Training Blog August 13 to 19, 2018

 Another week another small step in the right direction.  I tried a tiny bit of tempo work this week and that went very well and didn't leave me nearly as sore as my micro track workout last week so that was a nice surprise.  My cross training continues to improve and I'm actually back to doing my normal lifts, squats, front squats, deadlifts and the some other basics mixed in with some wieght.  I did 6x6 of dead lifts going from 135 up to 185lbs.  I did 6x6 with the back squats going from 85 up to 135lbs.   So light but not just the bar or no wieght anymore.   Still walking a lot!

Monday PT- adding a lot of jumping stuff, broad jumps and even some side to side jumping.

Tuesday 1 mile jog warm up, just under 7mins, then 12x100m on the track with 100m walk recoveries.  Locked in on the 17's for these.  felt pretty good.  Also saw Anna befor this and did some lifting and core work. 

Wednesday 20 minute run on the rail trail with no walk breaks.  Covered 3.1 miles.  This was also my first time doing some running on back to back days.  I could feel my hip was quite fatiqued after 15mins and it was a bit of a struggle to hold form and what not but it was good given that it was kinda a double whammy of increases.

Thursday heavy cross training day in terms of exercises from PT and Anna.  Couple long walks.

Friday at the track. 1 mile warm up, just under 7mins, 1 mile tempo run 5:20- very even 80, 2:40, 4:00.  1 mile cool down just under 7:00.  I cut the walk after this one short because a thunder and lighting storm started.  So only about a half mile instead of a mile and a half like normal.  The pace for this is just what I would like my threshold workouts to start out at when I start doing a bit of training at the start of October.  I felt pretty confident it would be ok just because generally I am very efficent down to that pace.  Even at times when a 5:00 feels very hard to run I am generally able to run a lot of 5:20's in a row.   This felt controlled but a bit uncomfortable as I haven't done anything up tempo longer than 200m.  My hr only got up to 145 but it didn't feel that easy.   Not a time trial or anything but not walking either.

Saturday Another heavy cross training day.  I'm recovering better and am able to mix in a lot more of my exercises without getting super sore or being too fatiqued the next day.

Sunday 24 minutes with no breaks on the rail trail.  3.8 miles. This actually felt great.  Hip wasn't as fatigued as on the 20minute run on Wednesday and I think the tempo mile helped my body realize its fitness a bit and the effort felt greatly reduced.  Just a nice little run.  Yes I think I can actually call this a run!

Summary a nice step in the right direction.  I have a long way to go and the hip is very weak but I actually feel like I'm doing some exercise now in both my running and cross training.  I also finished up my first four week cycle of general strength and will start a new routine next week which will be an increase over the pedistal routine I have been doing which is on the light end.  The two big tests for the coming week are that I'm moving to a two day on, one day off routine and that I'm going to retry the 6x200m.  I'm hopeful that both will be ok.    I hope you are running more than me!!  Have a great week!

Training Blog July 10 to 16, 2017

Monday AM 3.8 warm up, drills, strides. Attempted Aussie Quarters.  It was a bit windy, a good bit hot and I got kicked off the track, though I don't think the last two would have been pretty had I been able to stay. Goal was 50 for the rest 68 for the rep.  Went 49/67/53/67/50/68/50/69/51/68/51/69- total time 11:58 for 3600 meters, 5:20 mile pace. 3.8 mile cool down

Tuesday AM 5.2 miles solo, 38:53, was planning to go further but heard there was a bad traffic day going so I cut it short as we need to get to the airport.

PM travel to Bemidji, MN

Wednesday Off day Fishing all day with Dick Beardsley and Melissa.  Once in a lifetime experience gonna write a blog about it soon.

Thursday AM 9.7 miles, first 5 with Melissa, in 1:10:07
PM 6.1 miles solo, 39:08

Friday AM 3 mile warm up, first 1.5 with Melissa, then some drills and strides.  Mona Fartlek on awesome rail trail along the lake. covered 3.75 miles, 5:20 pace.  Which is about right for where I am fitness wise at the moment.  3 mile cool down.

Saturday AM 10.1 miles, 1:15, first 6 miles with Melissa.
PM travel back home, got back about 1am.

Sunday Noon 3 mile warm up, with Melissa, drills and a couple light strides.  3x2 miles with bit over 2 mins of drills recovery, very warm and humid. 10:26(5:15/5:11), 10:30(5:21/5:09), 10:24(5:13/5:11) 1 mile cool down, mostly with Melissa.

Summary not much in the way of miles this week but that was planned given that we were traveling and vacationing.  I was real happy to get in three good workouts.   We had an amazing trip. Really something every runner, or fisherman has to do.

Training Log June 26 to July 3, 2017

Me in my rabbit kit on the carriage roads in Bar Harbor.

Monday PM road 8.1 solo 51:24

Tuesday AM 3.8 warm up to the track, drills, strides, 8x400m with slow 200 jogs (avg. 65 seconds) averaged 68.4 for the 400's with a few 69's and a 65.9 for the last one. I did a 200 jog at the finish just so I could cover the 3 miles for comparison as I move to Aussie Quarters in the coming weeks, 17:54, ie not fast.  Felt pretty smooth and though it was a shock to the system I felt strong in spite of some real deal humidity. 3.8 cool down. 

Most everyday I since school ended I have been walking a few miles with Uta to keep her exercise up, she doesn't run as much when it is hot, and to get some more volume on my legs.  This week we had my father in laws dog to join us for a few of those walks.

