Turning Runners Into Racers

The foot race is one of the oldest human activities. Long before the beginning of civilization, our ancestors raced through woodlands and prairies, chasing wild animals to feed their families.

Over the millennia, running to survive evolved into racing for sport, ultimately becoming part of the social culture in North America during the latter portion of the 20th century. The success of two famous marathon runners—Bill Rodgers and Frank Shorter—initiated a running boom in the 1970s and 1980s, putting thousands of people in the streets for fitness and sport.

As women joined men on the roads, the sport of running races grew to new heights. Now women outnumber men in every race distance except the marathon. And the marathon has grown in popularity, with nearly 500 races occurring in the U.S. each year and the number of marathon finishers increasing from 299,000 in 2000 to 503,000 in 2010 (MarathonGuide.com 2012).

Many people who hire personal trainers have seen their will to run transformed into an urge to race, but runners often do not know how to train effectively for competition. This creates an excellent niche opportunity for personal trainers, especially as certifications do not cover how to train people to run, whether for fitness, weight loss or racing.

Building Workouts for Racers

Competing in foot races puts complex demands on the human body—and requires extensive training. You practically need a PhD to understand the many types of workouts and the multiple paces and to fit them together in clients’ training programs. It takes an expert to design the science- and research-based workouts that lead to specific physiological changes. These workouts must be organized into a progressive, systematic training program that builds on clients’ strengths and helps runners achieve the optimum fitness that improves competitive performance.

For runners who want to race, training programs must accomplish two things: teach them how to avoid injury, and demonstrate techniques that will enable them to succeed in competitions. If your clients want to be better runners, they need to start by running better.

Correct Running Technique

Repetition of specific running movements can make a runner smoother and improve running economy, the amount of oxygen used to maintain a given speed. Running drills target each part of the running motion to improve running mechanics and coordination. With countless repetitions, your clients’ muscle fiber recruitment patterns become ingrained; smoother running mechanics enable a more efficient application of muscular force. When proper running mechanics become ingrained, clients are better able to handle and even thrive off training. These drills, and the proper running technique they aim to produce, must be mastered before your clients can train effectively for a race.

Drilling Tips

When practicing drills, instruct clients to keep these points
in mind:

• Take full recovery between each set and each drill to avoid fatigue and to ensure maintenance of proper form.
• Be deliberate about all of the movements and remain either on the midfoot or the ball of the foot. It is better not to drill at all than to drill with improper form, since that will only ingrain bad habits.
• Make a conscious effort to run as lightly as possible over the ground, feeling your feet land directly under your body and springing off the ground.
• Don’t overstride by landing sharply with your heel and your leg out in front of your body, as this will cause you to decelerate. Whether you land slightly on the heel first or on the midfoot is not as important as where the foot lands in relation to the body. The faster you run, the more you naturally land toward the forefoot.

Arms, Hands and Balance

Although legs get the most attention, arms are important because they balance the legs. Quick, powerful arm movements mean quick, powerful leg movements. Teach these guidelines:

• Hold arms close to your body and swing them back and forth from the shoulder like a pendulum, with your forearms swinging at a slight angle toward your body.
• Keep elbows bent at 90 degrees or slightly less. Do not allow your arms to cross over the midline of your chest.
• Keep the palms of your hands facing your body, and cup your hands as if you were gently holding a potato chip.
• Swing arms with quick, compact movements.
• To run faster, increase the cadence of your arms but keep the movements controlled and compact.

Mileage

The number of miles (or the length of time) your clients run each week dictates their performance capacity, making it the most important part of their training. Endurance training increases the number of red blood cells and the amount of hemoglobin, which

• improves the blood vessels’ oxygen-carrying capability;
• stimulates the storage of muscle glycogen, giving your clients more fuel for long races;
• increases the use of intramuscular fat to spare glycogen;
• creates a greater capillary network surrounding the muscle fibers for a more rapid diffusion of oxygen into the muscles;
• increases muscle mitochondrial density and the number of aerobic enzymes, which control the rate at which energy (ATP) is produced; and
• improves running economy (Fitts et al. 1975; Holloszy & Coyle 1984; Ingjer 1979).

