The Importance of Running Specific Musculoskeletal Strength

  I was doing a bit of running 'research' this morning, ok I was wasting time reading about running on the internet because the wind chill is once again in the @#$%ing miserable level and I'm supposed to be starting a workout.  Anyway I came across a quote from Rob De Castella in an interview back in 1983 talking about how to that point in his running career he had only missed 10 total days of running due to injury.

Deek said, "You've got two levels- skeletal strength and physiological fitness.  If the latter surpasses the former it means you can push the body further than it is really able to sustain.  I think that's when you get injured." * This is something I have thought about through my long injury history and never been able to sum up nearly so concisely but it really drives home a simple point that I believe is largely missing from our current conversation about training.

  It is no secret I have had a long and extensive injury history.  I think that some of this can be simply attributed to my habit of always wanting to push harder and not listening to my body.  Still I think there is more to it than that.

  Separately I have long felt that my limiting factors in performance had become muscular more than aerobic.  This is part of why I felt I didn't have success in my short stint at altitude.  In fact I had the opposite. I think most americans, most first world runners, are undertrained aerobically and go to altitude where the stress on the aerobic system is inherently increased greatly and  they see a jump in performance as a result of this redistribution of effort.  Where as I went up there and put even more stress on the aerobic system and even less on the muscular system and saw a loss of fitness.  Now this isn't to say I or someone else like me couldn't find great success training at altitude just that it would take a well thought out plan to address this balance but that is for another blog.

   I think that most of your good training schedules have a good balance between muscular and aerobic development but I don't think that most coaches put enough specific thought and focus into creating this balance.  Most often I think the balance that is being thought about is aerobic and anaerobic work.  Further more I think too often we think of muscular and anaerobic work as the same thing.  I know when I started out I did.

  The problem with hard intervals lead to severe fatigue and under fatigue our form falls apart so instead of taxing our muscular system in a nice balanced way and teaching good strong muscular pathway our form falls apart and we build bad habits and imbalances.   Anaerobic workouts can be great muscular sessions but only for a very developed athlete who has spent years building great muscular strength so their form doesn't break down under stress.  For the rest of us the solution is to do work that is specifically targeting fast dynamic motion while maintaining relaxed control so that we are teaching good form and balanced muscular development.

  From the beginning of our running we should be doing daily work to build our muscular skeletal system to excel at the specific demands of running and running fast.  How?  Mostly with fast relaxed running.  This can be in the form of strides or short hills.  It can be fast relaxed tempo running.  This can be repeats at all sorts of distances AS LONG AS THE EFFORT IS CONTROLLED!  This is what is always missed.  Also you can do running specific drills, skipping, lunge walking and other dynamic running and core exercises to build a muscular skeletal system that can stay healthy and deliver on all the aerobic power you can build.

  I honestly believe that my biggest failure as an athlete was a failure to develop a strong dynamic muscular skeletal system from the beginning.  I believe if I had done more aerobic work sooner I could have been more successful at a younger age but that it would not have improved my overall development.  However if I had started out doing strides daily, controlling my effort in 99% of my workouts to maintain form and doing dynamic general strength work, like the type of stuff you see from  John Cook or Jay Johnson, I honestly believe I would never have had the injury problems I had in college nor do I think I would have developed my coordination problem.  I honestly believe my failure to do this work from the beginning of my running cost me a career as a at least high level national class marathoner.

  I do much more now to try and develop the muscular strength.  I do the yoga for general strength and when I'm not banged up I do strides daily or close to it.  I have also developed a lot of strength over the last couple decades so my workouts are now a means of building strength as well.  Still if there is one area that I need to do more for it is specific muscular strength and endurance.  So often in my training I am strong.  I can run miles on top of miles and feel fine I can run quickly, say 5:20 per mile or even faster and have it feel like walking but as soon as I need to get just a little bit more muscular sub 5:00 at time, sub 4:40 per mile most of the time, I struggle, sometimes to hold these paces for even a few hundred meters.  It may sound crazy but it is not uncommon for me to find myself in a place where I can run for an hour or more feeling relaxed at 5:20 per mile but I struggle to run even a kilometer at 4:40 mile pace.  In the stretches where I have been able to do all the muscular work I start to see huge improvements in my middle distance racing.  So often I find myself very fit but racing fairly slowly.  Where as if I was maintaining my muscular training better I could be running much much faster, if not quite national class certainly much closer.  Specifically I should often be running in the 23's for 8k instead of 24's and 29's for 10k instead of 30's. sub 14:40 for road 5k instead of sub 15:10.  Now you can sharpen up and run faster with anaerobic work but that isn't what I'm talking about in this instance.  I have run sub 30 for 10, sub 24 for 8k and sub 14:40 for a road 5k without doing much if any real anaerobic work.  I can run those times off good balanced aerobic and muscular training.  Too often I fail to do the muscular work to make running relaxed enough at those paces to hold them without good anaerobic fitness.  This slowed my overall development and means I have a lot of decent races in my history but few very good ones.

   I cannot encourage you enough to plan for muscular development as specifically as you do aerobic development.  These two things are the foundations of all running success.  You can always do race specific and anaerobic work later but if you don't build a great foundation of muscular strength and aerobic endurance all the race work in the world won't be worth a bucket of piss.






* P.S. a bit of an aside but the article the quote comes from is in the August of 1983 Runners World.  It is mind blowing to me that they would run an article like this complete with discussion of his racing career, a sample training week and intelligent conversation about his thoughts on his current training and where he would like to take it in the future.  I just can't imagine coming across the same type of article with one of the Geoff Mutia's in this August's Runners World. link to article http://www.juanjosemartinez.com.mx/files/deek_training_log.pdf

Pressure

Pressure

  I have been asked a few times over the last couple weeks in a few different contexts about pressure.  In anything we care about there is bound to be some pressure.  We each handle it in different ways.  There are many great athletes who can't handle it well at all and normal unknown folks who are only comfortable under pressure.

  I think some of how we deal with pressure is innate.  Like speed I think that you can develop what you have but a person who has a natural physical reaction to shut down or get overly charged up they will never have the ice water that runs in their veins.  Just as a inherently slow person can get faster but will never be a world beater in the 100 meters.

  I do not think I was born to be in a pressure cooker but still at my best I have always been able to handle pressure.

  As a kid I remember being in a little league game.  I was not much of a player.  I came up to bat with two outs in the last inning we were losing by two runs and the bases were loaded.  I have heard that in such situations the ball can appear to be as large as a grapefruit or as small as a pea as it comes flying in towards you depending on if you are a cool cucumber or a high strung flyer.  I experienced neither.

  Instead the first pitch it appeared the pitcher was just tossing the ball to the catcher like he wanted a new ball.  It was so damn slow.  I was shocked.  I didn't swing.  I was confused.  Why was this kid throwing the game away.  The kid in right field was half asleep.  I had never hit a ball to right in my life but it seemed so easy the next pitch floated in as slow as the first I punched the ball into right it was as easy as if I had tossed it up myself to hit fly balls to my brother.  A bases clearing triple.

  Still I was not a sure thing.  In 8th grade I had a chance to make the varsity xc team for the championship races.  It was down to me and another kid.  I had beat him in the last two races.  It was the first race one of my parents came to.  I wanted to be on varsity in junior high.  I wanted to impress my dad.  A race had never been so hard from the gun.  I fought and fought.  For the first time that year at a home meet my time wasn't faster than the time before.  I was our 8th man.  No varsity, no championship races. Our team won our state class meet, the qualifier for the all state championship.  I watched.  Pressure had come and I had cracked.

  Over the next few years I would do better.  More and more I would succeed when it mattered.  At my first state championship as a freshman it was the first time in my life I finished higher than 5th man for my team.

  The next time I failed under pressure was as a senior. My team had graduated and I qualified alone.  I needed a win.  Nothing else would be good enough.  I was a decent runner but two of the best preps in a generation, Andy Powell and Franklyn Sanchez where in my race.  Yet I needed a win.  I knew the odds but I couldn't give up.  By the night before the race I had lost all appetite.  I failed.  10th the year before I was in 6th coming into the home stretch and I was done.  If felt the whole field went by.  I finished 23rd.  But I grew stronger.

  I was knocked to a slow heat during my only run on a 200m track during the indoor season and was pissed off and over emotional like only a teen can be.  I took a deep breath and forced out the anger and ran the best race of my life to that point from the front lapping the field.

  Before the state qualifier outdoors my mom and her boyfriend had a roaring fight late into the night.  An hour before my race her boyfriend arrived at the meet obviously incredibly drunk. He wanted to apologize for the fight the night before.  In his state he didn't realize the scene he was making was far worse than the lost sleep the night before.  I didn't even think it weird until after the race.  I was in the zone.  I ran a PR and qualified for my first state track meet as an individual.

  In college I continued to generally run my best when it mattered most unless I was hurt.  But I had not met real pressure.

  A the day after arriving for my final NCAA cross country championship I got a message.  My brother had attempted suicide.  He was a few months back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan and I hadn't been there for him.  I was wrapped up in my life.  He was alive but hospitalized.  My reaction was to get to him.  However I didn't come from a family with money.  The price of even changing my ticket home to go home was not the kind of money I had or I could get.  I'm sure if I had asked for it the school would have paid to send me home but I was not the type who could ask for that at that time.  I also felt I owed it to my team to run.