Wednesday Noon 8.2 miles around Eagle lake area in Bar Harbor with Melissa and Uta.  Melissa was doing a workout and I was pacing.  Very nice little run despite the fact that we literally just hopped out of the car after a 4.5 hour drive and did this before going to the hotel.  I was mostly impressed with Melissa being able to do a great workout like that but I was also happy my back seemed un-bothered which isn't always the case after a long car ride.

Thursday AM 10.2 miles around carriage roads, first 3 miles easy with Melissa and Uta, then would do 20 second sprints, jog back to join them and do another 2 mins later when they finished their run I did 20 second sprints and then just jogged back to where I had started and repeated this until I had done 30 sprints.   I did a mile cool down.

a bit later in the AM  we had some car issues and this lead to a lot of walking and I got board with it so I ran about 2k on the roads.

Friday PM road and trail 10, 1:10:46,  felt pretty darn flat.

Saturday AM  on chelmsford rail trail, 1.8 warm up with Melissa and Anna, did some drills and strides and a 30 second effort, then 3 miles in 15:52, drills, .2 miles before realizing I had stopped the watch, so I took 45 seconds did another drill, then did 2 miles in 10:23, drills, and 1 mile in 4:58, drills, then met back up with Melissa and Anna for a cool down of 1.8 miles. After the run we went to the gym where I mostly did some easy mobility stuff but Anna and Melissa suckered me into a circuit which has left me with some sore shoulders.

Uta did not want to get out of bed this morning.  Neither did I.

Sunday AM road 10.5 in 1:11:36, first 3.3 with Uta, but it was too hot for her to do much so I dropped her off and finished solo.  

Summary about 70 miles for the week, very happy with all three workouts.  Resting HR is coming back down to normal which is a good sign for a slow return of aerobic fitness. All in all another step in the right direction.  

  For all of you who ordered the rabbit gear with the link, which I'll provide again below, thanks!  I hope you like it.  If you want to tell me about your experience with it I'd be really interested and you can email me directly, nateruns at hotmail , or leave a comment. I may do a blog on it later or send some feedback to the company or just use it to help me chose what stuff to get myself!  

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Training Blog June 19 to 25, 2017 Sorta Training

Me finishing at last weekends USATF-NE 5 mile Championship

After the race last weekend, which was pretty humid, my legs were just junk for a few days.  I wan't sore and I felt find walking around but when I would run my legs felt crushed and I felt very heavy and with no power.  I was also feeling really dehydrated overall.  I had my last two days of school on Monday and Tuesday and then my summer vacation started.  I didn't get hired for summer school so I'll at least be getting some quality recovery in.

Monday PM road 6 in 42:55

Tuesday PM road 8, 56:44, surprised to still feel this flat.

Wednesday Noon road and trail 10, pretty hot and humid, 1:09:06.  Felt pretty shitty but a shade better then the last two days so I decided on an easy day for tomorrow and to try 100's on Friday.

Thursday 5PM 8 miles in 52:53, I didn't feel good but I didn't feel like complete crap so a good step in the right direction

Friday Noon stupid humid.  I had been out in the AM and it was humid but didn't feel too bad.  As I was getting ready to run I checked the temp and it was like 82 or so and I thought nice it hasn't really warmed up this will be great.  I knew I was wrong the moment I opened the door.  It was intense.  4 mile warm up to the track in 29:13 then drills, 20x100m at an average of 16.0 with very slow 100 jog recoveries, covered 4k, then 4 mile cool down in 27:38.  It was so hot that I actually drank out of a discarded water bottle at the track because I wasn't sure I would make it the 4 miles back to the house without some water. 

Saturday AM 8 miles around Phillips fields and track mostly with Melissa.  I did her warm up, jogged around while she did drills and strides, then paced her 4 mile tempo run in 26:00 then jogged during her 4 minute recovery and paced her on a 2:49 800 going 93/76.  Then an easy cool down with her. It rained pretty hard at times but the cooler water felt very nice.

Sunday AM humidity had blown out and ran pretty early on the very shaded Chelmsford rail trail. 3 mile warm up with Melissa and Uta, 23:10, drills and strides, 2x2 miles with 3mins of drills for the recovery and a few drills right after.  10:26 (5:20/5:06), 10:26 (5:18/5:08).  Felt pretty good but my legs were suprisingly heavy on the second rep.  I have the engine but the body is very unfit. 3 mile cool down with Melissa, Uta and we quickly picked up Kara Haas, in 23:40

Summary 61 miles and a couple of light workouts a nice step in the right direction.   

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Training Blog May 22 to 28, 2017

Monday AM road 4 with Uta, 28:04

Tuesday PM 7.2 miles around Phillips Academy, first 5 miles with Uta and Melissa, this felt pretty good.

Wednesday PM 5.2 miles on roads with Uta in 34:29.  Uta was more into this one than I was...

Thursday PM 8.2 on the roads in the rain with Uta, nice run, 52:03, planned strides for tonight but was getting pretty cold/tight by the time I finished up so I decided to skip them.

Friday PM road 5 mile solo, gave Uta the evening off, 32:41

Saturday AM at Chelmsford rail trail, 3.1 mile warm up, strides- this felt really excellent, all between 4:20 and 4:35 pace but felt easy and smooth, 2 mile tempo- this felt less excellent, aerobically ok but my quads were a bit burny by the end and my HR looks to have been through the roof, for what the watch hr is worth, 10:22 (5:13, 5:09), 3.4 miles cool down

Sunday PM I was in VT for a memorial for my Brother and slipped in a jog on the AT, I planned on 5 but this was pretty hilly single track and so after 25 mins, and according to the Garmin 1.88 miles, I turned around, I would guess it was longer than that given the dense tree cover and very windy nature of the trail but probably not all that much longer...

