A Question of Surface and Stiffness

Reading time: 2 min

A thought experiment. Imagine you’re running fast on the road. Then, suddenly, the road ends and you’re running fast on a sandy beach. Your running surface goes from hard to soft in an instant.

What happens? Most people will feel their legs trip up under them, maybe even fall. Why? On soft surfaces, more energy “leaks” into the ground compared to a hard surface. Hence, your legs need to “stiffen” to prevent you from sinking down. Until your stiffness adjusts, you’ll feel like you are losing your balance.

“Stiffness” in this context refers to the combination of the bend (or lack thereof) in the hip, knee, ankles and feet plus the tension in the muscles, tendons and connective tissues.

In general, hard surfaces require less stiffness and soft surfaces more stiffness.

Now, think about this: What if you’re always running on a hard surface (like a road) with the stiffness usually reserved for a soft surface (like grass)? Or vice-versa?

At least, there will be a decrease in performance. At worst, there will be certain types of injuries that will recur. Too much stiffness is associated with bony injuries, while too little stiffness is associated with soft tissue injuries.

Continue reading →

A Better Warm-Up and Cool-Down

Reading time: 5 min

What do you do as a Warm-Up (WU) and Cool-Down (CD) before and after your workouts and races?

Perhaps some easy running and maybe a few short sprints to get the kinks out the legs pre-race or pre-workout. Then a 1-2km easy run, if that, as a cool-down after all the hard work has been done.

But is this the right thing to do? Is this too much? Or not enough?

Enter Peter Thompson. A legendary figure in Track & Field who has coached athletes to world record performances for over 40 years. His systematic and empirical approach to warm-up and cool-down prescription has lead to interesting and perhaps counter-intuitive suggestions for WU and CD

Continue reading →

Dietary Supplements for Performance

Reading time: 6 min

I receive a lot of questions about dietary supplements to improve performance. Questions usually revolve around enhancing endurance, typically for longer duration events. However, I do field the occasional question about increasing strength or improving body composition and physique through targetted supplementation.

While I am not a big proponent of supplementation, it would be unprofessional and ignorant to deny that certain supplements taken in an appropriate context provide a performance boost. In this post, I go over the few proven supplements from a highly reliable resource.

Continue reading →

400m Pace Workouts

Reading time: 4 min

This post outlines progressions for 400m pace workouts with Middle-Distance runners as the target audience. The main purpose of these workouts is to improve Top-Speed-Endurance. If you are a 400m Sprinter, you can add these sessions to your program as “long speed endurance” workouts. However, you will want to increase the duration of the recovery periods – more on this below.

The workout list below is NOT a training program. Check out the post on Five-Pace Training to learn how to integrate these 400m pace workouts into a complete program. The Five-Pace Training model includes workouts at paces anchored to standard race distances spread over two- or three-week training cycles. The post on Choosing Workouts will also be helpful when selecting your training sessions.

Continue reading →

Half-Marathon Pace Workouts

Reading time: 4 min

This post outlines progressions for three different styles of Half-Marathon pace workouts: Work-Rest training, Over-Unders and Progression Runs.

The workout list below is NOT a training program. Check out the post on Five-Pace Training to learn how to integrate these Half-Marathon pace workouts into a complete program. The Five-Pace Training model includes workouts at paces anchored to standard race distances spread over two- or three-week training cycles. The post on Choosing Workouts will also be helpful when selecting your training sessions.

Continue reading →

Threshold Pace Workouts

Reading time: 5 min

The term Threshold comes from the world of exercise physiology. If you run at a pace above your Threshold Pace, your blood lactate levels and breathing rate increase at a much faster rate compared to a speed only slightly slower. And these increases correlate with a much more rapid onset of fatigue. The physiology terms are Lactate Threshold & Lactate Turnpoint and Ventilatory Threshold if you want to google it.

Running at your Threshold provides a significant training stimulus for your endurance development. While, at the same time, minimizing the mechanical stress on your body because you don’t need to run as fast as 5k-pace or Mile-pace to get the intended training effect.

Plus, you can hold threshold pace (or just below) for a long time to stretch your stamina. You practice becoming comfortable, even to crave, the discomforts of running for extended durations – a crucial characteristic of the success of any distance runner.

In this post, I present two types of Threshold workouts: Tempo Runs and Cruise Intervals.

The workout list below is NOT a training program. Check out the post on Five-Pace Training to learn how to integrate these Threshold pace workouts into a complete program. The Five-Pace Training model includes workouts at paces anchored to standard race distances spread over two- or three-week training cycles. The post on Choosing Workouts will also be helpful when selecting your training sessions.

Continue reading →

3000m Pace Workouts

Reading time: 3 min

This post outlines progressions for two different types of 3000m pace workouts: Long Recoveries and Short Recoveries. Plus three 3000m Race Prediction workouts are included at the end.