  In a race in which I should have been in the top 20 I ended up around 50th.  I just couldn't dig down and get the kind of effort I needed.  I couldn't hold my focus or my drive.  It hurt for sure but the effort didn't yield the results.  To run a great race you need to drive the whole world out from your head and live your entire life in that race with no distraction.  As though you are in a dream and you did not exist before and you will not exist after.  I could not drive the world out from my head.

  Running after college brought new pressures.  Racing for rent money brings a different kind of pressure.  Traveling to a race alone when the race pays for your hotel, your tickets, your food, basically spending more on getting me to the line than I had ever had at one time in my life to that point which brings a certain type of pressure to perform.  Racing early in the morning after arriving late the night before because of flight delays.

  Each of these new things and each repetition of them builds your ability to drive out pressure to let it roll over you like rain.  Other pressures arise in life and build the same things.  I ran in Lowell, which can at times be a tough town, for many years and my road etiquette is let us say a bit sub par.  So over the years I have had a number of confrontations and even a few guns pointed at me.  These things are all types of pressure and you must learn to act in a calm and thought out way with these pressures.

  In this time frame a small non-running incident sticks out in my mind as a moment in which I grew in terms of my ability to perform under pressure.  I rented a room in a house near the UMass Lowell campus and one night I was making some chicken.  I put oil in a pan I had just washed and not dried well and as it heated I breaded the chicken.  I put an ill fitted top on the pan when the inevitable popping and what not started as the oil heated and reacted to the water on the pan.

  I heard it light on fire behind me. I felt the heat even before I could turn to see it.  The entire pan was engulfed in flames, you couldn't see it.  The flames went fully up the wally and curved out over my head on the ceiling.  I knew we didn't have a fire extinguisher, I checked under the sink and on the cellar stairs lighting fast to be sure.  I didn't know you could put a fire like that out with baking soda or flour.  I knew you couldn't put an oil fire out with water.

  I knew by the time I called the fire department and they arrived the kitchen would be gone.  Who knew if the guys I lived with had insurance.  I opened the kitchen door.  At this point less than 10 seconds had passed since the pan had lit on fire, it felt like a lifetime.  We didn't have oven mits or pan holders, we were after all a group of grad students or just out of school guys.  I calmed my mind and separated myself from my hand.  I reached into the flames and grabbed the pan. I carried it the ten feet across the kitchen to the door and tossed it out into the snow.  I used my shirt to quickly stomp out the bits of the wall and celling that were on fire.  I opened the windows and scrubbed the burns and smoke stains out of the wall and celling and called the kid who owned the house.  I knew I was burned badly though I must admit I was a bit shocked as I gingerly tried to was the smoke stains off my hand and wrist to watch chunks of skin roll away.

  Pressure takes many forms and each time we do what is needed under it.  Each time we face it and manage to pull ourselves together and stay inside our heads we develop the ability to handle it better the next time.

  The Olympic Trials is for many, myself included, the biggest race of your life.  In the build up to the '08 marathon trials a few weeks out I was dumped by my fiancee at the time.  In the long run this was a great thing as I ended up with Melissa, but at the time time I didn't know that.  Having something like that happen in your personal life is a huge jump in pressure.  Also my shoe contract had only been extended for 6 months to get it just past the trials with the clear point that if I didn't do something there it would be the end of that support.   I remember at the time Gary freaking out that I was in such good shape and that this girl could just break things off so close to the biggest race of my life.  I was in a place where I couldn't see the big deal they were separate. When the workouts started I didn't have a personal life, when the gun went up on race day I wouldn't have anything but the race.

  On race day I was aware of the insanity that is running a race like that.  There are just so many huge stars and the TV crews and the crowds.  Yet there was an relaxed focus. It would go well as long as my body would work.

  Each of these types of pressure are different.  What pressure is hardest for you to deal with varies for each person.  As you can see from the stories above most of what I had the hardest time with are either life stress or are internal pressure.  To be honest I have always put a huge amount of pressure on myself.  I always have even as a child.  I need to be exceptional and nothing I accomplish is ever good enough.  On the other hand I really don't care about most external pressure.  In someways this seems rude or embarrassing to say but I generally don't care what other people think of me.  Don't get me wrong I care what my boss thinks because I want to keep my job.  Things like that.  But in terms of feeling like I need to prove myself to others it just isn't something I feel a huge drive for.  First I don't feel bad when someone tells me I suck.  It just isn't something that bothers me.  More over I don't enjoy when someone compliments me or tells me I have done good.  Actually I don't believe them.  So it has never become something I have needed or wanted.

  Now for a few years now there has been no external pressure in my running.  Interestingly I have continued to put much of the same internal pressure on myself even though I have not been competing on a high level.  Suddenly though I have done nothing to earn it I'm getting interviewed again and being talked about and so there is external pressure again.  I actually noticed it only because my foot started hurting and the reality that I might not race Boston came into my mind and here I'm getting all this undeserved attention.

  Still I haven't changed.  I don't know how exactly to describe it but basically it is like rain on your face. You feel it but it rolls off.  It doesn't change anything.  From my perspective the only thing I want is to get to compete again and to do these workouts and all that matters is what I want and how I feel about it.  Still it has been kinda nice to feel a bit of pressure again.  Feels like the running matters a bit more and it is nice.

Threshold Run

  The threshold run is what is most commonly thought of when you talk about tempo runs.  The name refers to the idea that you are running very close to or right at your anaerobic threshold.  That is the point at which your body begins to produce more lactic acid than it can use as fuel and the PH of the blood begins to rise sharply.  It is a bit of a false hood in that the exact pace will change as you tire but essentially the idea is to run at this pace.

  There are a number of ways to determine this pace for yourself ranging from blood tests during activity and VO2max testing to calculators and charts based on workouts and race performances.  The best guideline I have found is that it is roughly the pace you would expect to RACE for a 1 hour race.  For me I use half marathon pace, All my halves have been in the 1:04 to 1:08 range.  For someone else this might be 10mile race pace or 10k.  The thing to remember is the pace varies a good bit with level of exhaustion as well as changes in weather or terrain so always trust feel over the watch.

  These runs should be run steady or with a slightly negative split, but if your last mile is more than 5 or 10 second faster than your first mile than you are doing a progression run and that is fine but it is a slightly different stimulus.  The threshold tempo is about the steady pressure on the cardiovascular system.  These runs can vary in distance greatly.  It largely depends on what kind of an effort you can get out of yourself in a non-racing situation.  I myself can almost never go more than half an hour like this.  In contrast a few years back Ritz ran a 10 mile tempo run at his half marathon pace a few weeks out from running 3rd at the World half marathon championships in 1:00:00.  So he was doing 45mins.  That is about the max you see and most people cannot produce an effort like that in a workout without a taper, race day adrenalin etc..

  The most important thing with these workouts is that you are better off going too easy than too hard.  If you push too hard and go into anaerobic running your body does not receive the message that the aerobic threshold failed.  The idea is to lock in at a steady effort just below the threshold and exhaust that system.  As to 'embarrass' it so your body will make growths there to address the problem.  If you are a bit too slow this will mean you run a bit longer in the workout to accomplish this but it will be accomplished.  If you are too fast than you simply won't see much improvement.

  Like all tempo runs I suggest you improve the workout by increase the volume before the pace.  I would suggest starting with about a 20minute effort and building up by 5 to 10 minutes each time until you are running 30 to 40 minutes.  Than return to the original distance and increase the pace by 5 seconds per mile or so.  You should find the effort is the same.

   These tempos are most specific to 10 mile to half marathon racing for most athletes but the anaerobic threshold is the single most important marker of fitness for all distances from 3k to the marathon.  In all those events your race specific fitness can be thought of as being built off of the anaerobic threshold.  These workouts should be done throughout the training cycle and they should be a main focus of the pre- specific phase, or early season period of your training.

  This workout builds the ability to run on the edge of disaster, pain, acid, oxygen debt while maintaining control.  Effective distance running boils down to the ability to run fast without falling into those things so it doesn't take much imagination to see how key a session like this can be to your reaching your full potential.

Fartlek Friday: Recovery Fartlek

  This weeks fartlek friday is a little something different.  Instead of focusing on a hard session we will look at a session for recovery.  Most of us just go out and slog around at a slow pace on our easy days.  At best we may do some strides after an easy or moderate jog.  However if you look at the programs of some of the most successful runners in the world you will see things like easy fartlek and 20 kilometers with short variations for speed.  These sessions fall in places where a workout wouldn't be possible or advisable, the day before or after very hard sessions or races.  So what do they know that you are missing?

  Running well is a game of speed.  It has long been known that in running speed kills all those who don't have it. Yet still so many of us, particularly those who fall into the weekend warrior or regionally competitive groups do very little fast running.  In a normal week we do maybe two workouts, a race and a few strides and that is a great week.  Many times we may go days or even weeks with all or nearly all our running at paces ranging from 1 to 3 minutes per mile slower than our race pace.

  Then we watch with awe the best in the world and wonder what they have we don't.  The answer is strength with speed.  Most who chase the best possess one or the other or only some of each.  Now some of the difference between you and the lads and lasses in the Golden league has to do with Momma and Poppa.  Lets be honest not every guy has the genetics to run 13:00 and not every gal can be a 15:00 monster.  Still much less of the gap between you and them is genetic, or illicit chemical use, than you think. The two biggest differences I see are one the huge efforts expended to build aerobic power through fast steady running, IE various types of tempo and progression runs, and two huge amounts of relaxed FAST running, SPEED.