Summary 43 miles for the week, give or take.  One light workout.  I'm finally to the point where I was willing to write myself a bit of a schedule.  In general I am addicted to having a plan and following a schedule.  I'm pretty good about listening to my body and making adjustments to that schedule as needed.  I would guess I only follow it to the letter in somewhere between 1 week out of 5 to 1 week out of 10 but I do feel that having a plan, knowing how the workouts need to progress and what workouts are going into the overall mix keeps me from training out of balance or from getting caught up in training for training sake.   That said early in a comeback things are so touch and go I find that plans cause nothing but complications, disappointments and artificial barriers.  Far better to just have a general sense of what you are trying to do, is today a recovery day or an increase day or a day I'm going to try to run a 'new' pace.  Then listen to the body.  Many runs I start in the early part of a comeback even as I start the run I don't know how far it is going to be.  I will head out with the intention of trying to run farther then my last 'push day' but that might mean doing 1 minute more or 2 miles more depending on how the body reacts and feels on the day.  I also always end up taking a day off that I don't want to take because I can feel the pressures building in the body and that I'm not as recovered on a given day as I should be before adding new stimulus.
  Beyond that I have continued with one to two Feldenkrais sessions per day for cross training.

Training October 10 to 16, 2016

Monday AM 4 miles porter road loop, 28:40 tot. 4
                PM 4 miles porter road loop backwards with Uta, 26:41, tot. 4
                XT bikram yoga, 90mins

Tuesday AM 4.1 neighborhood loops with Uta and Melissa, 32:27 tot. 4.1
                PM 4 mile out and back on dale with Uta, 28:16 tot. 4

Wednesday AM out and back on Dale/Coventry with Uta, 30:51, tot. 4
                     PM 25:23 warm up, full drills, 14mins, 16x100m on Methuen track 'on the minute',
                            averaged 16.1 felt good, 5min cool down tot. 5.5 miles


Thursday OFF

Friday PM dale/coventry out and back with Melissa and Uta, 30:57 tot. 4

Saturday AM 50:23 with Uta at Shed park, tot. 7.5

Sunday 1PM On chelmsford rail trail, 1.6 warm up, 12:43, drills, 2 mile tempo 10:37 (5:16.7/5:19.7), 3:50 recovery with more drills, 2 mile tempo 10:17 (5:09.7, 5:07.3), 1.6 cool down in 11:36 tot. 7.2


Summary ~ 44 miles, two workouts, happy with both. Some 'fantom' pain in the stress fracture area that wouldn't worry me at all except I haven't had it before this week.  That is why I took Thursday off. Hopefully I'll keep moving in the right direction this week.  Hope your running is going well.

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.

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!

Tempo Tuesdays: The Hard Progression Run

 I basically do two types of general fitness progression runs moderate and hard.  Lately I have been doing a lot more moderate progressions but over the course of my running career my single favorite workout is the hard progression run. Like the names suggest the difference is in the effort level.  To be honest the effort throughout most of the run is the same it is just that at the end of the hard progression run you keep accelerating until it gets very hard and you can't keep increasing the pace anymore.

  The length of this workout is entirely at your discretion.  I would suggest that for 5k runners you want a run of at least 20 to 30 minutes for the 10k you want 30mins to 1 hour.  For the half marathon 45 to 90mins.  For the marathon, if you are using these as a general fitness workout you should stick to the 1 hour to 90 minute range but if you do want to make it more specific you can extend them out over 2 hours.

  The idea is simply enough start out running a bit faster then regular training pace and steadily increase the pace a little bit at a time until you are running just about as fast and as hard as you can.  If you do these workouts enough you will find that your body reacts to getting tired by picking up the pace.  You will find yourself coming apart in a tempo run and hitting faster and faster splits, which only quicken your demise but it is neat all the same.

  I think most often people pick a normal training run route and pick up the pace each mile or kilometer.  This is fine but I suggest a different plan.  I would strongly advice you pick a loop, the length of which is not important it can range from 1/10th to 1/3rd the length of the progression you plan on doing.  Personally I like to pick a loop that will have me taking about 5 to 8 loops for my whole workout.  This loop does not need to be measured.  The terrain should reflect your goal race terrain.  Next make sure the loop is one that you will not have to stop.  IE no intersection crossings- at least not ones with traffic- no train tracks etc… Ideally a trail loop with good footing is available but right now there is ninety something inches of snow on the ground here so if you experience similar situations then you to will have to find a road area.

  The reasoning for this is simple. The idea of a progression run is to be constantly increasing the pace.  It is hard to know if you are really doing this if the terrain is different.  On a 10 mile loop comparing mile 1 to mile 5 is often apples to oranges.  However if you do 7 loops of 1.35 miles or whatever each loop is they are each exactly the same so you know if you run each loop faster than the one before it you are correctly increasing the effort.

  So you have your loop.  You run the first loop at about or just a little quicker than your normal training pace.  (I would do a warm up before this but I can't run much under 8 or 9 minute mile pace without a warm up but I have been running over a 100miles a week with some pretty darn good consistency since Bill Clinton was President and that doesn't come without a price).  On each loop you increase the pace from the lap before.  How much?  As long as it is faster than the loop before you have done your job.  Don't over complicate.  Just don't increase too much or your workout will end up being a lot shorter than you planned.

