There’s an old saying,
"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel" by Carl W. Buechner.
At this point in the program, sometimes what we need most are a few reminders of what we should be doing and the purpose of working out. We occasionally forget because we’re either too busy or having too much fun to realize we could be moving in the wrong direction. So, for all those people who may need a little “kick in the pants” motivation… not in any particular order… here it is.
“Nobody ever won a training run.” I wrote this on the “white-board” before our weekend long run a couple of weeks back to make people think about their long run pace and to slow down. I should have also included it as a reminder during the week for the people who still believe they are going to get faster if they go outside of their training zone. It’s hard to remind oneself that you are working out for tomorrow and not today. This means always holding back just a little. You should be feeling really good after your workout and that you really could do some more at the same paces. If you are feeling like you are “red-lining” during every workout, and exhausted after every workout, that will eventually catch up to you and will become an injury. Then, like it or not, you are going to have to slow down and depending upon the severity, you may even have to stop completely for a while.
Recovery days are for recovery, and not for working out more just because you are feeling good. We’re still getting emails from people wanting to add more stuff to their program because they are feeling really good. Hello… It’s okay to feel good! No… seriously… when you are starting to feel good it means the program is working. It doesn’t mean do more stuff. By adding running to your life-style, you’ve already added more than enough at this time. If you were already running regularly and have “upped” your program at the start by increasing the distance you were currently running or moving up to a faster pace group, you’ve definitely added enough at this time. We continuously add things into the program based on what you did in the previous clinic and what you need to be doing at this time. There should be no need to add any more. As we said to one person, we don’t want to be “sport-dictators” and say, “you can do this” and “you can’t do that” because it takes away the freedom to choose your free will. But we would like you to use a bit of discretion when it comes to approaching your exercise program. We’ve already built in stress throughout the program and you may want to look ahead at the distances, paces and volume of work you will be doing before deciding to take on that “Jousting 101 Program”. Because something is going to have to give either in your schedule or in the amount of energy you have.
Recovery between intervals does not mean you stand around letting your muscles contact while you gab. When you finish your current interval on the track, don’t just stand around… move around. After an exertion such as found in interval training, if you simply stop moving around altogether, the muscles used in all parts of the body (not just the legs) contract… they tighten up. It’s how they protect themselves and react to stress. They react by tightening up because they don’t know you’ve stopped exercising for the moment or they were stressed and are preparing for more. Therefore, after you’ve finished an interval… keep moving rather briskly and remember to slow down very gradually so you don’t shock the muscles. Maybe even stretch a bit before starting on your next one. Also… your running starts. Like in strides, bring your pace up gradually to your interval pace. The shorter the interval, the longer it should take you to get up to speed and the longer it should take for you to bring it back down for recovery.
It’s called a “training zone”, not a “straining zone”. Don’t attack your workouts. The times you are currently running are from pace tables based on tens of thousands of runners. They are calculated using your current fitness level and should not be exceeded. We always use the slowest end of the scale at the beginning of the clinic and gradually increase the pace as the clinic progresses, but we always stay within your training zone. Most people start at the top end(fast) of the paces and push harder thereby going outside their training zone. That’s not how you get faster but it is a sure-fire recipe for injury. The people who get the most success from our training are the people who follow it. You really don’t have to add anything (athletically) to it or try to speed up the process. And if you are running more than 3 days a week, make sure that the extra days are at recovery run paces. I’m sure some of you have been training at more than a little above your training zone pace because some of you are coming to the workouts telling me you’ve been following the interval paces but still don’t feel recovered between workouts. This means you are either working at too ambitious of training paces for your current fitness level or you are not getting enough recovery between faster workouts.