  So often we use fast and hard as interchangeable terms.  The thing is they are not at all interchangeable.  The biggest lesson I learned in my years is fast is not hard and hard is not fast.  Sometimes they happen together but they should largely be trained separately.  If you want to be a speed demon you need to be able to run very fast while you are relaxed.  If you want that you need to PRACTICE running fast while you are RELAXED.

  One of the ways of doing this is to run fast on your recovery days.  Note fast not hard.  A great way of doing this is to slow your recovery run pace down a little bit and mix in some short quick burst of speed.  Not at a max sprint, not killer drives but pleasantly fast accelerations run only long enough to feel quick and not long enough to get tired.  Between these flashes of speed you should have long breaks.  More than recovery you should be really stretching it out.  This is a run with some quick spurts not a workout with long rests.
 
  This session should be as long as your normal recovery run and done on as pleasant a route as you can find.  I imagine it in a cool forest on soft pine needle trails or running around rolling fields in the english country side.  I actually run it in 15 degree weather on a heavily trafficked loop dodging cars and fearing for my life around every 12 foot snow bank covered corner.  But not everything is ideal and in my mind I drift to that pine forest and I'm just killing it!

  After a few times of doing this you will discover you can often recover better with a session like this than with a regular run and over the long haul this extra relaxed speed will go a long way to improving your muscular endurance and efficiency making you one who kills with speed rather than one who is killed by it.  Ok full discloser this workout alone is not going to change your world but it can be one piece to the larger puzzle of finding the path to unlocking your full running potential.

Tempo Tuesday: Making improvements and breakthroughs in all tempo training

  Generally I talk about specific workouts in this space but today I'll talk about some more general tactics that you can use across all your tempo runs to make improvements in those workouts and by extension your general fitness and racing.  For me I put all steady running faster than regular training and longer than a  mile or two into the category of tempo training.  This could be something as short and fast as 2 miles at 5k pace or as long and slow as 27 miles at 80% of your goal marathon pace.  All are designed to improve your aerobic fitness, though in many different ways, and all can be improved using some of the same tactics.

  To me the most important thing about a tempo run in training, really any workout in training, is not how you run it the first time but how you run it better each successive time.  Good running is after all in its simplest state all about getting better.

  I have done a ton of work over the years and one thing I have seen in my running and others again and again is if you take your tempo run and just try and run it faster each time out at first you are able to do so but in general you are not running it better you are just running it harder and soon enough you are running as hard as you can and your not going much faster.  In short you stagnate.

  The key is to instead increase distance at the SAME PACE.  So you go out and do a 3 mile tempo run at 5:30 per mile.  The next time out you should aim for 4 miles on the same course at the same pace.  You will find that you are able to fairly quickly find yourself running twice the distance at the same pace and your effort when going by the original distance is much lower than when you started.

  After you have increased the distance a good bit say 50% to 100% longer than the original distance than you go back to the original distance and run it faster.  You will find the effort is not increased.  In fact often it is less.  Through cycles like this you can make very big gains and make them very consistently.

  However sometimes you will still stagnate.  In these cases there is one more trick to try.  In this case you run a fast finish.  So at one point I was trying to build up to an 8k to 10k tempo run on the track at 3:00 per K.  Thing was I was stuck at 5k to 6k.  I built up to that well. I was doing some other work but I was stuck.  So what to do?  I ran an 8k tempo run where I ran slower than I had been for the first 5k, in my case 16:00 so 3:12 per k. That is about 5 to 10% slower than goal pace and then I finished at or faster than my goal tempo pace, in this case I ran the last 3k in around 8:50.  So 2% or 3% faster than pace.  Even if it is dead on pace that is ok.

  The results?  Next time out I ran 8k in 23:56.  It isn't a sure fire thing but sometimes the reason you are stuck is you really lack the endurance to run the later part of the run at that past and this can specifically target that weakness.

  Finally sometimes the answer lies outside the specific workout.  If these two tricks don't work and you are still stuck it is time to work on other types of workouts to build up your abilities around your tempo run.  Most often either intervals at your tempo pace or 5% faster for the volume you wish to run for your tempo or as much as 50% more volume this can improve the muscular endurance and efficiency.  Second is to run a longer tempo at a slower pace to build the aerobic endurance and efficiency.

  Hopefully you can use this to get the most out of your tempo runs and reap the improvements you deserve for your hard work!

Weekly Training Blog February 16 to 22, 2015 Vacation!

I was on vacation this week which meant I had a lot more time which basically meant I slept a lot more which was wonderful!  This week off also saved my first specific workout as we had a blizzard last Sunday when the workout was scheduled and I was able to move it to Monday because I didn't have to work.  Now I also did some vacationy things like eating out and a few trips up to Maine.  Melissa, my wife, has to schedule her time off from work about a year in advance and we have been going to Hawaii each winter during February vacation but I put a kibosh on that this year because the two long flights in a 9 day period tend to undo any recovery you could get during that time and I wanted to be able to get as many hard workouts in as possible during my time off.  Given the winter we are having Melissa giving up a trip to Hawaii to escape from the 2nd coldest and soon to be snowiest winter in Massachusetts history is a pretty huge sacrifice, all because I basically was being very picky and specific about my training plans.  She is super supportive so the least I could do was go along for a few day trips.  The eating out is about my favorite thing so no sacrifice on my part there.

Monday

PM COLD! 16 degrees but windchill well under 0.  With Ruben. 3 mile warm up to Merrimack College 5k loop.  Loop was in real bad shape in terms of footing.  Only the 4th K was pavement.  The rest was a mix of packed ice, loose snow, ice and a bit of slush.  There are 12 turns on each loop and they were all very challenging.   The plan was 30k specific workout.  10k at 80 to 85% of mp, 5k of 1min fast 1 min moderate, 5k back at 80 to 85%mp, 5k at mp and 5k max effort.  In the end we only did 25k as footing really beat up on the legs and it meant that though we were on pace in the first 10k our effort was greatly in excess of the proper effort which you can see by how fast the 4th K was on each loop.  The full run was continuous but I'll break it down below by section

10k at  80 to 85% of mp- 35:56.5 (4th k was 3:20 and the 4th k on the second loop was 3:20 again) This means that we were probably running 33:20 effort or faster as really the 4th k felt easier than the other k's)  

5k of 1min fast/1min moderate- 16:39.19 (4th k was a 3:05) 

5k back at 80 to 85% mp- 18:09.51( 4th k was 3:23)

5k at mp- we just went about as hard as we could we knew with the footing there was no way we were going to get down around 16:00 we ran 16:45.34 (3:10 for the 4th K)

Total this was 1:27:30 for 25k, 5:37 per mile pace, though I have no trouble believing the footing alone cost us 60 to 80 seconds per 5k loop.  So 5 to 7 minutes overall.  Never mind the cold and all the extra cloths we were wearing.  No cool down on this one as Melissa and Uta were nice enough to pick Ruben and I up at the finish. Total 18.5 miles 

XT whartons, rubberbands

Tuesday

AM road 7, shitty footing, cold 10 degrees real feel 2. 47:26 total 7

PM road 7, same loop, same conditions except temp all the way up to 20 and real feel up to 8, balmy! total 7

XT whartons, rubberbands

Wednesday

AM 3 mile warm up, 19:45, skipping warm up, light drills, 4 strides, 20k of 1k/1k alternations on Merrimack College 5k loop. In bit better shape than Monday, 1st and 4th k were clear footing, 2nd and 5th were about the same and the 3rd was a bit better but the turns were still real bad.  Temps were about the same as Monday. Which means wearing a LOT of cloths which adds to the effort.  In an ideal world my goal would be the fast k's between 3:00 and 3:05 and the recovery K's around 3:20.  This was not ideal.

1k-2:59.8

2k-3:33.8(6:33.6)

3k-3:07.5(9:41.2)

4k-3:21.0 (13:02.2)

5k-3:15.5- yes that was an 'on' k (16:17.7)

6k-3:26.7(19:44.5)

7k- 3:05.9(22:50.5)

8k-3:33.3(26:23.8)

9k-3:01.2(29:25.1)

10k-3:37.7(33:02)

11k-3:04.4(36:07.2)

12k-3:32.2(39:39.4)

13k-3:08.3(42:47.7)

14k-3:24.5(46:12.3)

15k-3:17.0(49:29.5)

16k-3:26.7(52:56.2)

17k-3:08.1(56:04.3)

18k-3:34.1(59:38.4)

19k-3:04.1(1:02:42)

20k-3:41.2(1:06:23)

 Those splits look all over the place but really if you compare the same K's on each loop to each other they are much closer than you think.  IE the 4th k hard reps were 3:01 and 3:04 and the recoveries on that K were 3:21 and 3:24.  On the 5th k, the slowest you see the same relationship 3:15.5 and 3:17.0 for the fasts and 3:37.7 and 3:41.2 for the recoveries.

 3 mile cool down total of 19+ miles

XT skipping warm up, light drills, whartons, rubber bands

Thursday

AM road 10k, first 4.2 with Uta, then 2 miles solo, objectively speaking this was one of the most beautiful runs I have ever been on. We were running just at Sunrise and the orange glow of that through the freshly coated snow on the trees and reflecting off the fresh few inches on the ground.  However I'm pretty much finished with winter and it was very cold and I was slipping all over the place.  On the plus side Uta was able to enjoy it for its beauty and seemed to have a great time. total 6.2 miles

PM road 7, 46:15, not as snowy but still a couple of icy snowy miles road out front of the house was clear enough for me to do some strides which was very nice total 7.5 miles

XT whartons, shoveling, rubber bands, YTI

Friday

AM Super cold wind chill 15 to 20 below zero, wind was very heavy and very steady. 2 mile warm up and strides then did a 10 mile moderate progression run on my regular 10 loop(rolling)

 Footing in 5th and 7th and 8th miles was very bad.  The last 2 and 1/4 miles were pretty much into the wind the whole way and it made them VERY hard.  I had hoped to run them at 5:20 pace for 8 and 9 and about 5:00 for the last mile.  I'm sure the effort was there but the pace was not!  