  Each lap you get faster until you reach the final lap where you should steadily accelerate over the whole lap trying to finish at a full kick sprint and around a maximum effort.  If you find yourself at a point where you know you can't run the next lap faster then the lap you are currently running then the workout is over.  You need to just hammer to the end of the loop you are running.  DON'T slow down and try to salvage. The lesson of constant increase of pace is more important.  So your planned 90minute progression run ends up only being 45mins.  That is ok.  It is still a good workout.  It still taught your body what it needs and it has steadily increased the pressure on your heart and the amount of acid your body had to process out of the blood.  Also you did your fastest running when your legs were at their most tired.  Next time you will pace yourself better and do the volume you want for the workout and that too will be the successful learning of an important lesson on understanding and controlling your own body.

  A few words of caution and guidance.  Don't pick a loop that is too short.  If you want to do a 1 hour profession run and you run around a loop that takes about 3 minutes to run you are setting yourself up for failure. It takes some crazy pace sense to only go 1 or 2 seconds a lap faster each lap. So what invariable happens is you drop 10 seconds or more on one lap and after you do that a couple times you are running crazy fast and you are done.  Frankly if you are running the first loop at 3 minutes at a nice steady pace it is unlikely you are capable of running that loop all out under 2 minutes.  Better to do a loop that is a little longer and give yourself a bit more time and distance to play with.  I also pick a couple spots on the loop to use as pace checks, not too many though as you mostly want to be focused on feeling smooth and covering the ground quickly.

  Next make sure the footing is good.  This is not the time and place for technical trails or tight turns.  You want a nice steady effort and fancy footing and breaking hard and re-acclerating are not conducive to that.

  When to do this workout?  This is a great base phase workout for all distances.  It is a great anytime workout for half marathoner and marathoners.  This is also a great workout for maintaining aerobic fitness in the specific phases for 5k and 10k runners.  Also it can be used as an aerobic focused specific workout for the 10k and cross country.  Anything 5k or shorter and something this aerobic is not going to be very specific.  You would be better in that case doing a portuguese surge, http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/01/tempo-tuesday-portuguese-surge.html

  This session will build the physical and mental ability to run relaxed at a quick pace and to make a long hard killing drive to the finish of a hard race.  Doing it once is nice but done regularly this workout will reinvent you as a runner.

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.

Tempo Tuesday Marathon Pace Tempo Run

  This week we look at the marathon paced tempo.  This is one of the staples of so many programs and it is a great workout to increase your aerobic fitness not just for marathon racing but also for events all the way down to the mile.  Though this is for many runners the focal point of their marathon specific work I don't like it as much for that purpose because though it is a great session for the aerobic demands of the marathon it falls short for most runners in terms of teaching the body to burn fat over glycogen and specific muscular endurance.  Still it is a great workout that should be part of the marathoners program for sure and can be a secret weapon for athletes who focus on the shorter distances.

  The marathon paced tempo run is exactly what it sounds like a tempo run at your goal marathon pace. Depending on what point in your program you are at this run can be 8 to 16 miles long.  Some runners who are very good at getting big efforts out in workouts might even push it out to 18 or 20 miles.

  As I mentioned in the build up this type of run is a staple of many marathoners.  Particularly american marathoners.  The Hansons group very famously does a 26.2, right around 16miles, kilometer marathon paced tempo run as part of their marathon prep.  I would say the most zealous and successful practitioner of this workout is Meb who does one pretty much every week during his marathon prep.  He starts them at about 8 miles long and builds the distance over the cycle and has run them as long as 18 miles.  It should be noted though that he has had very successful marathons off build ups that only reached shorter distances.  Most notably his longest marathon paced tempo before the 2012 Olympics where he finished 4th was only 12 miles.

  Why this workout works.  It is a great aerobic session that teaches the athlete to stay smooth for a long time. It builds great muscular as well as aerobic strength.  By going slower than threshold pace it allows you to run at what is still a very quick pace for upwards of an hour, maybe even approaching two hours.  This type of work also does great things for building mental endurance and strength.  For any runner regardless of goal race this session is a great way to massively increase aerobic endurance, mental fortitude and practice staying relaxed at a quick pace.

  How to progress this workout.  Like all tempo runs I encourage you to increase the distance before dropping the pace.  So set your goal marathon pace, be realistic.  It is not your current 5k or 10k race pace! Remember if your training goes well you can always adjust the pace later.  At the start you should try to run about 8 miles.  Focus on being as even paced as you can, the exception to that being if you are preparing for a hilly marathon in which case you should do your tempos on a comparably hilly course and your effort should be even but your pace will obviously fluctuate.  Also remember it is always better to start a bit slow and finish strong than to go out to fast and slow down.

  The drawbacks on this session.  To often this is the only marathon specific workout in a schedule and for most runners it simply will not fully prepare them for the demands of the marathon. Don't get me wrong there are athletes for whom this is exactly enough. Meb is probably the greatest marathon in American history.  Athletes like Brian Sell and Desiree Linden are no slouches.  BUT there are as many stories of athletes who have done a great marathon paced tempo in training or multiple marathon paced tempos in training and have not come close to that performance on race day.  Ask the Hanson guys for every guy that ran 5:10 pace at their 26.2 dress rehearsal and ran that pace on race day as well there was another one who ran with them on the training run and crashed on race day.  Prior to the 2008 Olympic Trials Josh Rohatinsky reportedly ran 5:02 pace for 20 miles on the trials course itself.  I was limping next to him at 22 miles in the Olympic trials when he ran out of glycogen.  There is no question in my mind he was in better aerobic fitness than I was.  But he ended up behind me in the results because he had not trained his body to burn less glycogen and more fat at race pace.