The workout list below is NOT a training program. Check out the post on Five-Pace Training to learn how to integrate these 5km pace workouts into a complete program. The Five-Pace Training model includes workouts at paces anchored to standard race distances spread over two- or three-week training cycles. The post on Choosing Workouts will also be helpful when selecting your training sessions.

Continue reading →

10km Pace Workouts

Reading time: 4 min

This post outlines progressions for three different styles of 10km pace workouts: Work-Rest training, Over-Unders and 10km Progression Runs.

The workout list below is NOT a training program. Check out the post on Five-Pace Training to learn how to integrate these 10km pace workouts into a complete program. The Five-Pace Training model includes workouts at paces anchored to standard race distances spread over two- or three-week training cycles. The post on Choosing Workouts will also be helpful when selecting your training sessions.

Continue reading →

800m Pace Workouts

Reading time: 3 min

This post outlines progressions for two different styles of 800m pace workouts: Single Reps and Sets of Reps. The single reps approach focuses on building speed with adequate recoveries longer and longer durations. The sets of reps method develop your ability to buffer increasing acid levels.

The workout list below is NOT a training program. Check out the post on Five-Pace Training to learn how to integrate these 800m pace workouts into a complete program. The Five-Pace Training model includes workouts at paces anchored to standard race distances spread over two- or three-week training cycles. The post on Choosing Workouts will also be helpful when selecting your training sessions.

Continue reading →

Race Prediction Workouts and Time Trials

Reading time: 3 min

In the post on Five-Pace Training, you learned how to construct a program based on your goal race distance. And in the post on Choosing Workouts, you read the guidelines on how to select workouts of an appropriate level and progress them appropriately within your program.

Sometimes, however, you need a higher-level stimulus for both body and mind to determine your current fitness accurately. There are two such workouts for this: Race Prediction workouts and Time Trials.

Race Prediction Workouts

Within each of the workout lists for the different paces, I included Race Prediction workouts. Below is a list of the different Paces and associated workouts that may be part of your Five-Pace Training Program. Compiling at the workout lists is still a work in progress – forgive me for the ones that are not ready yet.

Race Prediction workouts are not intended to be repeated week after week like the other workouts in the lists. Race Prediction workouts stress your body almost as much as a race itself. You’ll need more time to recover than a typical workout. And this can disrupt your overall program design.

A good time for a Race Prediction workout is about 10-14 days out from a scheduled high-priority race. It takes about that long for your body to absorb the fitness gains from the training. After the Race Prediction workout, take a few extra recovery days. Then decrease any planned workout by two or three levels leading into the race.

But you don’t need to have an upcoming race to complete a Race Prediction workout. Nor do you need to stick to on your target pace for Race Prediction workouts. Complete a few training cycles to build your fitness and confidence at the paces. Then challenge your speed or endurance by doing a Race Prediciton workout for one of your support paces. Take a few extra days off after the workout.

Time Trials

There are also Time Trials in which you complete the full race distance for a specific pace which may be your target race pace or one of your support paces.

Before a Time Trial, formulate a race plan for the first half to three-quarters of the distance. Give yourself specific pace targets. See how well you can execute the plan and how well you can finish the race. You may choose a progressive approach every 1km or 400m at a faster speed. Or you may force yourself to surge periodically to simulate pace variations common in track races.

Then, see how precisely you can execute your race plan. Are you able to meet your targets? By removing all rest periods, you’ll find out if your speed or your endurance is up to par or lacking.

Plus, you’ll gain valuable insights on what you do well and what needs improvement. Time Trials tend to invoke more mental and physical stress than even very challenging workouts. You’ll learn firsthand if you can perform when it counts. Often it takes several attempts to get it right.

Use the scientific process and four questions explained in the Choosing Workouts post to assess your performance. Think about what will do differently next time and write it down. And make sure you re-read your notes the day of your next Time Trial or Race!

Race as a Time Trial

A classic Time Trial workout is a scheduled race that is not high-priority. A race you entered as a stepping stone to a future race. Don’t bother doing a Race Prediction workout beforehand this lower priority race. Stick to your regular training. And then use the race itself as a Time Trial.

Workout as Time Trial

But, you don’t need to sign up for an official race to do a Time Trial. You can add them in here and there. In Road to the Top, Joe Vigil included a Multi-Tier Training schedule which included a Time Trial at the end of every two-week cycle! I don’t suggest this level of frequency, especially for master’s athletes. Coach Vigil worked mostly with High School, College and Elite athletes. But don’t be shy to swap a workout for a Time Trial and see what happens.

If you are not in a race environment, sticking to Time Trials at distances shorter than your target event is usually a good idea – especially if you are doing them alone.

If you want to do a Time Trial at race pace or an endurance support pace not in a race setting, decrease the length to roughly three-quarters the full race distance. For example, if your race pace is 5km and you want to do a Time Trial at your 10km endurance support pace to challenge your stamina, aim to hold 10k pace for 7.5k or 4.5 miles. Three-quarter distance is enough volume to obtain all the intended benefits in a race-distance or over-distance Time Trial.