Reach the next level of your running potential by focusing on footing, cadence, terrain, speed work, and ultimately brick sessions.
There are several essential elements to work into your training, regardless of the total volume you actually complete. Just as the source of the calories in your diet is just as important to your health as eating the right amount of food, the type of running training you do will be as related to your running fitness as the total volume you do.
The five key areas are as follows.
First and foremost is the Foot Strike.
Unless you’re out in the wild or on a deserted island, you’re likely to be a heel thumper. This means that each time your foot makes contact with the ground, you apply the brakes lightly until your center of mass rolls over and past your midfoot. At that point, gravity starts helping him again with a force vector that accelerates his forward momentum for free. If you’re running fast, the slight deceleration that occurs when your heel first hits the ground won’t be noticeable. However, on a long run, if you end up really tired, the braking action of a heel strike is, well, striking and very noticeable.
So here is the exercise. Go to a track or grass field if you can’t find a track or don’t have access to one and run a lap or two without shoes or socks. I guarantee you’ll instantly start landing on midfoot or even slightly forward.
This subtracts any braking action that a heel strike would have and immediately converts your running form to your most efficient planting pattern. Now put your shoes back on and try to continue running with the same feeling you had without the shoes.
Do this drill every day until you can replicate the midfoot strike, and maintain it throughout your training runs. Over time, this will become his normal running form.
Next, and equally important, is the cadence.
One thing you’ll notice after perfecting a midfoot strike is that it picks up and up more quickly with each ball of your foot. This naturally increases your cadence, something that will benefit all runners. Elite runners have about the same cadence as the best cyclists, hitting the ground about 90 times per minute if you count the blows on one side. The slowest and most inefficient runners drop around 70-80 foot strikes per minute, which means they spend more time on the ground with each foot and are typically guilty of heel-striking braking.
Increasing your cadence starts with coming into a midfoot strike. It’s much easier to increase from 80 to 90 strides per minute with a midfoot strike than if you land heel first. Heel strikers often end up over-striding, especially when trying to go faster or trying to increase leg movement.
Another way to increase your running cadence to that of an elite runner is to translate that same goal into your cycling. If you’re pushing the bike at 75 revolutions per minute (rpm) for hours on end, it’s going to be very difficult to get off and suddenly spin your tired legs at 90 rpm while racing. However, keeping an eye on your cadence on the bike and keeping it between 90 and 95 rpm for most of the time will help you reach a similar cadence when it’s time to run.
The last piece of gait and cadence advice is to practice it on every run, even slow recovery runs. Just because you’re running slow on a recovery day doesn’t mean you should have a slower cadence or heel strike again.
Next up is Terrain’s voice.
Hills or plains, roads or trails? These are choices we make when we go out to every race training. Each has its place and purpose to help you become a faster runner. Trails have several advantages. The uneven terrain forces your feet and legs to handle a lateral movement and create stability on slightly unstable ground. This strengthens many smaller supporting muscles that are simply not working because of the predictability of the pavement. Then later in a run, when you start to get fatigued, these small muscles can come into play to help support the larger muscles as they tire, allowing you to maintain good form and be efficient much longer than if you had never run trails. A second benefit of trails is that the jolt to your body is less than on pavement, allowing a person to put in more training miles with fewer breakdowns. The net result is more training volume and training consistency with less chance of injury.
But there is also a reason to race on the roads. Unless you’re going to be racing on a trail, it’s important that your legs adapt to the impact of the pavement. Early in my career, I did most of my trail running training, especially my longer runs. However, when I got to Ironman I found that running the marathon on pavement caused a great deal of muscle wasting, and the critical turning point where the shock overwhelmed the brain’s override mechanism was around the half marathon point. This meant that it became impossible for me to run the second half of the race. Finally in 1989 I realized this. I gradually transitioned to running more miles on the roads as I approached the Ironman, so my leg muscles and joints adapted to the added impact. The results were profound. I still had a few breakdowns, but the big dead end I had struggled through in previous years didn’t hit me until I was a couple of miles from the finish. By this time the horse could smell the stable and I was able to keep up with my pace.
The actual profile of your training ground is also important. If you have hills in your run, you’ll want to run them in training. Same for flat courses. Jumping uphill will not be the most effective way to prepare to run fast on a flat course. A variety of training terrains is ideal for improving overall running fitness and also for preventing repetitive motion injuries that can be caused by running on only one type of terrain. As you get closer to your key runs, move on to doing about two-thirds of your runs on the terrain you’ll find on race day. Then split the remaining third of your runs between the other two terrain options (hilly, rolling, or flat) that are a minor part of your race track profile.
The Infamous Brick.
As a triathlete, running off the bike is a skill that needs to be honed in training. Although both sports use the legs, your body is in very different positions for each and the muscles used, as well as the range of motion in the two sports, are very different. There is a transition period that happens when you get off the bike and start running, where your cycling muscles gradually stop trying to do their job and your running muscles start to take over. A brick workout trains you to make this transition quickly and efficiently.
When it comes to brick workouts, the main decision you have to make is the length of the run you should do. An efficient brick workout should be a fairly fast followed bike ride with a run of about 20-50 minutes. This is not a run to build endurance, but rather a neurological transition workout that is teaching your brain how to turn off your cycling muscles and turn on your running muscles. The stamina you need to complete the actual race in your triathlon, even an Ironman, is obtained from a combination of your long-distance training on the bike and your long-run training. Running more than 8-10 miles off the bike can cause a muscle breakdown that goes into the unsafe zone. It’s best to save those long off-bike runs for race day, when you’re not going to be demanding on your body to go out the next day and train again.
If you’ve never done a brick, start running after a short ride, then gradually transition to doing it after your longest ride of the week. You don’t need to do a brick every week, especially if it takes more than a couple days of recovery to get your legs back to normal. When doing a brick, try to do the run before letting your energy level drop from the walk. You don’t necessarily have to run the moment you get off your bike, but don’t wait until you’re in front of the fridge looking for a snack while you make a few phone calls. As long as you’re running within 15 minutes of finishing your run, you’ll be able to reap the full physiological benefits of the brick.
And equally as the infamous speed training.
To run fast in a race you first have to run fast in your workouts. However, just like a brick workout, more is not always better when it comes to doing speed work. A total of 15-20 minutes of sprinting in a sprint session is sufficient. Thirty to 40 minutes of speed work is too long to be able to go fast enough to make the big gains that anaerobic training can bring you. One of the markers that goes up when you do speed work is your VO2 max, which is a measure of your ability to absorb oxygen. The more oxygen you can take in for any unit of time, the more likely it is that you can go faster. When running, the greatest gains in VO2 max occur as you approach your maximum heart rate. (Cycling and swimming get those gains at lower heart rates.)
So let’s say you’re doing a sprint session on the track where you’re trying to run 10 x 1000 meters. You will likely find that due to the length of this workout, you can only go fast enough to get your heart rate up to around 160 beats per minute (bpm) instead of approaching your maximum heart rate (say 180 bpm per minute). minute). this example). You will probably be very tired from the training, but you will not have obtained as much benefit as you could. However, if you shorten that workout to 5 x 1000 meters, now you’ll likely find that you can push yourself fast enough to get your heart rate up to over 170 in the last 1000 and you’ll get the most bang for your buck out of the session. interval.
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