  So for sure get out there and start getting after these runs but I would advise that you do need to do some other types of more extensive workouts as part of your marathon specific prep.

Workout Wednesday Alternations for the 5k Runner

  It is no secret I'm a huge fan of alternations and similar workouts.  Basically an alteration workout is a play on intervals where the rests are run at a quick enough pace to force the overall average pace into the range of a tempo workout.  These sessions are the best of both worlds option that incorporate the positives of both interval running.  Even more importantly they are more than the sum of their parts.  Learning to recover at a quick pace leads to huge gains in aerobic fitness much more quickly than you can get from tempos or threshold intervals.

  In this blog I'm going to focus on 5k specific alternations.  Now in past blogs I have talked about Australian quarters, http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2014/12/workout-wednesday-australian-quarters.html and 400/400 alternations http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/01/workout-wednesday-400400-alternations.html both of these sessions are great for the 5k runner.  Those workouts both work for the 5k runner and can be part of your prep.  The 5k specific workout we are talking about here is just more directly focused on improving your 5k performance specifically.

  For 5k specific alternations you want to run a total of 4 miles.  You will run the fast portion of the alternation at your goal 5k pace and the recovery sections at 75% to 85% of 5k pace.

  To find your recovery pace take your goal 5k pace per mile or kilometer write it in seconds and multiply by 1.15 for 85% and 1.25 for 75%.  Finally convert back from seconds to minutes and seconds.  For example if your goal 5k is 15:00 that is 3:00 per kilometer which is 180 seconds per kilometer.  That gives you a slow end of 3:45 per k and a fast end of 3:27 per k.

  Giving some perspective to those paces for a 5k runner capable of aiming for 15:00 running at 3:45 per k, which is a shade over 6:00 per mile, is a pretty easy thing.  It is the fast end of what they would be expected to be running on a training run but it is not a tempo effort at all.  3:27 per K is about 5:30 per mile which is certainly faster than a training run but would be much slower than tempo work they do and with practice they will be able to recover at this pace.

  Doing the workout- At the start you will run 400m at 5k pace and take 1200m at the slower pace. So the session would be 4x400m at 5k with 1200m recoveries after EVERY rep including the last one at 75% to 85% of 5k pace.  This will be 4 total miles.  For our example 15:00 runner if he runs his reps at 72 and his recoveries at 85%(3:27 per K/83 per 400m) he will cover the 4 miles in 21:24.

 If you can not run the fast end of the recovery zone then your first job is to get faster on the 1200 recovery.  So each time you repeat the workout you will still do the 400m at 5k goal pace but each time you will run that recovery faster until you get down to the 85% of race pace range.

  Once you reach the point where you can run the 1200 recovery at 85% of goal pace, and for the aerobically well developed among you this will be your first time out, you start increasing your distance at 5k pace and reducing your recovery distance.  Each time you repeat the workout you increase the distance at 5k pace by 100 to 200 meters and reducing the recovery by an equal amount.

  So you would progress through 4x500/1100, 4x600/1200 up to a goal of 4x800/800 or for someone who is a real workout monster 4x1k/600- this would be 20:16.  Which would be a very challenging aerobic test which forces you to relax during your 5k reps as well as your recovery.  This is the great advantage of alternations.  I can't tell you how often someone tells me they want to run a set time in the 5k and they regularly do 5x1k or even 8 or 10 x 1k at that pace.  Heck even 3 or 4 x mile at that pace but they can not seem to hit the time in the race.  Why????  The recovery!  They are taking too much recovery and they are learning to run repeated races more than learning to run their goal pace at an effort level that makes maintaining it without any recovery for the full 5k possible.  The genius of the alternations is that it is focus entirely on teaching you to run your reps at the right effort AND building the aerobic power needed to maintain it for the whole race.

Tempo Tuesday: Tempo Runs for the Young or Developing Runner.

  Many of my posts about training certainly lean towards the more experienced athlete.  This post instead is focused on the beginning athlete.  It is most directly targeting the middle school or high school athlete but certainly could be extended to work for any runner who is fairly new to the sport.

  Unfortunately partially because of ease of organization and partially because I don't think most youth coaches know any better beginning runners are often subjected to large amounts of anaerobic intervals of many kinds.  This type of training is very easy to structure and very convenient when trying to monitor and manage large numbers of young athletes.  Also it appeals to young competitive children who can turn each short effort into a little mini race.  Finally athletes who do this type of work tend to make some very quick improvements, at least in the beginning. Sadly for real development this is probably the worst type of training a young runner can be doing.

  Why is it so bad?  Well three issues really.  First when you run hard your form breaks down and in young developing runners you are building their form habits and if they are constantly straining you are bringing out all their worst form habits.  For the short term this will only make them less efficient which means a bit slower but not noticeably.  The long term damage however is that as this runner begins at some point in their running life to start and try to build their mileage they will have all sorts of underlying form issues that will cause injuries and be very hard to fix.

  Second though you see short term gains you do not develop the aerobic engine which is where long term development comes from.  By focusing training on short term gains we rob ourselves of real development.  Aerobic improvement can be a little slower but it is much more limitless and you can always sharpen that fitness up with anaerobic work later, where if you get anaerobic fitness first and then move to aerobic you actually will get slower for a time because you are losing that anaerobic sharpness while slowly increasing the more real and lasting aerobic fitness.