1-5:49(into wind)

2-5:46(into wind)

3-5:32

4-5:29

5-5:35(footing and uphill)

6-5:34 (uphill)

7-5:27(Footing!)

8- 5:43(footing, hill, wind!)

9-5:42(wind)

10-5:23(wind)

 After this run Melissa asked if I was alright.  I basically threw a fit in response.  This is not normal for me. In my defense it was REALLY cold and REALLY windy.  Still Melissa had a pretty good laugh about my little fit later. total 12.5 miles

PM on curve treadmill- I had had enough of the outdoors for one day. 15 minute warm up, 10x20 seconds hard with 1minute jog breaks. Sort of simulating short hill reps giving how the curve works. total 4.5 miles

XT whartons, rubberband, 

Saturday

AM regular 10, cold 12 degrees, -6 degrees windchill, footing a bit better than yesterday and sadly this was a good bit warmer than yesterday too. 66:47, did strides after total 10.5 miles

XT rubberbands, whartons

Sunday

AM 3 miles warm up on treadmill, with 4 strides at 12mph mixed in.  I also jacked up the mill to 2% instead of 1% because it seemed a bit easy like perhaps the grade was off a bit or the floor not flat. 7 miles at 11.8mph- 35:35, losing coordination so I hoped off and did whartons, got back on 45 seconds later and did a half mile in 3:30 felt ok so I did 3 miles at 12mph, 15:00.  I had the shoulders back on and Melissa was on the Mill next to me and said my shoulders looked good.  I really have been struggling to hold coordination on the mill.  I think it may have something to do with how I don't really use my glutes and hamstrings much on it.  But I'm not 100% sure. total of about 14 miles

XT rubberbands, whartons, shoveling

Summary

 107 miles for the week but the real story is that with the strides and workouts more than 100 kilometers of that was at a workout effort.  Just a huge amount of quality work.  Really a great week of work.

  I was scheduled to race the USATF-NE 10 mile champs but really didn't want to deal with the snowy roads getting out there, though I have since heard they weren't that bad.  Anyway I played it safe. If I had raced this next week would be much lighter but with just the moderate workout today I'll keep it rolling through next week.

  Hope you are doing well and for those of you who are as sick of winter as me I hope the weather treats us a bit better in the coming weeks.

Sponsorship!! Team Skechers!

  I am super excited to announce that I will be a Go Elite Ambassador for Skechers Performance Division.  I have been training in Skechers since last April and I'm really happy to have their support in my return to the marathon this April.

  Currently I'm training and racing primarily in the GoMeb Speed.  These are actually my favorite shoe of all time.  Light flexible and with a great fitting upper.  They are not for everyone as they certainly are a light weight flexible shoe but for me they are perfect! http://www.skechersperformance.com/running/mens#/content/gorun-speed-mens

  The other shoes I mix into my routine are the GoRun Ride 3 and the GoRun Ultra.  I use the Ride 3 for most of my easy runs and as my second favorite behind the speeds and the Ultra work great for when the footing isn't very good which means over the last 6 weeks they have been getting a lot of work.  So in the snow lately they have been getting a lot of miles.  They are one of the most durable shoes I have ever run in.
http://www.skechersperformance.com/running/mens
http://www.skechersperformance.com/running/mens#/content/gorun-ultra-mens

  If you are interested in more information about Skechers performance on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SkechersPerformance
  or instagram = @SkechersPerformance or twitter @SkechersGO

Weekly Training Log February 9 to 15, 2015 Recovery

Monday

Mid Day- 48:16, around 10k on roads in snow storm, first 4.2 with Melissa total 10k

PM Bikram yoga (90minutes hot yoga)

XT whartons, rubber band exercises, shoveling and yoga

Tuesday

AM Bear Hill 4.2 with Uta, snowy. total 4.2

PM Regular 10 on snowy roads, 68:58, roads very bad this was actually a pretty good effort, I think perhaps a bit too good. total 10+

XT whartons, rubber band 

Wednesday

PM on treadmill with Ruben. 3.5 warm up, with 4 "strides" of 15 seconds at 12.5mph, 13mph, 13.5mph, 14mph respectively. switch shirts do whartons. goal was 6x2 miles at marathon pace.  Very tired so didn't figure that would happen.  1/2 mile get up to speed then 2 miles in 10:15, 1/2mile in 2:50, 1 mile in 5:06. Stopped just tired as shit.  Ruben manned up for 5 reps.  I did 3 miles cool down total 10.5 miles

XT whartons, rubber band

Thursday

PM 50mins in snow storm with Uta, the dog, at least she was having a good time.  total around 8 miles we were moving pretty good.

XT whartons, rubber band

Friday

PM On curve treadmill (manual) 3.3 miles warm up with 4 strides, 25mins, Moneghetti fartlek on curve (2x90, 4x60, 4x30, 4x15 with matching rest) 20 total minutes covered 3.55 miles, my best on the curve before this was 3.46 two weeks ago.  This was only 5:38 pace but a very good effort.  The curve is much slower than regular running.  At the end of December I did this session on the curve and only covered 3.25 miles.  To put this in perspective I ran around 4:57 pace on the roads a week or two after that.  I have dropped my time on the curve by 32seconds per mile since then.  I doubt it transfers directly but the improvement is still very very good.  20 minutes cool down ended up with 65minutes on the curve and just under 10 miles 

XT whartons, rubber band

Saturday

Spent the morning shoveling and breaking up ice jams on roof. This sucked.

1pm road 7.8 solo, very poor road conditions for most of run, 52mins total 8-

4pm road 10k, 46:19, first 4.2 with Melissa and Uta, roads very rough shape tot. 6+

XT whartons, rubber band

Sunday

had first specific workout scheduled but pushed it to monday because of Blizzard

AM 50mins steady on Curve and then 5 strides with 1min breaks between them total 8 miles

PM road 10k solo very very cold total 6,2 miles 

XT whartons, rubber band, pull ups on assisted machine

Summary

  Not an impressive week at all. Basically a recovery week after the bit special block last weekend.  It was supposed to end with our first specific session but we'll be suffering through that in sub zero wind chills on some poor footing this afternoon because it is better conditions then during a blizzard yesterday.  The weather in New England is never helpful but it has sort of been becoming a bigger pain every few days for the last month or so.  I'm hoping it starts to move in the other direction over the next two weeks or so.  The biggest difference between training now, with a full time job, and the good old days is that it is very hard to deal with curveballs like the weather.  Luckily I have February vacation this week so I could bump the run to today but now as we get into the specific phase I really don't want to be doing modified 'effort' workouts and that is what snow storms generally force.   Hope things are going well for you!

Fartlek Friday Hammer the Hills

  It was a bit of a right of passage to do a hammer the hills fartlek when I ran for George Davis at UML.  He had a loop that was less than 5 miles long and had seven or eight hills.  There was a great variety from short to long and shallow to steep.  The toughest hill was the last one and in true George fashion there was a two way stop you had to run through, the unsafe way, half way up.  George used this as a staple in athletes returning from injury before letting us back in with the wolves and as a great workout for someone who wouldn't be able to workout with the rest of the team on a given day.  Simply it was a workout without any way to measure it objectively it was strictly a workout based on effort.  Beyond that it was a workout that was sure to get a great effort and really start toughing you up.

  So what is it?  Super simple.  You just hammer every time you go uphill.  I really like to be a stickler about this.  I mean a two stride bump in the road and I drop two hard strides.  You run at your regular pace between runs.  On a loop that is largely flat this is a nice moderate run with a few nice hard efforts to open up the system.  On a very hilly loop this can be one of your hardest sessions.  I would do this on a 1.5 mile loop in the Phillips Academy Sanctuary that is basically a loop around a valley so it has two killer long climbs each loop.  Six or seven loops in there and I would be DONE!

  When to do it?  First I'm a huge fan of fartlek and hills most anytime as a workout on a day when the main plan may have fallen through or as the second workout for the week.  Second this is a great bread and butter session if you are preparing for a cross country or hilly road racing.  You can adjust the distance of the fartlek depending on the the distance of the race you are preparing for.

  Goal Race   Fartlek distance

5k                    3 to 5 miles

8k/10k               5 to 10 miles

half marathon    8 to 15 miles

Marathon            10 to 25 miles

  What are you trying to accomplish with this workout?  First anytime you do hills you are building your muscular strength.  With this workout specifically you tend to get long breaks so you are working on flushing out latic acid completely which makes it a great transition workout between base work and heavy anaerobic work for 800 to 10k runners or early in cross country season.  This is also an awesome session for building mental fortitude.  It is real easy to get motivated for and not intimidating but you really have to dig down to get a good effort on tough hills later in the session.

  Variations

  You can run faster, as fast as fundamental tempo run pace, on the stretches between the hills to make this a specific prep for a race strategy where you plan to hammer the hills.  This makes it a great aerobic session and really forces your body to flush out a lot of acid at a quick pace on the recoveries.

  Another option is to do this on your long runs.  This can be a great first step towards some of the hard long workouts I and others advise for the marathon.  

