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Law 3: Train First For Distance Only Later For Speed

September 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment
marathon training, running coaching

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 … [Read more...]

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Law 2: Start Gradually and Train Gently

August 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Nearly all of us dash into it hoping for and expecting results which are quite unwarranted. Nature is unable to make a really first class job of anything if she is hustled. To enhance our best, we need only, and should only, enhance our average. That is the basis we ought to work on, for it succeeds every time when the other fails. So, in running, it is essential to take to it kindly. Many beginning runners experience their first injury fairly on in their running career. Often, after successfully completing their first race and full of enthusiasm, they increase their training realising that more miles equals better racing and end up at the physio’s. For most untrained people, the cardio vascular system will adapt to a training stress far … [Read more...]

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Jack Daniels was wrong!?

July 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Marathon training

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...]

Filed Under: 10k training, Marathon training, Run Smart, Speedwork, Threshold training Tagged With: , , , ,

“It’s very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.” George Sheehan

July 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Cruise Intervals according to Jack Daniels

The first type of speedwork we’ll look at is threshold training. In the 1980s, Jack Daniels (the world renown exercise physiologist and running coach – not the whisky guy!) introduced the term ‘cruise intervals’ to runner. These, along with tempo runs have become the mainstay of threshold training. But what do the terms mean? Threshold training – during running, the muscles obtain fuel from a process called glycolysis. As a bi-product of this process, lactic acid can be formed. When exercising gently enough, the body is able to utilise this lactic acid to help fuel the running effort. However, once you start running harder, the lactic acid can build at a pace that the body is unable to clear from the muscles. The point where the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Speedwork, Threshold training, Training plan Tagged With: , , ,

I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. – Abraham Lincoln

June 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment
marathon training, running training, train smart

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...]

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