  Third the interval trained athlete is going to have a real hard time transitioning to the individual runner lifestyle.  For the athlete who develops into a competitor this is not a real issue.  When they finish running for their middle school or high school team they simply go onto join a team at the next level but for the mid packer who will not compete at the next level the most often only run for a short while after their competitive days are over.  The reality of hard intervals as a main training method is that when you start doing them without a team around you they get old very quickly.  Simply put you aren't teaching the young runners a running lifestyle that is going to be naturally maintained for a lifetime.

  So my solution is that the three main training sessions for the young runner should be easy steady running, strides (EVERY DAY) http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/01/strides.html , and Tempo Runs.

  Tempo runs for the young runner should be short.  They need not be structure very much.  At this age the athlete is improving very fast and picking a pace based on goal or current fitness can leave you shooting at a moving target.  The best option is to teach the correct effort.  It is easier said than done but it is worth while both as a running life skill as well as because of the competitive results you will see from it.

  The effort. As fast as the athlete can run well still feeling relaxed.  I describe it as an effort at which you could talk if you had to but you certainly wouldn't want to.  You should feel like you are on the edge of your legs and lungs starting to burn but not go over that edge.  You will gain more by going a bit too slow than you will by going too fast so it is ok to err on the side of going a bit slow.  It isn't whimping out, it is training smart!

  The distance.  The key to running tempos for the beginning athlete is that they should be quite short.  15 to 20 minutes is ideal.  Any longer and the runners inherent lack of endurance is going to greatly harm the quality of the work.  You are obviously doing regular running with some form of long run to build that endurance over time but that can take a few years so in the mean time the tempo should be right in the athletes wheel house.   I have purposely put down a time not a distance on these.  I realize that for some beginning athletes a 15minute tempo run may be barely more than a mile.  That is fine!  What matters 100% on this session is internal effort.

 For teams of athletes I would suggest doing loops around a flat area.  This way a coach can monitor to make sure athletes are not going too hard.  Also this way there is not a pressure to set up a loop of 2 or 3 miles that now everyone covers the same DISTANCE.  You want them covering the same TIME.

  The way to progress these runs is to increase the time.  So you work through them in cycles.  Start with a tempo of just 12 to 15 minutes and then repeat this effort every 5 days to one week increasing the time by 2 to 4 minutes.  The key is to try to maintain the same effort.  You will find that though you were quite tired at the end of the last tempo you are able to hold it together for a couple more minutes and within a few weeks you are running 20 to 25 minutes at the same pace you held for your first tempo and that you feel quite fresh and relaxed as you pass that original 12 to 15minute point.

  Once you have reached the 20 to 25 minute range you go back to the beginning of 12 to 15 minutes but you will find the same effort you used the first time out will allow you to cover greater distance in the time.  In short you will go faster for the same effort.

  The young athlete should be doing this pretty much every week of the year that they train.  I was not the most talented athlete and as a young runner I struggled.  I needed aerobic development and so I struggled as an athlete until I got it.  Some would say I was a late bloomer and that is possible.  However I would say I had comparable talent to a guy like Charlie Spedding but in HS he ran the equivalent of about a 4:12 mile and did well in English national cross country races.  The difference?  As I stagnated from my freshman through junior years, 10:20 down to only 10:06 for 2 miles in those three years, Charlie improved greatly in the same time period.  Our training volumes where similarly low.  Our racing schedules were similarly over stocked.  Our interval workouts were similar in similarity, if mine were much more often done.  However Charlie's bread and butter was a very fast 15minute run.  I doubt he would have called it a tempo but that is exactly what it was and he learned very quickly to run fast with control and his aerobic system grew greatly in that time period.

  What is better is that work like this sets the athlete up for success in the future.  You are building with tempos, and strides, the ability to do more training and to build improvement on top of your current fitness.  So often I hear coaches proudly touting that there young athletes are under trained.  Meaning generally that they have done low mileage.  The problem is this usually means they have done a ton of workouts and hard races without building the underlying structures needed to train harder later on.  As well meaning as the coaching has been the athlete has been done a disservice. They have been built up in such a way that they are more likely to get hurt and they are underperforming in anything longer than a mile because they simply have no real aerobic development.

  Far better to focus early training on three things.

(1)Steady year over year increases in volume.  If an athlete can run 30 miles in his/her 3rd week of training for a team they damn well should be doing a lot more than that 4 years later.  I view the idea of weekly volume averages being 25 to 35 per week as a frosh and then increase around 10 miles per week each year, 35 to 45 as a soph, 45 to 55 as a jr and 55 to 65 as a senior.  Obviously some athletes will progress faster an others slower but the idea is simple.  Each year you will be stronger then the year prior so the training should progress with this.

  (2) These tempo runs done with incredible regularity year round- if you can add in progression runs of similar durations nearly as often all the better!

(3) strides, form drills and short hill sprints to build great smooth powerful form and great running specific muscular strength.

  So there you have my tempos for new runners and a bit of extra as well.

Tempo Tuesday Portuguese Surge

  Portugal is a very small nation but in spite of that they have a pretty amazing history of great distance runners.  Their greatest legend has to be Carlos Lopes, Olympic champ and world record holder, but his 2:07:12 marathon best is no longer even the national record also it should be remembered that for much of his career many would have argued he was not the best of his contemporaries in Portugal.  I don't know that this particular workout was ever part of Lopes training but I do know I got it from some training schedules of Portuguese marathoners.  I also know I have since seen it in some schedules of top Spanish and Brazilian athletes.