  A variation on the long run is to find a place with real long climbs.  One summer I lived near Northfield Mountain in western Massachusetts and it has a ton of trails.  I would do my Sunday long runs up there.  I often would push the long uphills, 1 to 3 miles, and just recover and fly on the long downhills.  It was ok if I found myself completely hammering quads burning and gasping for air at 7 miles into a 22 mile long run because I was going to recover on the next downhill but it really can build the mental fortitude as well as the aerobic and muscular endurance.  This session was almost like doing a series of uphill tempos with 10 to 20 minute easy running breaks between them.  I'll tell you I never ran better on hills than I did the fall after I spent the summer doing those runs!

   So the next time you are about to skip a workout because life got in the way or whatever and you are about to just head out for your regular old training loop MAN UP and Hammer the Hills!!  You will sneak a workout in where you would other wise have just a regular training run, you will be tougher for having done it and chances are you'll have a lot of fun in the process.

Progression Runs for the Beginning Runner

 This is an extension on my blog about tempo runs for the beginning runner.  In that blog I suggest that the beginning runner should be doing a 15 to 20 minute tempo pretty much once a week throughout all their training seasons.  I also mention that a progression run of similar length can be added in once a week as well to vary the stimulus a bit and to increase the aerobic training stimuli in the micro cycle.

  In the tempo blog, http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/02/tempo-tuesday-tempo-runs-for-young-or.html , I go off topic a bit and talk about the overall focus of a training plan for the beginning runner so I won't rehash that here.

  The progression run will take a bit of work to teach to new athletes who have a natural predilection to going out too fast and fading.  However the work you put into teaching this workout will pay off two fold.  First the fitness gains can be huge.  Second it teaches the athlete not to go out too fast in races and other sessions and how fast and strong they can be if they run with control in the early stages.

  I suggest using a flat loop less than a mile in length.  It can be a bit longer.  You can have the kids run in groups or entirely by their own effort.  Set up RULES.  This seems odd but if you don't some kids just will not go out slow enough.  The rules are simply.  You have a goal distance.  IE the goal is 4 laps.  Rule 2 if an athlete does not run faster on a lap their workout is over. This will cause an athlete to not complete a workout or two but the lesson is well worth it.

  I suggest the athletes run the first loop at about their normal training pace.  Just knowing it is a workout will suck them into going a bit quicker than that which is actually ideal.  The next lap only needs to be faster.  A second or two is fine.  This is not a workout that needs to be overly structured.  Each lap needs to be a bit faster than the last and the final lap should be run as fast as the athlete can manage.

  Some athletes will increase in fairly even increments and only go a bit faster on the last lap.  Some athletes will increase only a bit each lap and then finish with an incredibly fast last lap.  Both of these are fine.  In fact if you have a group of similar level athletes training together you will likely get a mix of these type of efforts depending on who is 'leading' the pack and that mix is awesome.

  For the beginning athlete these runs should not be very long 15 to 25 minutes.  You need not adjust them to progress them.  They will adjust themselves by finishing faster and faster and with time and regular tempos and strides in their training programs as well you will see their starting "baseline" pace increasing significantly as well.

  You will see big gains in general fitness with sessions like this but the most noticeable effect you will see is that as your athletes tire in races their bodies will respond by actually increasing the pace.  They will mentally and physically learn how to make a long killing drive to the finish that particularly in high school racing can be absolutely devastating to their competition.

Training Blog February 2 to 8, 2015 Special Block

Monday 

AM 35mins with Uta, the dog, and Melissa in the snow. total 4.3 miles

XT whartons, YTI

Tuesday

AM on treadmill 3.5 mile warm up with four 15 second blocks at 13mph(4:36pace) for strides, quick bathroom trip and a shirt change, 1/2 mile  to get up to speed then 7 miles of alternations 1/2 mile at 12.4mph and 1/2 mile at 10.7mph- 36:27 for 7 miles, 5:12 per mile. lost coordination and stopped.  I have a very hard time keeping my shoulders back on the 'mill.  3 mile cool down total of 14 miles

PM Bear hill 4.2 with Uta, 30:08 total 4.2 miles

XT whartons, YTI

Wednesday

PM regular 10, 65:56, felt pretty good but roads were sloppy, total 10 miles

XT whartons, YTI

Thursday

PM on treadmill, 3 warm up on treadmill with 4 "strides" of 15 seconds at 13.5mph (4:24pace), 1/2 mile getting up to speed then, 10 mile progression run starting at 10.7mph(5:36) down to 11.9mph (5:04mph) 54:17- big fight with coordination, again I really struggle on the treadmill- I keep looking down at the darn screen!! 1.5 cool down total 15 miles

XT whartons, rubber band, YTI

Friday

PM road 8, 54mins footing not so great total total 8 miles

XT wharton, YTI, rubberband

Saturday

9AM with Ruben,  all outdoors 20 degrees, 3.2 warm up 23mins, big of light drills, couple of strides, 10k moderate tempo around lightly rolling merrimack college 5k loop- goal was 34:00 ran 33:09.

splits 

1-5:19

2-5:20(10:39)

3-5:22(16:01)

4-5:19(21:20)

5-5:22(26:42)

6-5:22(32:04)

Footing ok but we had to be very careful(slow) on all the turns(12 on loop) and there was about 100m that was quite slushy/slippery.  Still this felt very easy.

3mins rest

10k at marathon pace- honestly I thought given the footing, the rolling course and the temps if we could run 32:00 I'd be thrilled.  Before we started the loop Ruben said he would be happy with anything with a 32 in front of it.  We ran 31:29 and it felt very good and controlled.

Splits

1-5:08

2-5:03(10:11)

3-5:08(15:19)

4-4:55(20:14)

5-5:07(25:21)

6-5:10(30:31)

2.5 mile cool down back to house 17mins total 19 miles

4PM 2.5 mile warm up, light drills, strides, 10k moderate tempo, again goal was 34mins, again we exceeded the agreed upon speed limit like Rubes. 10k in 33:20

Splits

1-5:19

2-5:22(10:41)

3-5:26(16:07)

4-5:22(21:29)

5-5:20(26:48)

6-5:24(32:12)

It was amazing how easy this was.  Don't forget we are starting this with more than 21miles in our legs including more than 20k of running at a good clip.  Also footing, rolling hills and the very cold temps. Really felt very relaxed.

2mins recovery with light drills

7x1k on roads with 2min rests

1- 3:02

2- 3:03

3-3:07

4-3:03

5-3:13

6- 3:08

7-3:12- completely bankrupt. called it. 

Ruben continued on for 3 more reps.  I jogged in the last 3k while he did it.  I would catch up to him and send him off on his next rep.  To be honest not being able to do the last 3 was a rookie mistake on my part I had only eaten 6 pieces of toast and two things of tea all day.  Just not enough fuel for a run like this with all the extra miles of warm up and cool down.

2.5 mile cool down- by now I was in a pretty bad way but we headed home- NEVER do a marathon block with a cool down.  I should have had Melissa waiting for us. I didn't. It was stupid.  I have been bankrupt of fuel like this a couple times.  You struggle to think straight and feel very hopeless and just want to stop.  Also we were soaking wet and it was very cold, 20 degrees.  With about a mile to go Ruben ran out of fuel to.  He wanted to stop, I couldn't get him going again.  He walked a bit but it was obvious he was done.  I told him to wait and I ran the last mile to the house.  I was so gone I couldn't drive. Melissa went out and found Ruben.  I was supposed to go out to eat with Melissa's extended family instead they got us takeout and helped us get our whits back about us.  We kinda ruined their night.  total 18 miles 

XT a good bit of light drills(a skip mostly), whartons, rubber bands.

Sunday 

PM 36mins of snowy road jogging with Melissa- she took it easy on me. total around 4.5 miles.

XT whartons and rubberband.

Summary 

97 miles for the week. Two good normal workouts and one GREAT special block.  Even not being able to run the last few K's at the end this was an awesome session.  To be able to run that fast that easily in the PM is really great.  The way it went confirmed our monster aerobic strength down to about 5:05 pace but the lack of speed on the 1k's, really should have been about 3:00 shows we do need more half marathon paced work to round out the special phase.  I really think though as strong as we are a few good alternation sessions should do the job. 

  A single session like this is a double edged sword and the key to super compensation is to recover from it.  My father in Law was all worried that training like this would get us sick or hurt.  He was exactly right to be concerned.  If you try to jump back into your regular runs after something like this and it is like setting a time bomb in your system.  You will break down.  If you are really strong a couple easy days will do if not you may need much more.  After my first I needed a light week.  I felt pretty good today but I won't workout again until the middle of this week and I'm quite strong.  

  

Eating for Fuel; My Current Diet

In a separate post I'll go into the full details of how I got to this point but here I'll just discuss what I currently eat and why.

  My current diet is plant based.  Which is to say that I eat very little that isn't plants but I don't completely ban myself from eating meat or other animal products.  To give that context.  In the last two weeks I haven't actually eaten any meat but I have made some dinners that had chicken broth, I have had some cheese, I have had some things made with eggs and I regularly put a splash of milk in my tea.

  Why am I eating like this?  The short answer is my wife made me to try it and how I feel makes me to keep doing it.

   My personal journey with food over the last 15 years or so has been in the general direction of eating less and less processed foods and more and more "real" foods.  I grew up eating very healthy but during college sort of jumped off that path and since than have slowly found my way back.  I have fully plant based for the last 3 months or a bit more.  In that time I have made a solid jump in fitness and increased the quantity and quality of my workouts.  I have also lost around 15 pounds without trying.  I have done so without feeling weak or that I'm on the verge of getting sick which was common for me in the past when I dipped much under 160lbs in the past.

