This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while, but just haven't really gotten around to it. This is for anyone using the summer to gear up for a fall season of racing, whether that's a marathon, road races, or cross country. That said, this is especially for you high school and college athletes.
Summer is the most important time of the season. It's when you build your base -- everything that's to come later in the fall is determined by the quality of this base. In fact, some might even say that your end-of-season peak is limited by how well you trained over the summer.
Arthur Lydiard believed this. And his philosophies still form the foundation of modern-day distance training.
You've probably heard (and maybe internalized) many of the common critiques of Lydiard-style training: it's old and outdated, or it's too hard, or, most common, it's just a lot of long slow distance. And low slow distance makes for long slow runners.
The latter rationale, especially, cannot be further from the truth. You can thank Runner's World and popularity of fitness jogging for that.
What follows is a brief summary of a Lydiard base phase and then some suggestions on how you can implement it into your schedule.
But first, what's the point of a base phase anyway? If you're aiming to primarily run fast in the fall season, then why should you practice running slower in the summer?
Like it or not, every distance race from 800m on up relies primarily on you aerobic fitness, which means that your body can provide enough oxygen to meet the demands of your muscles. If your muscles are working harder than the max amount of oxygen your body can provide, then you're tapping into anaerobic fitness. (I'm massively simplifying this, by the way.)
Think of it this way: a 100m sprint is nearly entirely anaerobic, while on the other end of the spectrum a marathon is nearly entirely aerobic. Everything in between involves some sort of combination of the two energy pathways. Here's a nice, succinct summary of this.
For the 5k, nearly 90% of the energy demands are aerobic. Any further distance is even more aerobic. It stands to reason, then, that you should primarily focus on aerobic development when training for these races.
This is the core of Lydiard's approach to the base: "marathon training for mid-distance runners," he called it. The focus of the base phase is to develop your aerobic capacity as high as possible, so that once you later add in anaerobic training, your body will be that much more fit to adapt. Mankind's fundamental physiology hasn't changed, so I'm not sure why people think this approach is outdated.
As for the Long Slow Distance myth, Lydiard never trained his runners like that. Sure, they ran long during the base phase (upwards of 100 miles per week, ideally), but very little of it was slow. It was just all mileage done at aerobic efforts, which could range anywhere from marathon pace to slow pace. But whatever the pace is, it should never cross into the anaerobic territory.
After a period of initial easy mileage, Lydiard's base typically lasted 8-12 weeks. Around that time, improvements in aerobic fitness would start to level off in athletes; plus, they'd get restless anyway and need a mental change in training. The goal for this phase is to run 100 aerobic miles per week, with any supplementary mileage done at a very easy tempo. You shouldn't be pushing or straining or stressing on any of these runs; instead, you should let the pace naturally flow how you're feeling. If done right, you'll progress faster and faster as the weeks go on, without any real increase in effort.
For a guideline, Lydiard divided efforts into general fractions:
Summer is the most important time of the season. It's when you build your base -- everything that's to come later in the fall is determined by the quality of this base. In fact, some might even say that your end-of-season peak is limited by how well you trained over the summer.
Arthur Lydiard believed this. And his philosophies still form the foundation of modern-day distance training.
You've probably heard (and maybe internalized) many of the common critiques of Lydiard-style training: it's old and outdated, or it's too hard, or, most common, it's just a lot of long slow distance. And low slow distance makes for long slow runners.
The latter rationale, especially, cannot be further from the truth. You can thank Runner's World and popularity of fitness jogging for that.
What follows is a brief summary of a Lydiard base phase and then some suggestions on how you can implement it into your schedule.
But first, what's the point of a base phase anyway? If you're aiming to primarily run fast in the fall season, then why should you practice running slower in the summer?
Like it or not, every distance race from 800m on up relies primarily on you aerobic fitness, which means that your body can provide enough oxygen to meet the demands of your muscles. If your muscles are working harder than the max amount of oxygen your body can provide, then you're tapping into anaerobic fitness. (I'm massively simplifying this, by the way.)
Think of it this way: a 100m sprint is nearly entirely anaerobic, while on the other end of the spectrum a marathon is nearly entirely aerobic. Everything in between involves some sort of combination of the two energy pathways. Here's a nice, succinct summary of this.
For the 5k, nearly 90% of the energy demands are aerobic. Any further distance is even more aerobic. It stands to reason, then, that you should primarily focus on aerobic development when training for these races.
This is the core of Lydiard's approach to the base: "marathon training for mid-distance runners," he called it. The focus of the base phase is to develop your aerobic capacity as high as possible, so that once you later add in anaerobic training, your body will be that much more fit to adapt. Mankind's fundamental physiology hasn't changed, so I'm not sure why people think this approach is outdated.
