Running Shorts

Monday:  3 w/u; 2 x 6 x diagonals (4 min jog between sets), 1k in 3:02, 2 c/d Tuesday: Easy hour of running Wednesday: Planned off day Thursday: One hour of running with 5 surges by feeling in the second half Friday: 10 min up, 57 min marathon effort tempo, 1 mile c/d Saturday:  Very easy 8 recovery Sunday: Planned long run, but sick in the chest so no run today TOTAL : 48 miles on 5 days Well, for my first week back in a while this was...passable. I was almost really happy with it until I got sick over the weekend, but there's nothing you can do about that. Better to miss a day or two than to have a cold just drag on. Usually a head cold is fine to run through, but a nasty cough is something not to mess with. Monday's workout was exactly what I needed, both mentally and physically. Diagonals are a popular mid-distance workout in Kenya, and it consists of running diagonally from flag to flag across a soccer field, with a jog across the baseline for recovery. Th...

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 You've probably heard (and maybe internalized) many of the common critiques of Lydiard-style training: it's old and outdated , or it's too hard, or, most common, it's just a lot of long slow distance.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 lat...

...is an Ohio guy named Bob Schul. Sure, you know all the American greats: Ryun, Shorter, Pre, Rodgers, Salazar, Joanie, Webb. Maybe you even know of some of the more obscure stars: Mills, Kastor, Lindgren, etc. But how much do you really know about Bob Schul, the only American to ever win Olympic gold at 5,000m  -- which he did while also coming into the race as the favorite and world #1 at the time? The race that made Schul immortal was the 5,000m at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Racing the deepest field ever assembled to that point (including Ron Clarke, Bill Baillie, Harald Norpoth, Michel Jazy, Kip Keino, and Bill Dellinger -- all running royalty), Schul waited patiently through a tactical, surging and slowing 4800 meters until unleashing an incredible kick over the final lap. To beat out nine (9!) other runners in contention at the bell, Schul closed in 54.8 for 400m and an astonishing 38.7 for the final 300 meters -- as fast, if not faster, than Mo Farah's kick in London 20...

Despite all the convolutions of training -- Lactate Threshold, vVo2max, cadence, foot strike, turnover, etc. etc. etc. -- running is a very simple sport: who can cover a specified distance on foot the fastest? With all the technology and tactics and strategies and training approaches we have today, it's not really any more complicated than that. So what's my training advice for you? Simple: Do what makes you feel good. That good feeling you get in training -- the endorphin high, "full of run," effortlessness; however you want to describe it -- is your body's way of telling you, "I like this. I'm responding to this. I should keep doing this. This is playing to my strengths." You wanna get better? Listen to your body. What feels good is going to be a little different for everybody. For me, I get that effortlessly good feeling during steady-state type of runs...longer, sustained workouts at an aerobically challenging but not crippling pace. I tr...

"Quenton, this is where you find out. This is the time and place. All the rest is window dressing. ... You can do very nearly anything. Haven't you figured that out?"                                                                                                  - Bruce Denton, Once a Runner If you've read this blog before, you know how I often preach training at a controlled effort. Strides should be run at a relaxed fast effort. Interval workouts should be finished feeling like you could do one more . Et cetera et cetera. And I stand by the philosophy that most of your training should be controlled. Most of it, but not all of it. Every once in a while -- maybe once or twice a season MAX -- you should think about running a workout where y...

In baseball, there's a term for the ideal position player: the Five-Tool Player. This player can hit for average, hit for power, run the bases fast, throw hard/far/accurately, and excel defensively. All players strive to master all five tools, but few players actually possess them. For the competitive runner, I believe, there is a similar set of five 'tools' they should strive to develop. Perhaps a better term for the runner might be 'five paces', as there are five sets of paces that runners should have in their training repertoire. These are the types of paces that should be touched on year-round, but at different intensity levels based on any upcoming race schedules. These paces -- these tools -- will help you train smarter and race faster. Here they are: A runner's five 'tools' (or paces): Easy.  This is an easy effort. Real easy. Like, laughably easy. So easy, it should feel like you're not really getting any work in. That's because y...

And by 'easy long runs' I mean long runs (no matter how long) done at an easy effort; long slow distance, or LSD is how some people term it. But first, a caveat: long slow runs still have their place in the running world, but can we please stop doing only long slow runs? LSD runs are great in two situations: 1) when you are building your mileage early on in base training, and 2) as a low-key aerobic maintenance session during your peak competition season -- your focus should be on race-specific workouts, so long runs shouldn't be enough to tire you out. At any other point in the heart of your training? Change it up. Why? Because always and only doing long easy runs is the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Listen, I know consistency is important to train well, but so is variation. If you want to improve, you have to mix things up bit, you have to challenge yourself and push the limits of your comfort zo...

Alright, so now that cross country season is starting to gear up (first day of official practice for the high schoolers in Ohio is Monday!), I thought it'd be a good time for another post geared towards the scholastic runners. Not that this topic isn't applicable to everyone else out there, but I think it'll resonate most with the former type of runners. Showing up at practice, no matter what team you run for or who your coach is, you can bet one of the first things you will run through are the classic form drills. High knees, butt kicks, A-skips, B-skips, high skips, carioca, backwards running; the list goes on. You've probably already done some of those and you probably also do some other not on that list. And if you're in school, you'll probably do them just about every day from Day 1 without any more specific rationale than, "they improve your form." But do they improve your form? In my opinion, the answer is no. So you do you really need to ...

What is the workout? Strides aren't a workout per se , more like an addendum to your regular running schedule. Typically you'll finish up an easy or normal run with 4-10 strides of 80-120 meters. So what's a stride? It's a short sprint at sub-maximal effort (somewhere between 80 and 120 meters; doesn't have to be exact, just eyeball it) followed by full recovery between reps (about a minute or so walking around; again, doesn't have to be exact, just feel fresh before your next one). This is all done by feel...run at a relaxed-fast, near effortless speed; no straining, no flailing, no racing. Don't worry about splits, don't worry about pace; just run smooth so you can feel fast and focus on solid form. Think of these like the running version of free-throw practice. (Edit: if you really wanted to, you could make strides a stand-alone workout: warm up, then run 10-30-ish strides with full recovery , then cool down.) Why should you do it? You should do...