  We went plant based because my wife was reading the China Study which is a fairly well known study that spawned a bunch of books and a movie or two.  Summing up something that has been described in multiple books in one sentence, basically these researchers found that if you eat less than 5% animal protein in your diet cancer can't grow.  People who then followed this diet found they had more energy and better health all around.

  We were already eating pretty healthy, basically no processed foods.  I haven't had something you would call fast food in literally years.  In short we ate real food.  The stuff from the outside of the grocery store instead of the aisles.  This was working ok.  Though I did notice if I was eating yogurt instead of salad for lunch I would be much more likely to get sick.  I was running a lot but I would not describe myself as having much energy.

  Since going plant based I have not had some amazing awakening of feeling like a million dollars all the time experience.  I have made big jumps in fitness and you may have noticed I'm posting 5 or 6 blogs a week and still training and working like I was before so I certainly have more energy and I have returned to going hard or moderately hard every other day so 7 times every two weeks.  For the last few years I have only been going hard twice or sometimes 3 times a week so about 4 to 5 times every two weeks.  All of this adds up to a pretty darn good step in the right direction.

  The number one question I have been getting is what about protein for recovery.  I totally understand this question.  It was my number one concern heading into eating like this.  I have long taken either protein powder, kefir, or chocolate milk after all hard workouts and the vast majority of runs.  I have not replaced this with anything.  I generally eat something right after a run but nothing specific. Often it is just some fruit or toast. I have tried energy bits which are spirulina for post run recovery and like them so that may become my regular routine but currently I'm not doing anything.  I do eat a decent amount of protein but not nearly as much as I was eating before switching to plant based.

  Here is the funny thing.  I'm recovering better. I'm not sore.  I'm bouncing back for another hard run or workout quicker.  I feel pretty darn good.

  I have told you what I'm not eating.  Which leaves what I am eating.

  For breakfast I have either steel cut oats that I cook in the slow cooker over night with cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla.  I eat it with some fruit, whatever is around, and almond milk.  If I don't have the oatmeal I have ezekiel toast with cashew butter or peanut butter, the kind that is just ground nuts, no oil, no salt.  I also have a large cup of water and a large cup of tea, 24 ozs each.

  For lunch I have make a peanut butter jelly smoothie.  Which tastes totally like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but with a smoothie texture, which is a bit of mind screw at first but you get over that.  I think melissa found the recipe on 100 days of real food or kris karr's website.  Basically it is peanut butter, almond milk, apple juice, two bananas, some baby spinach, and a bunch of frozen berries.  I make it in the morning and stick it in the fridge at work.

  Dinner is different every night.  I make a lot of soups, I always use low sodium organic broth.  I generally use veggie broth but sometimes chicken broth. A real quick meal is a BIG salad and veggie burgers.  Other than that we have been just trying out a ton of things.  We had a CSA in the fall and I would just google recipes based on what we got in that each week.  Now in the dead of winter no CSA so we google recipes and then buy the stuff for them.  We eat pasta dishes pretty regularly with a lot of veggies mixed in.

  For snacks I eat mostly fruit, toast, and whole wheat cookies when Melissa makes them, I don't do much baking.

  The biggest positives have been the loss of weight and being less hungry.  I have heard the term 'toxic hunger' used to describe the cravings for fatty, sugary, salty foods we eat.  The first few weeks you don't eat this food you crave them like mad.  Basically more like an addiction than a real hunger response.  Now as I said I gave up most of that stuff years ago but I did have that reaction for sure.

  The other type of hunger when you don't need calories is hunger from a need for nutrients.  The concept is simple enough your body needs some vitamin and even though you have eaten enough or more than enough calories to satisfy your needs your body tells you to keep eating until you get enough of whatever else you need.  If you read the nutrition labels on most of the processed foods we eat or the nutrition info on meat you will notice that there are calories but very little else.  What this means is that you can eat and eat and as soon as your stomach empties out you will be hungry again because you are desperately short of nutrients.  Even when I was eating very well by american standards before going plant based I was hungry quite often.  After a few weeks of the veggie based diet I noticed I was not nearly as hungry.  A quick glance the nutrition info on my meals told the story why.  Instead of a small amount of a handful of nutrients you have dozens of nutrients represented and many in very high quantities.

  Problems. The biggest problem is fiber.  Too damn much fiber.  Ok really it is probably the right amount of fiber but it is more than I am used to.  This has lead to a lot of unplanned bathroom stops on runs.  For a few weeks this was pretty out of control.  However I started drinking a lot more water and that pretty much got me back to normal.

  Weak points.  Ok don't tell Melissa, she pretty much just glances at the blog so I'm not too worried, but I sneak at least on soda a week.  Usually a virgil's root beer.  I swear that stuff really tastes like it was made in heaven.  It also has two days worth of sugar and zero nutritional value.

  Yup that covers it.  After the first couple of weeks I really stopped wanting any other junk food or meat. I don't want it. When I'm hungry I want fruit.  I want a salad. I want a nice colorful dinner. To be clear this took a few weeks.  The first couple weeks all I wanted was a damn hamburger covered in cheese and bacon.  Now that kinda grosses me out.

  Now I do eat some meat.  If I get a salad from a restaurant it generally has some chicken or cheese or whatever on it.  I eat that.  I did get a 'super salad' recently that was a little too super for me and I ended up leaving a lot of cheese and meat behind but generally speaking I will eat a bit of meat once every week or two.

  If you want greater detail or real info on the hows and whys of all this post a comment asking Melissa to do a guest blog because she is the brains behind this part of the operation.

Phases of Training and How to Progress Your Workouts Through Them

  Training in phases was most notably put forth by Arthur Lydiard in the the late 1950's and early 1960s.  Now there were other coaches before who were already doing this but he was most responsible for popularizing this and for creating the idea of doing very different training depending on how far from your race you are.  Lydiard advocated a base phase for building the aerobic system, a hill phase for building the mechanical strength, an anaerobic phase for building the anaerobic threshold and prepare for the specific demands of racing and finally a race phase to continue specific workouts and start doing races to sharpen up for and specifically prepare for your goal race or races.

  On the other end of the spectrum would be athletes from the Pat Clohessy school.  This includes athletes he directly coached, like Rob de Castella, but also athletes from systems through out Australia who were heavily influenced by Clohessy and his success.  These programs call for almost the exact same training each week of the training year.  So if you look at a schedule from one of these athletes from 5 months out from a race it looks just like it does 5 weeks before their goal race.  The thing is they do in fact adjust their training.  Which workout is the focus and which workouts are treated as lighter efforts.  They adjust how they perform certain workouts to target specific fitness goals.  So it is that in modern training in one way or another are using phases of training to produce their best results.

  Most modern programs are closer to Clohessy than to Lydiard.  Which is to say that they heavily use all types of training in all phases.  It is a fallacy that Lydiard did only one type of training in each phase but his phases were much more focused on individual types of work.  The reasons this type of starkly different phases has largely faded out of use are varied but the big three reasons are that somewhat greater gains can be made by doing a more mixed phases, that if you have a set back along the way it is easier to get back into things without a major time set back with more mixed phases and finally Lydiards athletes were very slow in their base phase.  In modern running and racing athletes are expected to be world class every time they lace up their racing shoes.  It was not uncommon to see a Lydiard coached athlete who was at his best a mid 13:30 5k runner race a 5k in the mid 14's while perfectly healthy in their base phase.  If Galen Rupp regularly ran 14:00 5k's at an indoor meets in January he would stop getting his normal fees and he would have to deal with all sorts of performance cutbacks on his shoe contract.  It just isn't a feasible system for many top pros.  Similarly with three competitive seasons it is very hard for a college or high school coach to have athletes under perform in one season, completely skip another to produce great results in there key season.  It is not to say if this was the only way to achieve success there wouldn't be coaches doing it but instead coaches found other ways and in doing so found ways of producing equal or eventually superior results through other methods.

  For me I generally use three phases Fundamental, special and specific.  I sometimes skip the fundamental phase if I am very fit and have come off a strong last cycle with only a short break between.  How many phases you use depends on which system you are using.  I would encourage you to pick a good program, there are plenty out there, and follow it through once in full fidelity. That means follow the program as laid out and don't make any adjustments.  See how it works.  See how you react to it.  Only then should you repeat it and make adjustments.  We are not all Bob Ross who could make a mistake midway and naturally and easily see how to turn it into a perfect part of the final masterpiece.  From my perspective better to start with Paint by numbers and branch out once you have a sense of how the whole thing comes out.  I'll do a blog on great programs I suggest sometime soon but really there are tons of good ones out there.

  So as I said I use three phases and I'll get into them in a moment but I want to highlight that regardless of if you use 6 phases or 4 or 3 or if you do basically the same thing year round and tweak it to match the period of your training the KEY is how you progress workouts.  This is tied into having an understanding of what the goal and effect of every type of training and workout that you do is.  I'm not saying you need a grad degree in exercise physiology to coach but you should never do a workout because it is a hard effort or because it looks like a good workout.  Specifically I'm talking about if your goal is good performance.  If you are running and training for enjoyment then I have no issue what so ever with you doing such and such a workout you read about recently because it looks like it would be really neat to do.