  This workout can be done with a huge amount of variety but it is very simple at its heart all the same.  The workout is broken into two distinct halves.  The first half is run very quickly from marathon pace to right around 95% marathon pace, if you are a 5k runner you can go for 85% to 80% 5k pace.  Then at half way you make a huge surge and push the second half as fast as you can.

  Basically you are making one big killing drive to the finish. This workout works great from 2k to 10k in total distance.  The amazing thing is that you will often run the second half faster than you can manage for a time trial for that distance with nothing before it.  Don't ask me why.  I don't understand it but I know I have run the 2nd half of a 2 mile like this in 4:18 and my fastest mile time trial in a workout is 4:17.  The fastest 1k I have ever done in a workout was the 2nd half of a Portuguese surge and I have read about other runners having the same experience.

  I think this workout is best from 3k to 6k.  It is long enough that you really do get a great aerobic session but short enough that you are able to really let yourself go in the second half.

  The only trick to this session is that it is a SURGE at half way.  You want to accelerate quickly and then try to keep that surging/accelerating feeling going all the way to the end.  It is key to maintain that feel.  It will keep you loose and FAST.  If you do that you got it right.  You may not always run great in the second half but when you are hitting it don't limit yourself the idea of this session is to just go as fast as you can.

  This isn't a session I do a lot but it serves two great purposes.  One it is a great tempo workout during your specific phase.  You touch on relaxed tempo running and then get to hammer at race pace or faster  for a long way.  A great way to simulate the closing mile of a 5k or last 3k of a 10k.

The other thing it is great for is to break your tempos out of a rut or get past a seeming plateau. When I was coming back from mono in early 2007 I wanted to get my fitness back to where it had been prior to sickness, the goal I set out for the first half of the year was to run a tempo 8k to 10k on the track at 3:00 per k.  I started with some slower stuff and repeats but pretty soon I did a 3k in 9mins and started building up.  Then I got stuck at 5k to 6k for a month or more.  I just couldn't seem to extend past that.  So I did a run where I ran 5k in 16:00 and shifted for 3k.  I ran 8:54 for the last 3k and felt STRONG.  Sure enough two weeks later when I again attempted my regular tempo at 3:00 per k I rolled by 5k and 6k easily and was able to run 8k in 23:56.  There is a huge difference between the fitness it takes to run a tempo 5k in 15:00 and that it takes to run 8k in 24:00.  I was floored.  It is still one of the best tempos I have ever done.

  Now I'm not promising breakthroughs like that every time you use this session.  In that case it was the perfect session at the perfect time.  There are other times I have done and and not seen much more impact than any other session gives.  It is a tool for the tool box but if you are trying to learn to be a powerful finisher over the closing miles 5k to half marathons or if your tempos have been stuck in a rut this workout may just be the key to unlock your next breakthrough.

Fundamental Pace Tempo Runs for Marathoners

  Welcome to the first installment of 'tempo tuesday'!  Tempo runs are a huge part of a successful training program and yet what they are is often debated and disagreed on.  Many people put them in a very specific corner, a tempo run is a 4 mile run at 10k to half marathon pace for example. From my perspective this is a little silly.  It is like saying intervals are only 12x400m at 5k pace with 100m jog rest.  It is my perspective that tempo runs are one of what I call the four major workout types, interval, long run, tempo run, hill workout, and are as varied or more varied than all the other groups. So each week I plan on trying to highlight one specific type of tempo run and how you can use it to improve your running.

  This week we start with a fundamental pace tempo run for marathoners.  Fundamental paced tempos are the least strenuous of the tempo paced workouts I will highlight.  All runners should be using them, and most do whether they know it or not.  They are most used and best used in the early stages of a training cycle though they can be sprinkled in throughout training for various reasons.  Depending on what event you are focused on the exact type of fundamental tempo you should be doing varies.  Today we I will be talking about fundamental tempos specifically for marathon training.  This is not to say that non marathoners or those focused on a different event this season shouldn't use these at all but only points to the fact that the fitness benefits of this workout most directly impact your ability to do better marathon specific workouts later in the training cycle.

  The fundamental tempo for marathon runners should be run at 80% to 90% of marathon goal pace.  Put another way at 1.1 to 1.2 times marathon pace. This is not a particularly fast effort.  For a national class marathoner targeting a mid 2:13 marathon- 3:10 per Kilometer/ 5:06 per mile- your fundamental pace would be only 3:29 per k, 5:36 per mile to 3:48 per K, 6:07 per mile.  For a runner with a realistic expectation of running a 2:13 marathon 6:07 per mile would be considered in most instances a normal training pace, not a tempo but that is the low end of the fundamental tempo.  A pace which would normally be viewed as just a good training run pace.

  Now how to find your fundamental tempo pace.  There are a number of ways to do this and I will attempt to pick just one despite the math teacher in me wanting to show you 9 different ways and wax lyrical about the symmetry of math…  The easiest way is to take your goal marathon pace in minutes per mile or per kilometer and convert it to seconds.