Pain is an indicator that something is wrong, but does not mean you necessarily have to stop running completely. It does mean however that something has to change in your program. We’ve always said that if you can run slow enough where you don’t have to compensate or have to change your natural stride no matter what the injury… keep running. But, you have to be honest here and be aware that if you are experiencing pain something is wrong and needs to be immediately dealt with. How you do that should be between you and your health care practitioner - as long as they are the right person for the job. If you break your leg you probably should not be going to your chiropractor and asking him to put the bones back in place so you can continue running because you have a race next week. Just because some form of therapy or drug makes a sport ache feel good at the moment, it does not necessarily mean it’s helping it get any better in the long term. We are not saying if you have a virus you can do speed work. That’s dangerous. If the virus goes to the lungs, you may need antibiotics and an even longer lay off in order to get better. There are however some things that are considered “common knowledge”. As a shoe fitter by trade, we see many foot problems. In the case of Achilles Tendonitis it’s common knowledge to put a heel lift inside your shoes so you don’t irritate it as much when active. If your natural motion is to over-pronate, you will need some form of guidance or support to ensure you are in your most neutral position throughout your gate cycle. The latest epidemic is plantar fasciitis. It has affected young, old, active or sedentary and the medical profession has been trying to find out answers “why?” this is and what can be done about it. This subject is way to long to talk about in the current discussion. But we will say that plantar fasciitis does not necessarily mean you have to stop running; and you do need to find a way to support it so that it can heal in a natural position. The best method we have found is taping. It may be inconvenient, but it’s cheap and it works. The whole point of this section is that if you have a sport ache, see someone who specializes in that area. Only look for the “exotic cure” when all other avenues have been exhausted. Otherwise, you are throwing away your time, energy and money.
Try the occasional sports massage to see if you have anything that may need to be worked out. This doesn’t mean, if it’s not broke… fix it. It does mean that even your body could use an occasional analysis to see if there is something slightly amiss before it becomes a full-blown problem. That little bit of a prod and some advice on what you can do to prevent it from becoming a problem later on will extend your pain free training regime. During a training run for the Vancouver Marathon years ago I was struck off a cross walk by a car at about 45 MPH. After doing a brief inventory that I still had all my body parts and concluding nothing was broken, I continued running for another 10 miles or so. The immediate thought was that had I stopped just shortly after the moment of impact, I would have tightened up completely and may not have been able to run for weeks. It was less than 3 weeks before the marathon and I had just registered less than a couple of hours earlier. I went on to run 2:36 something. The point is, there was no pain at the time and even for a couple of months after the marathon. However, it did eventually catch up to me by thinking I was okay and not having it looked at. I spent the next several years with a “floating pelvis” and instead of having it looked at and engaging in a little proper rehabilitation; I kept trying to continue training. I’d get to a certain level and break down. Then, I’d start from the beginning and do it all over… for years. I was young! What can I say? The other thing too… the medical profession back then was not as advanced as it is now and what we used to take a lot of time off from, today we run through it.
If you are dying at the end of a long run, you probably went out too fast. There’s a time to listen to your body and there’s a time to tell it to “shut up!” In the case of running your long runs faster than what we are saying….. if you are having discomfort, then you need to slow it down. If this is your first half marathon or your 85th marathon there’s nothing wrong with throwing in the occasional “brisk” walk break to get you through your long run especially when it’s your longest training distance. The Peach Festival Classic was my first marathon in 10 years. In that in-between time period I had maybe run a maximum of 2 to 3 10km races as fun runs but nothing longer. I did however work with beginner marathoners in the 12:00 – 13:00 per mile category 3 times a week, but nothing other than recovery runs during the rest of the week. Getting back up to running longer distances was scary so I devised a system where I would do 5 X 18; 2 X 20; and 3 X 22 mile runs for my longest ones. 20 miles I always found easy. It was the 22 that always scared the tights off me so on the first one, I would always do a ten and one even though I always ran through the rest of my runs. Why the change? Simple. Always do things you know you can do and build from there. According to my schedule, it said logically I should have been able to run 22 miles, but my mind was saying other things. I knew if I through away the watch and mixed up running and walking, I could go the entire day, so “logically” I could easily do 22 miles. I was right. I finished feeling like I could go at least another 10 miles and I still had 2 more 22 milers left in the program. The second 22-mile run was approached in a similar fashion except there would be no walk breaks. I would not worry about pace. I would just go to complete the run. Again, this proved to be a very enjoyable experience and I finished feeling like I could do a lot more. Because I had the confidence of completing 2 previous 22-mile runs, the 3rd was not approached with as many reservations. I still prepared for it, but I was able to run at my “normal” training pace and did not experience any problems. The end result was breaking the Master’s course record in the marathon by almost 10 minutes. The moral of the story… slow down… get faster.
