Minimum Effective Dose
• The best way to improve your running is to run more miles
• The best way to get injured running is to run more miles
Every runner who is seeking to improve will at some point face this problem – the best way to get fitter is to run more miles but if I do that, I’m likely to get injured.
Most running books and magazines quote the 10% rule when looking to increase mileage – that it is safe to increase your mileage by 10% each week. Some wiser writers include the warning that every fourth week should be a recovery week where you back off to let your body recover. Using this as a principle though, you could go from running 10 miles a week to running 100 miles in a week in less than a year! Well you could in theory but you would almost certainly have that progress interrupted by injury!
So where does this obsession with mileage come from?
Most of today’s runners and today’s races can trace their running heritage back to the marathon boom from the early 1980s. The dominant thought in running training at that time was based on the training principles of Arthur Lydiard, the legendary coach who trained a generation of New Zealand world beaters including Peter Snell and Murray Halberg. They were both Olympic gold medallists whose training was based on running 100 miles per week for several months in order to train the body to run with maximum aerobic efficiency. Even today, many running book and magazines use an adaptation of this idea.
However, I take your Lydiard and I raise you Costill and Seyle.
In 1936, Dr Hans Seyle carried out research by exposing mice to a series of different stressors – cold, injury, drugs and even excessive exercise (see where I’m going with this!) From his work, he became the first person to demonstrate the existence of the stress response. He found that regardless of the source of the stress, the mice reacted in a similar pattern – an initial alarm stage followed by a period of adaptation where the body gets stronger and then leading eventually to exhaustion.
David Costill is an American exercise scientist who has demonstrated that there is an almost linear progression between increases in mileage per week and increases in VO2 Max. until about 50 miles(80km) per week. After that, the likelihood of injury increases significantly and the rate of fitness improvement per mile run decreases. British coach and athlete Bruce Tulloh set a European record for 3 miles (just under 5k – 13 mins 12 secs) when averaging 28 miles per week. Even when he doubled his mileage later in his career, he was unable to improve on that time.
So, why is this important?
Well, most authors who write books about running either coach elite athletes or work in colleges/universities and coach students. What these runners have in common is that they have plenty of time to recover. When I was running competitively in my 20s, I was single and had little to do other than work, train and sleep. I was able to train hard almost every day and recover sufficiently. Today, I have much more responsibility at work, a wife and daughter who want to share time with me, responsibilities at my church…..etc,etc! Modern society is often a treadmill we cannot get off. Well, remember Dr Seyle. He concluded that it didn’t matter where the stress came from, it still created the same result. Adding high mileage running training onto every other stress in a modern life will lead to injury and illness.
So, what is the Train Smart solution?
Minimum Effective Dose.
Simply, this is the smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome. So, to boil water (at standard air pressure) the minimum effective dose is 100degrees C (212F) If you apply more heat, the water will not become more boiled – it is just a waste of energy. With running training, it is about applying the correct amount of training AND recovery to achieve the desired result. Clearly, what is the minimum effective dose for a world class runner is far different from what is the minimum effective dose for a beginner. It does not mean that every runner following the Train Smart system will run low mileage but what it does mean is that the runner will be fit enough to improve with increased mileage. The general rule of thumb I use is that I do increase mileage while performance is still improving. Over the coming weeks I will explore how this works in practice with specific examples.
Next time, I’ll look at non linear periodization – the Train Smart way of organising training.
Train Smart