  First the fundamental phase.  This is most similar to a lydaird base.  The focus of this phase for me is two fold.  First to build basic aerobic systems.  This means long easy tempo runs, basic easy mileage and perhaps a few threshold type tempo runs or tempo intervals.  The second focus is building the muscular systems.  This means strides, short hill repeats, easy circuit training and running over hilly or muddy or sandy or deep soft grass type terrians.  This could also include things like running with a weight vest or doing walking lunges, with or without weight vest and perhaps long tempo intervals for volume.  An example would be 6xmile at about half marathon or marathon pace with long full recovery.  The idea is the reps should be easy aerobically but you get some muscular work.  Another example might be doing 10 to 20 k of short reps, 200 to 400m at goal 5k to 10k pace but with full rest so that each rep is very easy to run but your muscles will get very tired.  A session at full volume as I just described is drifting into special phase type work but certainly the early efforts where your volume of the workout is more in the 5k to 10k range.

  So for me this earliest phase would start very light and quickly build up to fairly high mileage.  My key focuses would be on trying to do some sort of muscular work every day.  Be this just a set of strides after a regular run or something more focused like some short hill sprints, or hill bounding and springing.  My main focus workout would be long fundamental tempos. Here are two links to blogs I have done on fundamental tempos for 5000m and marathon training. http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/01/fundamental-tempo-runs-for-5000-meters.html
http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2014/12/fundamental-pace-tempo-runs-for.html

  These fundamental tempos help build general aerobic power and endurance as well as good muscular endurance.

  Secondary workouts would including an easy long run.  Some sort of hill work, either hill circuits of bounding, springing and other exercises or long moderate effort repeats or long moderate effort continuous uphill runs, if you are lucky enough to have a 3 to 10 mile continuous uphill in your vicinity to use.  You can use a treadmill for this type of work but since you don't have to lift your center of gravity the muscular component is largely lost.  So for example I did 7.6 miles at a 12% grade on a treadmill in under 1 hour but racing up Mount Washington, 7.6 miles at an average of 11% I was only able to run 1:06 or so.

  Additionally you can do your specific muscular type work.  For a 10k or longer runner this would be high volume of short repeats at or around goal race paces with full recoveries to avoid it becoming anaerobic.  For the 10k or under runner this would be very short 100m to 200m efforts run at or much faster than race pace again with full recovery to avoid becoming anaerobic and done for great volume as much as 5k to 10k worth of work.  Sessions may be something like 30 to 50x100m at 400m to 800m race pace or a long session of diagonals or the like.  Again it is key that all this work should be done with so much rest that you avoid the breathing getting hard or the feeling of acid building.  You want to fatigue the muscles and only the muscles.

  Onto the special phase.  This is the period where you are trying to build your greatest specific fitness.  The main session becomes threshold workouts.  You will have done some of these in the base phase but now they should be your main focus.  You should be doing at least one threshold run per week.  These may be straight up threshold tempos of 4 to 8 miles or bounce threshold type workouts like Aussie quarters, monaghetti fartleks, or alternations or threshold progression runs.  Some links to blogs on these types sessions are here…
http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/01/monaghetti-fartlek.html
http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/01/marathon-specific-alternations.html
http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2014/12/workout-wednesday-australian-quarters.html

  During this phase you should continue the longer fundamental type tempo running.  For the marathon athlete you should do some very long sessions at the same pace that you were running in the base and some sessions of the same 15 to 25 mile range but you should be increasing the pace closer to marathon pace.  For athletes focused on shorter races particularly 10k or below you should keep these sessions going but you probably shouldn't really be improving them at all.  They should become secondary sessions just there to maintain aerobic endurance.

  For all events you should extend and build on your specific muscular work that you started in the fundamental phase.  The length of the reps should increase a bit and volume can continue to come up.  You can be doing as much as double your race distance worth of work at your goal pace for 5k and 10k runners and as much a full race distance for half marathoners.  Marathoners are probably only going to be able to do half to 2/3rds of race distance.  The rests should still be fairly long but if you get a bit anaerobic at time it is ok but your main focus should still be on being as smooth and relaxed at pace.  For 5k and down racers you should be continuing the faster than race pace type repeats with full recovery and high volume.  As with the other distances the lengths of your repeats can increase.

  Now for these 5k and down racers I would continue the 100m reps weekly at fast speed doing 3k or more of volume.  I would in fact do this in all phases as it does amazing things for relaxation at race pace that enable you to really produce greatly improved race results in these middle distance events.

  During this phase you should be doing some under and in the case of 800m to 10k runners over distance racing.  Don't expect incredible results in these races but they are a great chance to build racing toughness and skills as well as measure your fitness and get in some good hard workouts to attack your weak points.  Ie if you are the type of runner who does better in longer races you should do more under distance racing for runners who excel in the shorter events and struggle in longer stuff you should be doing more over distance racing in this phase.

  Finally you enter the specific phase.  Here you may do some workouts from the other phases to maintain your general fitness level but these sessions are disincly secondary.  At this point all your main workouts should be focused on what I like to call 'building your race.'

  This means that you should be doing workouts that are either at or extremely close to your expected race pace.  For those training for championship style racing will need to use more paces and variety because they will likely not be running an even pace in their most important races.  The biggest mistake I see people make as they approach their big races is that they keep working out faster and faster and instead of building a great performance they start pushing their fitness in a direction that isn't best for their goal. What I mean is if you have an athlete who has run 16:00 for 5k at the end of their special phase who would like to run in the low 15's for 5k.  Let say they have been focused on 72 seconds for their goal pace and repeat pace.  Which is fine.  Perhaps a bit aggressive but certainly close enough to be effective.  So perhaps at the end of the special phase they are running 12x400 with 200 jog rest in 72 seconds.  The tendency is to keep doing this workout but getting faster each time out, 71's and then 70 and before you know it they are running 65 or even better per 400 on the same rest.  They run better but not much and when you consider how much they have improved their workout that is very disappointing.  Instead you need to look at your workouts and your goal race and say what is different between the two.  So in this example case the difference between 12x400 in 72 with 200 jogs and 5k in 15:00 is the 200 jogs.  So each specific workout should be run in a way to eliminate that distance.  You can do this directly by increasing the volume of the repeats at the same pace while not increasing the distance of the rests much if at all.  So you are far better building towards running 3xmile at 4:48 with the same 200 jog.  You should also mix in some other specific sessions that work in different ways.  So perhaps a portuguese surge, http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/01/tempo-tuesday-portuguese-surge.html , where you run the last 1k to 2k at or just a shade quicker than your 5k goal pace.

  So there you have how I break down my cycles and how I suggest you should always be building your sessions over the course of a full training cycle to produce your best performances when they matter and reach your full potential over time.

10k training Blog

I’m doing a bit of a 10k training block and someone suggested in a comment that I put up a post about training for the 5k and 10k so I thought now would be a good time to do that. To be honest because I spent my winter focused on getting ready for a marathon my schedule over the next couple of months is not an ideal example of 10k training but it can give you something to compare this idealized schedule and ideas I’ll put in here. You can see sort of both ends of a spectrum in the same type of program.

First you should start with a fundamental/base phase. Like if you were getting ready for any distance races this is focused on getting into great all around shape and getting ready to do the specific training that will sharpen and focus your fitness on its target distance (5k/10k). So it is pretty similar to what you would do for any distance but just with slightly different stresses. For example training for the 5 and 10k you are going to do more work to develop your muscular power and in turn your speed then you would getting ready for a marathon where you are much more worried about endurance both muscular and aerobic. The general focus of this phase is strength endurance basically referring to muscular strength and aerobic endurance. Now lastly a bit of disclaimer, I have been very focused on the marathon and I have only put together two small 10k seasons for myself, this one coming up off of a marathon phase with no race and certain limitations placed on it because I don’t want to do any workouts that bother the hamstring and one last spring that was much more focused on racing back into shape to get ready to train seriously for the trials after losing massive fitness to a 10 week layoff do to mono. So this is mostly theory and based on what I have scene others do. I have used aspects of this myself but never the full cycle and if I did I’m sure I would find things that worked differently then I expected and would make changes. At some point in the next couple of years I will have to do a full 10k season and I’ll have to redo this blog at that point. But it’s a start anyway.

Introductory phase; real quickly if you have taken more then 2 weeks off since your last season or just are not real fit for whatever reason you should do a intro phase to get fit enough to train. It should basically just be a build up of mileage with strides and some easy drills and bounding ect.. Just basically preparing your body to handle the stresses of the fundamental phase. Depending on your fitness level it could be anywhere from 2 to 12 weeks. Longer then that would become redundant and counter productive.

Fundamental phase; this should be 6 to 10 weeks long. Depending on the time available and how well you handle blocks of training for different periods of time. Dave Bedford, who set the world 10k record in the 70’s thrived off of a program of 12 hard weeks but wanted to make sure he won at the 72 olympics so he followed the same program for 16 weeks and ran awfully at the Olympics, he was simple flat. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Mileage is very much a personal thing, "the magic is in the man not the miles" as Bowerman said, but there are some guidelines if you can’t run 70 or 80 a week you probably shouldn’t be focused on the 5k/10k, probably the 3k/5k at the longest. Also running much over 120 a week serves no purpose unless you are training for a marathon or see one in your relatively near future and want to prepare your body for that training. The real focus of this program is the quality. Now very quickly far too often in this country people here quality and think instantly of anaerobic intervals. We need to stop this. I simply mean the workouts, the vast majority of which are aerobic quality or muscular development focused should be the focus of your program. Miles are nice but if too many miles are causing your workouts to suffer then they are counter productive, but more importantly if the pace of your easy runs is too fast and is causeing you to have to drop your mileage or affecting the quality of your hard days then you need to slow it down. Too many guys run 6 min pace and say oh its easy. But they are run down and underperforming in races particularly and workouts often. I was one of these guys in college and in slowed my progress, and that of many of my teammates. If you are running at 70% of your 10k pace or faster then you are not running easy enough period and often you should really be running more along the lines of 50 or 60% If that means you run with the freshman girls on your team then so be it. You will be amazed how much this will help your running. Plus no matter how slow you go you won’t be able to go as slow as most of the Kenyans go on there easy runs. 10 to 12 minute miles are quite normal.