Feeling good it is NOT a sign to go faster. In most cases, it’s probably better to pull back. It has been my experience that if your training is going really well, stay on the program and don’t touch that dial. You can’t speed up fitness. We have this mentality that if a little is good, a lot more is better. Well… the saying “Too much of a good thing” certainly applies to running. Generally, when you are feeling overly good, it’s a sign to slow down a bit. Phil Ellis and I were talking several weeks ago about instances when athletes that were training faster than what the coach set the targets at would be sent home. This wasn’t because they were not doing what they were supposed to do, it was because they were “peaking” too early. If they were able to slow it down and stay at the given paces, they would easily cruise through the workout and derive the maximum benefits from it. By exceeding the targets, they were running beyond what they should have been doing at the time and over-training. Over-training will only lead to injury or illness. Try to be patient. Whether it’s becoming a great painter, musician, surgeon, or runner…. it takes time. With some things we can see the results in right away. With running, the results are mainly evident in our races and the race is at the end of the “current” program. Not at the fun runs we sometimes interject into our training. Remember, if you have a race scheduled during your 4 – 5 month half-marathon or marathon-training program, you have to decide which one is the important one and train specifically for it because you cannot run 100% for every race that comes along. Even though it may be as short as a 5KM or 10Km fun-run, you still have to factor in recovery into your program or basically 1 day for every mile raced. This does not factor in micro tears that will only be discovered through sports message or a full-blown injury later on in the program. By the time something becomes an injury, the point of original trauma is usually forgotten. That’s why it’s necessary to keep a training log. In a lot of cases the precursor for a running injury was a simple training run where I said, “I’ve never run this fast before in my life!” All of a sudden they become famous last words. Simply put… if you are on a training schedule and it’s going well… stay on it and don’t change a thing.
Stretching any time during the day could be a good thing. Just because you are not working out at the time, it doesn’t mean it’s not a good time to stretch. Animals have the right idea… especially cats. They stretch whenever they have the urge too. We should be doing the same thing whether it is at the office (maybe not in the middle of a meeting) or at home during the day. Just because we may not be exercising at the time, it doesn’t mean we cannot benefit from a little more flexibility. If our muscles are always warm and pliable, when we call upon them to take action, there will be less of a need for a lengthy warm-up before working out.
Don’t build a program on fatigue. If you are tired, slow down and rest. This seems like such an obvious thing to say, but you have no idea how many people force themselves to do things because that’s what is on the schedule. Things happen during the course of life where energy will be taken away from one area and put into another. It’s just the way things are. Live with it. If you are feeling tired… back off. Never force a workout just because it’s on the program. You are sometimes better to modify the workout or take the day off completely. There are plenty of workout days during the entire program and one or four days off is not going to make a difference but pushing it might. Sometimes we hear about people who said that they didn’t feel like working out but once they got into it they felt better. Generally, this is not the case. If you are tired it’s your body and mind telling you it needs to rest. If you force it to work out, you may be either taking the chance of injury or just wearing yourself down even more. You ultimately have to make the decision whether to push through or back off, but a little discretion is the better part of valour. If you have an interval or hill workout and you are feeling a little bagged, try a tempo workout instead. If you have a tempo workout scheduled and you are a little weathered, make it a steady state run instead. If it’s a steady state run and you are not feeling up to it, try a fartlek workout. If it’s a fartlek workout and it’s just not your day, go for an easy recovery paced run. If you are just not up to that, then either go for a brisk walk or maybe you really do need a day off. As we said, the ultimate decision is yours, but it is better to have a program that layers strengths than straws.
The reason you came to a running web site or to a running clinic is to learn to run. If you are not going to follow proven professional advise than don’t invest time or money in it. It was said that some people seek advice only to hear what they want to hear. They will spend much effort trying to find someone of like mind just to have the other party agree with them. We see this all the time when it comes to running training. Although we have a “proven” method, some people try to change it in some way by either adding things or trying to speed up the process. It just doesn’t happen that way.
If you have any concerns or questions, please come and see us. We want you to be successful.
Have a great running week.
Russ and Lorne
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