Taking It Slow on Easy Days

The competitive runners in your clientele usually recognize the importance of switching between easy-running days and hard days. But they may not realize that the exact pace is the least important issue when running their easy miles. The single biggest mistake runners make is going too fast on easy days, which adds unnecessary stresses to the legs with no extra benefit. Slowing down the easy runs has at least three benefits:

1. It decreases the chance of injury.
2. It enables runners to get more out of their harder days because they are less fatigued.
3. It enables runners to increase their overall weekly mileage.

Planning for Long Runs

Long runs improve your clients’ endurance by pushing their bodies for a longer amount of time than they’re used to. Long runs cause a sustained push of oxygen into the muscles, stimulating muscle capillarization—an expansion of existing capillary beds and the creation of new capillary beds. Long runs also severely reduce muscle glycogen and stimulate a greater reliance on fat. Glycogen is muscles’ preferred fuel, and running low on it presents a threat to their survival. The human body responds to this rather elegantly by synthesizing and storing more glycogen than had previously been present, thus increasing endurance for the future. Empty a full glass, and you get a refilled larger glass in its place. The more glycogen your clients have packed into their musculature, the greater their endurance and ability to hold a hard pace.

The long run should make up no more than about a third of the weekly mileage, thought this may not be possible if clients run only a few times per week. Do not make the long runs a lot longer than any other run during the week, and try to have clients run enough during the week to support a long run on the weekend.

Lactate (Acidosis) Threshold Runs

The lactate threshold (LT), or what I call the acidosis threshold (AT) because the physiological marker of interest is acidosis rather than lactate, marks the transition between running that is almost purely aerobic and running that includes significant anaerobic (oxygen-independent) metabolism. The AT is an important determinant of distance-running performance because it represents the fastest you can go without relying on a significant anaerobic contribution and developing metabolic acidosis.

Increasing your clients’ AT enables them to run faster before anaerobic metabolism kicks in. With training, a previously anaerobic pace becomes “high aerobic.” (This kind of training takes a pace that was fatiguing because of the anaerobic contribution and makes that pace more aerobic so it can be sustained.) The faster your clients’ AT pace, the faster the pace they can hold over time. This is a key to training for a distance race, whether it’s a 5K or a marathon.

Distance races will require your clients to hold a hard pace for an extended time. The longer the race, the more important it is to train their AT. So, for the half-marathon and marathon, the AT should be the focus of your clients’ training.

Acidosis Threshold Workouts

AT workouts range from basic to challenging:

AT Run

The most basic of AT workouts, this is a continuous run at AT pace.

• 2–3 miles (15–20 minutes) to 5–6 miles (40–45 minutes) at AT pace

Long AT Run

For marathoners who need to get used to running longer near their AT pace, this workout is a continuous run at slightly slower than their AT pace.

• 6–10 miles (45–60 minutes) at 10–20 seconds per mile slower than AT pace

AT Intervals
An AT-interval workout uses short runs at AT pace with short rest intervals, which makes the AT run both physically and psychologically easier and increases the distance clients can run at their AT pace in a single workout.

• 4 x 1 mile at AT pace with 1:00 rest intervals
• 8 x 800–1,000 meters at AT pace with 1:00 rest intervals

AT-Plus Intervals

These AT intervals are run slightly faster than AT pace (hence the plus) with very short rest intervals.

• 2 sets of 3–4 x 800–1,000 meters at 5–10 seconds per mile faster than AT pace with 45 seconds’ rest and 2 minutes’ rest between sets

AT/LSD Combo Run

A twist on the 1970s term “ long slow distance,” this challenging workout for marathoners is a medium-long distance run with a portion at AT pace.