As for the Long Slow Distance myth, Lydiard never trained his runners like that. Sure, they ran long during the base phase (upwards of 100 miles per week, ideally), but very little of it was slow. It was just all mileage done at aerobic efforts, which could range anywhere from marathon pace to slow pace. But whatever the pace is, it should never cross into the anaerobic territory.
After a period of initial easy mileage, Lydiard's base typically lasted 8-12 weeks. Around that time, improvements in aerobic fitness would start to level off in athletes; plus, they'd get restless anyway and need a mental change in training. The goal for this phase is to run 100 aerobic miles per week, with any supplementary mileage done at a very easy tempo. You shouldn't be pushing or straining or stressing on any of these runs; instead, you should let the pace naturally flow how you're feeling. If done right, you'll progress faster and faster as the weeks go on, without any real increase in effort.
For a guideline, Lydiard divided efforts into general fractions:
- 1/4 effort was the slowest someone might run on their very easy, recovery days.
- 1/2 effort was the average running pace -- whatever you naturally fall into when you go out for a run.
- 3/4 effort was strong aerobic effort -- today we might call this marathon pace or steady state or aerobic threshold; basically, it's about the fastest you can run without dipping into anything anaerobic.
- 7/8 effort, used sparingly, was what we might today consider Lactate Threshold pace.
So a typical week during the base phase would look something like this:
- Monday: 10 miles at 3/4 effort
- Tuesday: 15 miles at 1/4 effort
- Wednesday: 1 hour or 10 mile fartlek
- Thursday: 18 miles at 1/4 effort
- Friday: 10 miles at 3/4 effort
- Saturday: 15 miles at 1/4 effort
- Sunday: 22 miles at 1/4 effort
So that's 100 miles in singles with the paces becoming progressively faster as you get more and more fit. For some perspective, when first starting the base many of Lydiard's runners might run the Monday and Friday 3/4 effort runs in about 65 minutes; by the end of the 12 weeks, they'd be down to 58 and 55 minutes, respectively. This isn't just a bunch of jogging around.
The long run, sort of a super-aerobic stimulus, would also creep towards the 3/4 effort as the weeks went on. Usually the hilly 22-miler would take two and half hours (2:30), but eventually it would get down to 2:20 and 2:15, sometimes even faster.
And notice the fartlek on Wednesday. This was a true fartlek, as in it was entirely free-form speed play. The whole point was to stay in touch in with basic leg speed, so his athletes would run controlled bursts of less-than-one-minute, punctuated by however long they felt like resting (while maintaining a continuous run).
On the other three days of the week without anything special planned, it wasn't uncommon to include 10 x 100 strides, again just to stay in touch with basic leg speed.
Yeah, this is hard. No, this isn't slow.
So how can you incorporate this into your own schedule? I mean, this was the stuff done by Olympic champions, so you probably shouldn't try to dive right into the full thing.
You don't have to be running 100 miles per week (although that's a good long-term goal), but as long as you understand the basic principles then it becomes relatively simple to apply:
You don't have to be running 100 miles per week (although that's a good long-term goal), but as long as you understand the basic principles then it becomes relatively simple to apply:
- Develop your aerobic fitness to the max and do not cross over into anything anaerobic. Alternating shorter runs at faster aerobic paces with longer easier runs is a great way to do this.
- Run long one day per week (typically Saturday or Sunday). Keep this relaxed for the most part, but as you get more fit feel free to use it as more of a progression run if you feel good.
- Don't neglect basic speed. Include strides, fartleks, even hill repeats; just make sure it always has plenty of recovery so that it's never too taxing.
So a weekly schedule might look something like this:
- Monday: Easy effort, easy mileage; OR, off day
- Tuesday: Build up to 40-60 minutes at a steady effort. This might also be a good day to halve the steady run and add in hill repeats afterward.
- Wednesday: Medium-long mileage run at a relaxed effort, strides following
- Thursday: 45-60 total minutes of leg speed run (fartlek, hill reps, etc.)
- Friday: Same as Wednesday
- Saturday: 45-60 minutes at a steady effort
- Sunday: Long run. Newer runners build up to 60-80 minutes, experienced runners 90+.
- Add in short (30 minutes or less) secondary runs as you see fit if you wish to double
There's 6 or 7 days of training, all of it at aerobic efforts but not all of it slow. It's not necessarily easy by any means, nor is it low mileage, but it should be sustainable. And if you can do this for even 6-8 weeks instead of the full 8-12, you'll be able to handle anything the next phase of your training can throw at you.
No matter what your experience running is, if you're looking to make the leap to the next level, then completing a Lydiard-style base phase should be your first step.
A 100m sprint is not anaerobic, well maybe a little bit, but mostly it is using Creatine Phosphate, but this is depleted after 4 - 10 seconds depending on the sprinter.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that 100m sprints / strides are not implementing the anaerobic system is the main reason Arthur included 10 x 100m sessions once a week in his base period.
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