his victory in the 1984 Olympic marathon.

There have since been various scientific studies carried out on the best way to taper for various events. After a period of intense marathon training, the muscles in the legs can suffer damage at a cellular level that can take up to 4 weeks to repair. Most marathon training programmes advocate a taper of two weeks. I’d suggest that three weeks is a minimum taper for a marathon.

Very few programmes advocate tapering for shorter road races eg 5 or 10k. However, various studies have shown improved performance when mileage is reduced significantly (by up to 70%) provided the remaining mileage is carried out at a brisk pace. Measurable performance gains were demonstrated in a study in 1994 by Houmard and others where average daily mileage was reduced from 10km to 1.5km and the training was based on 400m repeats at 5k race pace.

So, despite the evidence that a dramatic taper will improve your performance, it is often overlooked. Probably the greatest reason for this is a mental one. Having spent weeks training for an event, getting into the habit of regular training and knowing that training will improve performance, it is sorely tempting to cram in as much training as possible right up to the last minute before the event in the belief that it will improve performance. As in Law 12, it is necessary to have the mental strength to rest and recuperate prior to the event to achieve maximum performance.

Train Smart!

If you are going to contest a 26-mile event, you must at least be used to 100 miles a week…As it is always the speed, never the distance, that kills, so is it the distance not the speed that has to be acquired. In the early days of training, you must endeavour only to manage as great a distance on each practice outing as you can cover without being abnormally tired..Your aim throughout should be to avoid all maximum effort while you work wit one purpose only and that is to achieve a definite and sustained rise in average speed at which you practice, for that is the secret of ultimate achievement….You must never, except for short temporary bursts, practice at racing speed.

Newton’s ideas in this law are very close to the hugely successful New Zealand distance running coach Arthur Lydiard. In the 1960s, Lydiard coached a string of Olympic champions based on a philosophy of running 100 mile weeks to gradually increase the average speed followed by a short sharpening phase involving hill sprints and then using speedwork in the racing period just for sharpening. Lydiard’s views, as with Maffetone, are still very popular amongst large numbers of the running community.
Another body of coaches subscribe to the idea of using variable training paces throughout the training year. Frank Horwill, a British coach was probably the first to formalise this idea and it was used very successfully by Seb Coe whose father Peter coached him based on Horwill’s ideas. Coe and Martin describe this in the excellent book ‘Training Distance Runners’.

Over recent years, a new idea about what limits running performance has been proposed. The Integrated Neuromuscular Recruitment Model suggests that rather than fatigue or fuel being the limiting factor in running performance, it is a central governor in the brain. Accordingly, speed training is essential to reset this governor. Matt Fitzgerald discusses this theory and suggests training programmes based upon this idea in his book ‘Brain Training For Runners’. I’ll discuss this idea more fully in a later post.

Where do I stand?

I believe that in today’s world there a few runners who are both bio mechanically efficient enough and have sufficient time to run 100 miles per week. Even fewer would have the patience to spend several years gradually increasing their capability to then enable them to run 100 mile weeks without getting injured. Many recreational runners can achieve excellent performances on minimal mileage provided every mile is effective.
I am also a great believer in training at race pace. Many runners fail to achieve their potential in races due to poor pace judgement – setting off too fast normally. Training at race pace both mimics the energy systems that will be used in racing and enhances the neural pathways for performing on race day.
I believe that there is a place for a gradually increase in mileage for the new runner to enable the muscles/ligaments and tendons to toughen up to enable tougher training ahead.
I do not follow the idea that the best way to progress is to spend many weeks doing high mileage to gradually increase average speed.

Train safe and Train Smart!

At this weekend’s London Grand Prix, Mo Farah was aiming to break Dave Moorcroft’s long-held British 5000m record. Moorcroft had a successful background in middle distance running, winning the 1500m at the Commonwealth Games. However, the British abundance of talent in these events in the early 80s led him to move up to 5000m. On a balmy night in Oslo in 1982, Moorcroft smashed the world record and almost ran the first sub 13 minute 5000m.

