First practice your event as often as possible, paying less attention to other activities. If you want to be a good athlete, you must train all the year round, no matter what. What is really required is a little exercise constantly; this will benefit you permanently to a far greater degree than single heavy doses at long intervals. This advice appears sound and fits in well with the Train Smart philosophy. Let’s break it down: practise your event as often as possible. A major component of all Train Smart plans is training at race pace to prepare the body for what will be demanded of it on race day. You must train all the year round, no matter what Although this is a sound idea, there needs to be more clarity. Most international … [Read more...]
To finish first, you must first finish – Rick Mears
Of all the sessions I’ve written about this one is probably my favourite. Olga Bondarenko was a Russian athlete competing over 10,000m on the track in the infancy of the event for women. However, she lacked finishing speed so, working with her coach, she created this session. Run 400m @ 5k pace Recovery 400m@ marathon pace Run 300m @ 1500m pace Recovery 300m @ marathon pace Run 200m @ 800m pace Recovery 200m @ marathon pace Run 100 sprint Recovery 100m @ marathon pace. That is one set consisting of 2k of quality running – even the recovery periods are at marathon pace. Prior to winning the Olympic gold medal in 1988, Bondarenko completed 3 sets back to back, 3 mins recovery, 2 sets back to back, 3 minutes recovery, 1 set. … [Read more...]
Jack Daniels was wrong!?
Well, not entirely! For example, a famous Swedish study where runners added a 20 minute continuous run at 10 mile race pace to their weekly training resulted in a 4% increase in Lactate threshold and improvements of 1 minute in 10k times all in just 14 weeks. However, it’s just half the story! Training at lactate threshold pace enables the body to become more efficient at running at that pace as the body ‘learns’ to produce less lactate at a given pace. The second half of the story though is that the body can be trained to improve the way it clears and uses the lactate already produced – if you can use it and burn it up more efficiently, you’ll be able to run at a faster pace for longer before you crash and burn right? Research … [Read more...]
“Do what you can with what you have where you are.” Theodore Roosevelt
Runners come into the sport through many different routes. Some were runners at school, trained with a running club and kept up running through their adult lives. Others played other sports and took up running in later life. Others started to run to lose weight, get fit or support a charity. All runners have a different physiological makeup. They have different balances of slow twitch and fast twitch fibres. Many running books and training plans have a generic, one size fits all package that takes no account of the individual differences of each runner. So, how can we address the differences? I’ll give you an example. I have two athletes who are both training to run a 40 min 10k. In order to prepare for the race, I will include … [Read more...]
I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. – Abraham Lincoln
People have been running competitively for many years and during that time, an acquired wisdom has built up over running training and what you need to do to be successful. Over the years, trends have come and gone – following Zatopek’s success, everyone was running intervals; following the success of Arthur Lydiard’s runners, everyone ran 100 miles per week. So is the wisdom of previous years still valid today? ‘Lore of Running’ is a mighty tome authored by one of the world’s leading experts on distance running Tim Noakes. In it he describes the 15 Laws of Training based on the records of Arthur Newton, a competitive runner in the 1920s and 1930s. Can something developed before performance laboratories, sports science and … [Read more...]