Types of workouts

Aerobic Quality- these are your bread and butter of the fundamental phase and you should do one or two a week. They can be hard or medium. The goal is to improve your blood oxygen levels(there is a real term for that but I’m not thinking of it right now) improve the capillary beds in your muscle, both in size and scope but also in number. To increase the number of mitochondria (the energy producers) in your cells and the power and efficiency of those mitochondria.

Examples

hard

Progression runs of 30 mins to 1 hr

8 to 12k steady runs at 95% 10k pace

4k to 7k steady runs at 10k pace

Tempo intervals with short rest at 95% 10k pace 1k to 3k 10k to 12k total volume rest of 45 seconds to 3 minutes

Long runs of greater then 2 hours at 70to 75% 10k pace (traditional Sunday long run)

8k to 16k runs (5 to 10miles) at 90% 10k pace (long tempo)

15k to 30k runs at 80 to 85% 10k pace (very hard medium long run or very long tempo)

6k to 12k uphill running at 95% 10k effort (pace obviously slower)

Medium

4k to 6k at 95% 10k pace

3k/2 miles at 10k pace

10k to 20k runs at 80 to 85% 10k

20 to 30k runs at 70 to 75% 10k pace (traditional medium long run)

Muscular development- hard effort should be done at least once every other week but can be done as often as weekly. Easy efforts should be done close to every other day and certainly at least a couple of times a week. Goal is to build muscular skeletal strength to run fast in relaxed manner and efficiently in terms of fuel(oxygen mostly in this case) used at fast paces. Also to develop the ability to run very close to top speed for the last 200 to 400 meters of a hard race.

Examples

Hard

Circuits- start with an aerobic interval 800m to 1 mile at 10k pace then without stopping go into a series of sprints and exercises, best if done on a hill. For example 1k at 10k pace into 100m all out uphill sprint into 50m uphill bounding, into 50m uphill springing, into 100m uphill sprint into 10 jump squats. (there are tons of examples better then this online, just search through Canova schedules on lets run and you’ll find a bunch.

Hill bounding and Springing (Lydiard style) Mix these two exercises done for 600 to 800m with jog down rest for 1 hr to 90 minutes, ie 600m bounding into 600m springing jog down and repeat or 600m bounding jog down 600m springing jog down and repeat

Easy (can be done as a recovery run once you are used to performing them)

Short hill sprints 60 to 100m 8 to 14 seconds, alatic work with jog down full recovery (heart rate down to close to 120 for most people) this is great muscular exercise but also because it drives the heart rate up very fast and down very fast again it increases the hearts stroke volume which is very important and so these should be done at least once a week. You can do anywhere from 10 to 30 plus of these in a set, start low build up.

Butt kicks 8 to 14x30m

Continues warm up drills

High knees

Skipping

Bounding on the flat

Straight leg bounds

Short hill bounding and springing

Strides

Jump squats

Laying out a fundamental schedule

This is where your fitness level will dictate the specifics of your training the most. I love to work on a hard easy hard easy type cycle. To do that I may have to make my easy day very easy, in my present schedule its at 6 and 6 double and I take it very easy on both easy days. But you may not be able to go hard again after 1 easy day no matter how easy you make it. I know I couldn’t when I first started training like this. Now there are a few different ways to approach this you may just want to go hard easy easy hard or you could go hard easy medium, easy hard. Or you may find you can go hard easy hard but then need to go two easy days. One nice way is to have a hard week and a medium week. So maybe in week one you have two hard efforts and a medium effort then in week two you have three medium efforts. Something like that. Also you may find that some of the hard efforts are particularly hard for you and some are easier. Now first if that is so you want to get in some of those really hard ones because they obviously address a weakness in your fitness. That is not to say you should ignore completely the workouts you tend to do with more ease just that they should be less of a focus in your training and can be done much less. But also they are something you can squeeze into a medium week so you get two mediums and a hard but the hard isn’t that hard. I’m sure if that was totally clear but I hope it was.

Racing in the fundamental phase- Races are good workouts and as such are fine in this phase but with a couple of caveats. First you need to be prepared that you going to be tired and that backing off for a race is a bad idea so you must train though. (in a long 10 to 12 week phase you could back off for one race midway) as such you will most likely race poorly and often race very poorly. Think your in 30 min 10k shape you may well struggle to crack 31 or a runner targeting 36:00 may struggle to slip under 40:00. Second races are harder then workouts, they just are, so they take more time to recover from so in the interest of staying healthy and not getting your self into a pit of exhaustion where you don’t recover you need to give yourself extra time to recover after these efforts. Also because of this you simply don’t want to race a whole lot but a couple of races are not a bad idea at all.

The Specific phase

 Now is when you want to start to really focus your training on getting ready for the rigors of your event. So now you need to start doing your aneorbic intervals and your more race specific intervals. Also you want to do a number of what I call shift intervals or shift time trials. These are efforts of 1 to 6k where you run the first part pretty easy generally at about 90% 10k pace and then shift gears and run all out. You will be surprised how fast you can go in these often much faster then you are able to run in a single time trial or all out interval. The focus of these is to prepare your body for tactical races that may finish in a long drive to the finish and to practice running fast paces when you are tired. Also during this phase you should not completely abandon your aerobic quality and muscular development work. This things should just take a back seat to some of this more race specific work.

Specific work

800m to 2 mile intervals at 10k goal pace with short rest (over the course of phase you should shorten the rest or increase the distance of the reps not increase the pace)

Short progression runs 15 to 30 mins

10k runs with the first 6k to 8k at 85 to 90% 10k pace and the remaining 2 to 4k at 10k pace

5k to 6k runs with 2k to 5k at 90% 10k pace rest at 105% of 10k pace

Alternations, 6miles or 10k total distance with the "on" reps at 10k pace and the "recovery" part at marathon pace or a bit slower. Start with 400/1200 try to get to 1200fast/400 recovery

Alternations of 2miles to 5k with "on" at 5k pace (5%faster than 10k pace) and recovery at 5% slower than 10k pace about half marathon pace.  The idea is to try and average 10k pace for 2 to 3 miles.

Anaerobic work

600m to 2k intervals at 105% 10k pace with short rest (same as 10k short rest not increase pace)

4 to 6k time trials at 10k pace

2k to 2 mile time trials at 105% 10k pace

Traditional all out hill repeats 200m to 1k run all out with jog down rest

12x400m at 5k pace with 100 jog rest

Combination aerobic anaerobic work

Aussie Quarters

Moneghetti Fartlek

Shift intervals/time trials 3x2k 1k 95% 10k 1k all out, 2x3k 1500/1500 split, long rest on these 5 mins or so, time trials of 4k to 4 miles again split down the middle same paces

10 to 14 miles at 70% 10k pace into 4k to 6k at 90% 10k into sets of short intervals 300m to 500m at 105% of 10k pace w/ short rest ie a minute between intervals 3 mins between sets, only do 2 to 4 reps in each set only do 2 or 3 sets. For example 3x3x400m

Muscular and aerobic work options stay about the same but avoid the short aerobic options instead use some of the combo work above and the circuits change slightly instead of starting with an aerobic interval you should start with an all out what I call high school style interval, super anaerobic. Which is to say you go out too hard and get yourself in as much anaerobic pain as you can as quickly as you can. So you do an interval of 800m to 1k and just hammer out sub 30 for the first 200 and go as hard as you can. Sure you will run slower then you could have if you ran smart and you’ll be more tired too but that’s the point. You want to start the exercises with your body in an absolute state of crises. Just like the last 400m of a hard race. These Kenyans and Ethiopians you see dropping 50 to 53 second last laps on the track in Europe aren’t 45 second 400m men they are just able to run within a fraction of there top speed for 400m when their body is very near collapse. You want to be able to do the same.

Laying out your specific phase

 You are more worried during this time with the specific out put of your workouts versus really only worrying about the effort during the fundamental phase so recovery is even more important. So drop your miles a bit, say 5 or 10  per week, and put in an extra easy day here or there and go a bit easier even on your easy days.

You want to do one or two anaerobic or combo workouts a week and at least one circuit, one aerobic workout in each two week cycle. I really think one effort/run should be at least 15 miles in length, but there are some very successful runners who don’t do this so its not a absolute.

You should also race at least a couple of times, under distance is best. I wouldn’t want you racing every week but once for every 3 weeks or so is good. Again races are harder then workouts and you need to respect that and recover more from them.

You still want to be doing short hill repeats and the other easy muscular workout but cut the volume back to where you started the fundamental phase at. At this point it is just maintenance work.

As you get into your goal racing season so you need to back off and focus simply on racing mileage should be cut back to 50 to 60% you can last about 4 to 6 weeks without getting back to a little work and without loosing fitness, you should race every week you should do strides a couple of times a week and one or two real easy workouts like 6 laps of the track of sprint float sprint, or some light intervals at race pace or a hard mile or two mile time trial ect… I purposely don’t go into a ton of detail of how to do this part because it is so personal and so much based on the specifics of your racing season. Also there are so many example available out there.