  So a runner looking for a 3 hour marathon has a goal pace of 6:52 per mile which is 412 seconds ((60x6) + 52).  Now you multiply that number by 1.1 to get the fast end of the pace range, yes calculators are allowed, 1.1 x 412 = 453.2   Now convert back to minutes and seconds by dividing by 60, calculators are discouraged because you want a remainder, as this will be the seconds, not a decimal answer  453/60 = 7:33 per mile.  Now to find the slow end of your pace you multiply your goal marathon pace by 1.2. 412 x 1.2 = 494.4 again divide by 60 to get the time in minutes and seconds 494/60 = 8:14 per mile.  So for the runner with a goal of a 3 hour marathon your fundamental tempo goal pace is 7:33 to 8:14 per mile.

  Now that you know your pace the next part of the equation is how long to run for.  Traditionally the marathon focused fundamental tempo is pretty long.  Actually it borders on being what many would refer to as a long run or at least a medium long run. Basically you want to it to be from 1 hour and 20 minutes to 3 hours in length.  I am very specifically using time here not distance as I would not advice running at a high effort for much over 3 hours even if your marathon goal time is 5 or 6 hours.

  Now you have the basics of the workout set. The devil however with this and with every workout is in the details. The single most important detail of this workout and every workout is not how to do it once but how to IMPROVE it so that at the end of a given training cycle you are doing it better than you were capable of doing it at the beginning of the cycle.  In other words you have improved or gained fitness which is the goal of all training.

  I had a conversation early in my running career with a coach I would characterize as not very good and he was going on about how coaching was easy and success was based entirely on the talent that came to you, luck of the draw.  His basic premise was logical. There are only a handful of training methods and we all know what they are.

  My question at the time was 'why are some coaches consistently more successful than others?' His response was that they were either better recruiters, had more numbers of people to work with or were simply more lucky.  No doubt all these things can impact success but still again and again you have certain coaches who's athletes outperform their piers with similar backgrounds.  If this success was just luck than the Joe Vigil, Don Larson, Bill Bowermann etc… would have been far better off spending their lives in the local package store scratching lottery tickets as they would certainly have made more money that way.

  My point is the key to training is not just WHAT you do but HOW you do it. For improving with fundamental tempos and really all tempos there are a couple of possibilities. The most obvious is to try and run faster each time out. Unfortunately often this just means we run too hard and we do not see great improvement in this way. The next most obvious is to keep the effort the same and increase the distance.  Logically you would expect this to lead to the same problem as just going faster BUT the physiology of how our body improves under the stress of aerobic activity defies logic in this case.  As you increase the distance you will notice as you pass shorter marker that were once challenging that your effort at that stage is far less than it was in prior attempts.

  So what you must do is start with a shorter tempo, in this case 80 to 90 mins preferably in the slower end of the tempo range though if you are a very strong aerobic runner you may be able even at the early stages of a training cycle to run on the fast end of the pace window and if you can do so than it is perfectly right for you to do so.  Now after your first session you should return to this workout every week or two but each time out try to increase the distance of the run by 10 to 20 minutes. When you reach a length of time similar to your goal marathon time or 3 hours you should drop the time back down to the 90minute range but also increase the pace by 10 to 20 seconds per mile.  You will be shocked by how easy your body finds the new faster pace.  If there is still time in your base phase you should again build the time/distance of your tempos up at the new faster pace targeting your goal marathon time.

  It would be expected that in preparing for a marathon a person would spend 1 to 3 weeks tapering for the race, 6 to 8 weeks in specific prep for the race and 6 to 10 weeks prior to doing base work for that specific prep.  The fundamental tempo belongs here in that base.  During the Specific phase you may want to touch on this fitness as a secondary workout but in that case it should be a fairly light session not be more than 90mins in duration and it should not be the focus workout of the week.

  In the base phase of 6 to 10 weeks you should be doing this tempo 6 to 10 times. Basically every week. You are building your basic aerobic endurance as well as improving your bodies ability to burn fat at slightly quicker speeds which is the key to avoiding the wall in the marathon.  If you burn more fat at a given speed than you inherently burn less glycogen, which is a much more finite resource.  If you can reduce your glycogen burn enough you will not run out of it in 26.2 miles which means you can hold your pace and finish strong in the marathon with your aerobic abilities being your limiting factor rather than your muscles glycogen stores.

  This session alone will not solve the glycogen problem but it builds towards the sessions in the specific phase, specific intervals, specific fartlek, specific long tempo, specific progression, specific alternations, that all together will teach your body to burn a fat rich mix at marathon pace so you can be racing in the last 10k instead of battling for survival.

  A sample progression for marathon fundamental tempo runs in a marathon base phase would be
week 1- 1:30 at 1.2x marathon pace
week 2- 1:50  at 1.2x marathon pace
week 3- 2:10 at 1.2x marathon pace
week 4- 2:30 at 1.2x marathon pace
week 5- 1:30 at 1.1x marathon pace
week 6- AM 80mins at 1.1x marathon pace PM 80mins at 1.1x marathon pace
week 7- 2:10 at 1.1x marathon pace
week 8- 2:20 to 2:30 at 1.1x marathon pace
 Now you are ready for some specific marathon work!!

 Finally the down and dirty summary for the marathon focused fundamental tempo.

What it is- A 90minute to 3 hour tempo run at 80% to 90% of your goal marathon pace.

How it is progressed- Like all tempo runs you should increase the duration not the speed on a week to week basis.

Why it is done- The goal of this workout is to increase general aerobic endurance. Improve muscular endurance so that the body is ready for long hard marathon specific workouts.  This is the first step towards getting your body ready muscularly, aerobically and in terms of fuel consumption for the very specific demands of running 26.2 miles at a startlingly quick pace.

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.