I have to confess that I have a bit of an obsession for buying books about running, predominantly about running training. If I were to pick one area that was consistently undervalued, it would be the holism of training. Many runners obsess about how many miles they’ve done without ever consider what happens during the rest of the week when they are not training. Noakes identifies the four main factors that impact performance when training hard:
Eating an appropriate diet
Getting the right amount of sleep
Avoiding physical effort that it not training related
Reducing work stress
A professional runner has systems in place to manage these things. Masseurs and physios help with recovery between sessions, diet is closely analysed and managed and our runner has no other exertion to concentrate on other than training. Unfortunately, the vast majority of us do not have the good fortune (or talent!!) to be in that position.
Some of these areas may be very difficult to manage giving other conditions in your life. For example, as a parent of a young baby you may not be able to get the right amount of sleep. In my day job, I work a rapid rotation shift pattern that means I spend a third of my working life working nights. Even though I have had more years than I care to remember working shifts, I still regularly struggle with my sleep pattern. Until I retire, I will continue to face that. Therefore, I need to consider the holism of training and account for my variations in sleep in my training. So, I concentrate my hardest training efforts on my days off and on those days where I know that I will struggle for sleep, I either train very lightly or take the day off.
Similarly, a person working in a job involving considerable amounts of manual labour will need to manage their energy levels to ensure that their training is having a positive and not negative effect on their overall health and fitness.
Why is this important?
Many running books contain training programmes that are written by coaches who coach runners who are full time athletes or full time students – people who have very little stress to manage beyond their training efforts. For runners with full time job and family responsibilities, the stresses of all of life’s challenges have to be considered in conjunction with the stresses from running and the level of training needs to be modified to prevent overtraining and illness and to maximise performance.
Train Smart.
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.
Carlos Lopes
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!
Perhaps one of the chief points is to regulate your training so as to be sure of always being on the safe side: the least sign of overdose will surely lead to trouble. Go so far every day that the last mile or two become almost a desperate effort. So long as you are fit for another dose the following day, you are not overdoing it. But you must never permit yourself to approach real exhaustion; you must never become badly tired. A good way to judge whether you are overdoing it is by your appetite. A really fearsome thirst is a definite sign that either the pace or the distance has been too much. Not only are you unbearably thirsty but your appetite disappears entirely, even for many hours after the event.
For professional runners, their life is a balance between peak fitness and overtraining. With closely monitored nutrition programmes, masseurs on hand and several periods of complete rest every day, the only thing the athlete has to worry about is running. Many are frequently injured whether due to a seasonal build up that has been too severe or simply the cumulative effects of many miles run during a lifetime of running. Paula Radcliffe’s latest injury is probably due to this.
But what of us lesser mortals – will we ever undergo the risk of overtraining?
The answer to that is a resounding YES!
Surveys suggest that 50% of runners sustain an injury that prevents them from running at least once a year. Many of these are due to overtraining. It may be doing too much speedwork where there is no speed base to work from, it may be running on unforgiving surfaces, it is most likely to be running too many miles too soon.
It is better to be 10% under trained than 2% overtrained.
To achieve your optimum performance takes years of progressive overload gradually increasing the volume of training your body can handle. Every time the body is injured, the training process has to restart from a reduced level. Avoiding injury through a slower and more gradual progression is the best way to achieve your potential. Law 6 talked about achieving the maximum results with the minimum of training. Failing to follow that law would lead you to fall foul of this one!!
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