• 4 miles at AT pace + 8 miles easy
• 5 miles easy + 3 miles at AT pace + 5 miles easy + 3 miles at AT pace
• 10 miles easy + 4 miles at AT pace

VO₂max is very important for distance runners because it indicates the maximum rate at which their muscles consume oxygen. Think of VO2max as your clients’ aerobic ceiling, with the acidosis threshold representing the fraction of that ceiling in which they can run without fatigue-causing acidosis.

You can improve your clients’ VO₂max simply by increasing their weekly mileage, as this increases the muscles’ metabolic machinery to use oxygen, but interval training—during which clients run at their heart rate maximum (HRmax)—is the most potent way to increase VO2max (Billat 2001; Midgley, McNaughton & Jones 2007). One of the most elegant adaptations to interval training is hypertrophy of the left ventricle of the heart, causing an increase in maximum stroke volume (the volume of blood the heart pumps each beat), maximum cardiac output (the volume of blood the heart pumps each minute) and thus VO2max.

For VO₂max intervals, use work periods of 3–5 minutes. Shorter work periods can also improve VO2max as long as you use very short, jogging recovery intervals to keep VO2 elevated throughout the workout. Cap the work periods at 5 minutes; anything longer would necessitate a decrease in speed to repeat the work period more than once or twice.

Make sure clients warm up adequately before each workout, completing their warm-up with a few 100-meter runs at VO2max pace to prepare their legs for faster running and to transition seamlessly into the workout. Here are examples of VO₂max workouts:

• 5–6 x 800 meters at VO₂max pace with a 1:≤1 work-to-rest ratio
• 4–5 x 1,000 meters at VO₂max pace with a 1:≤1 work-to-rest ratio
• 3–4 x 1,200 meters at VO₂max pace with a 1:≤1 work-to-rest ratio
• 15–20 x 400 meters at VO₂max pace with a 1:<1 work-to-rest ratio
• VO₂max Ladder: 2 sets of 800, 1,000 and 1,200 meters at VO₂max pace, with a 1:≤1 work-to-rest ratio
• VO₂max Pyramid: 800, 1,000, 1,200, 1,000 and 800 meters at VO₂max pace with a 1:≤1 work-to-rest ratio

Anaerobic Capacity Intervals

The shorter the race, the greater the runner’s reliance on anaerobic glycolysis for energy and the greater the metabolic acidosis experienced. Every distance race from the mile to 10K has a significant anaerobic contribution, so anaerobic capacity training is essential. For anaerobic capacity intervals, use work periods of 45 seconds to 2 minutes with recovery intervals one to three times as long as the time spent running. These workouts increase muscle glycolytic enzyme activity so that glycolysis can regenerate ATP more quickly for muscle contraction and improve the ability to buffer the muscle acidosis that occurs when there is a large dependence on anaerobic metabolism.

Anaerobic Capacity Workouts

Make sure clients warm up adequately before each workout, completing their warm-up with a few 100-meter runs at VO2max pace and at anaerobic capacity pace to prepare their legs for faster running and seamlessly transition into the workout. Here are examples of anaerobic capacity workouts:

• 6–8 x 400 meters at anaerobic capacity pace with 1:1 work-to-rest ratio
• 2 sets of 400/800/400 meters at anaerobic capacity pace with 1-minute recovery and 5-minute recovery between sets
• 2 sets of 5 x 200–300 meters at anaerobic capacity pace with 1:2 work-to-rest ratio and 5-minute recovery between sets

With all of the types of workouts described above, make the workouts harder over time by adding more reps or decreasing the recovery intervals, rather than by running faster. Increase the speed of the work periods only after race results have shown that a client’s fitness level has improved. Races indicate fitness level, so they dictate the training speeds, not the other way around. Contrary to what many runners and coaches think, distance runners don’t do workouts to practice running faster. They do workouts to improve the physiological characteristics that enable them to run faster in the future.

Think of an assembly line: If you want to make more products, the better strategy is to increase the number of workers (physiological characteristics) so you have more assembly lines to do the work, rather than to increase the speed at which the assembly line workers operate. The goal of training is to obtain the greatest benefit while incurring the least amount of stress, so train your clients with as slow a pace as you can while still obtaining the desired result of the workout.