And he still holds the British record 27 years later – why?

To run a world class 5k, you need speed. At world record pace, the runners are almost running at 4 minute mile pace – for over 3 miles!! To enable them to maintain such a pace, they also have to be capable of running very economically and to have a very high lactate threshold speed.

So how does this relate to training for club athletes?

For most club runners, the 5k is at the short end of their range of distances. In order to prepare to race, you need to include sessions at current and goal 5k pace. If you haven’t recently run a 5k, you could convert another recent race time over a longer distance to give you an idea of goal time. However, many road runners’ times do not convert particularly well over shorter distances so an ideal session to gain an idea of your likely race time is one devised by Babineau and Leger, two Canadians. When rested and following a thorough warm up, run 3 x 1600m intervals at the fastest consistent speed you can manage throughout the three. You take one minute recovery between each interval. The average time of the three intervals will be your pace for the 5k.

Another session that Babineau and Leger experimented with was 12 x 400m with 15 seconds rest. They found that the average speed during this session was 3.7% faster than 5k speed. The lactate levels generated with this session were much the same as in a 5k race and as the pace is slightly faster than race pace, it is a great session for improving race speed.

The great thing about 5k racing is that you do not need the recovery time of longer races. After building up your endurance through training and racing a marathon, spending a month training for 5k races will enable you to build speed and maximise the endurance gains you’ve made.

Train SMART!

Wednesday evening was always club night. A group of somewhere between ten to twenty runners would set off, usually running nine miles at about seven and half minute miling. It was intended to be a social run and would always start with a lot of banter. However, normally at about the six mile point, one or two of the guys would gradually start to wind the pace up. For them it was almost a point of honour to be the first one home. Everyone else seemed to get carried along and what had started as an easy social run often finished with guys running faster than race pace just to keep up!!

That is not running smart!! When training smart, every time you start a run, you have a clear idea of your session – how far, how fast and what training response from your body you are trying to elicit. Many runners run their easy runs too hard and their hard runs too easy!! There’s nothing wrong with running hard. The 40/30 session I describe in the free e book was used by Steve Prefontaine as a test to see how hard he could push his body. But he used to recover afterwards! By running recovery runs like some of our Wednesday runs used to turn out, any of us planning a recovery run were wasting our time.

So, in order to train smart, always know what the session is designed to achieve and then complete it in order to achieve that. I know there will be those that say, some days I feel great and just want to run fast. If that is the case, run fast today and run easy tomorrow. Then, re-evaluate the plan. Are you including too many easy runs?

Equally, on those days where you get out the day knowing that you need to run fast and you feel awful, warm up first and if you feel no better, reduce or ditch the session. I’ll post later on about techniques for adapting your training on the hoof!!

Have a great weekend! Train hard and train smart!

I know I run the risk of upsetting some people but running clubs often prevent runners from achieving their best performance.

“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” John D. Rockefeller

Many running clubs in the UK have a club championship – a series of races throughout the year where runners score points based on finishing position relative to other runners in the same club. With races spread throughout the year, many runners are often racing two or three times a month over varying distances. As a consequence, the training that many runners do fits into the gaps between the races.

One of my favourite authors, Steven Covey wrote about the 7 Habits of highly Effective People. Habit #2 is ‘Always Start With the End In Mind’

How does that effect smart training?

Well, it means having a goal, something to work towards. It could be that your goal is to win the club championship. By targeting specific races and then planning to train to peak for those races, using other races as part of the training process, you are training smart.

Seeking to achieve the best 10k or marathon that you are capable of – that might mean missing many of the club championship races. But, as Rockerfeller said, it might be a case of giving up the good for the great.

In future, I’ll look at goal setting and the different types of goal you can work towards – all of which will help you train smarter.

Please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment

and run smart!