Should Children Run?

Of course children should run! Running should be as much a part of children’s lives as walking, skipping, playing tag, and so on. It should be a normal part of their play. For preteens, play can and should be the major source of physical activity. Some researchers have estimated that when kids are left to their own devices, they’ll cover as much as six miles a day on foot. Obviously, they don’t cover this distance all at once, and it’s a lot different from when an adult goes out for a six-mile run or walk, but that’s OK. At that age, most experts would agree, what you want is for your children to be active in a variety of activities that they enjoy.
Of course, many kids aren’t active. The average American teenager watches 22 hours of TV a week. Keep that in mind as you ponder these scary statistics: Only one-third of children ages 6 to 17 meet minimum standards of cardiovascular fitness. Of children between the ages of 5 and 8, 40 percent are obese, meaning that they weigh at least 20 percent more than they should. According to one survey of children in grades 4 to 12, 49 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls get nine hours or less of physical activity each week. When you consider that these estimates likely include a lot of time standing around on a ball field during gym classes, the figures seem even worse.
Now the question of whether children should run changes. Should children run in an organized way, for fitness, the way that adults do? That one’s a bit trickier to answer.

The Chase Corporate Challenge Series

Like the Race for the Cure Series, the Chase Corporate Challenge Series does a great job of luring new runners into the sport. It exposes occasional fitness runners to the racing scene and thereby shows them how fun it can be.
The Chase Corporate Challenge Series consists of runs in 16 cities in the United States, plus two overseas. The series culminates in a national final held on Park Avenue in New York City in October. In all, more than 175,000 runners take part in the series each year. Each race features team awards as well as individual recognition, such as first executive finisher. Each race is 3.5 miles long—a good challenging distance for the serious racers, but also a conquerable distance for the more casual runner.
In addition to introducing casual runners to the fun of racing, the Chase Corporate Challenge Series benefits runners in other ways. As you probably know, balancing your running with your work life can be tough. Work-based programs such as the Chase Series encourage employers to see their employees as more than just employees. They help show what employees do in the rest of their lives, and how important those pursuits are to them, and how having a healthy, rewarding life outside of work adds to, rather than detracts from, performance on the job.

The Race for the Cure Series

For you rock fans out there, sorry, but this series has nothing to do with that gloomy British band, The Cure. What it has to do with is a heck of a lot more important—finding a cure for breast cancer.
The Race for the Cure is the largest series of 5K runs in the United States. In 1997, the series was held in 77 cities throughout the country and included nearly half a million participants. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation organizes this series of runs; proceeds from the runs provide funding for local and national breast cancer research, education, screening, and treatment programs.
In case you haven’t noticed by now, I like it when there’s a connection between running and the rest of society. Apparently, a lot of others do, too, because The Race for the Cure Series gets bigger and bigger every year. Just one event in the series, the Washington, DC one, is the single largest 5K in the country. Vice President Gore and his wife, Tipper, regularly run it, in part because of their family’s history of breast cancer. That link exists for me, too, because my mom has had breast cancer. Many participants in these events are running in honor or memory of a breast cancer patient. Some in the field are even breast cancer survivors.

My Jingle Bell Runs

The Jingle Bell Runs are not just mine anymore, even though the official name is Bill Rodgers Jingle Bell Run. They’re not races in the traditional sense, which is why they’re on my list.
Just the Facts
My brother, Charlie, and I hold a few of these in the Boston area every year on different dates in December. These races are low-key fun runs of a few miles that raise money for charities. The largest one, in downtown Boston, attracts more than 3,000 runners. For more information, call my store, Bill Rodgers Running Center, at (617) 723-5612.
Jinglin’ All the Way for Charity
I started holding these runs from my running store more than 20 years ago. At first, they weren’t fundraisers for charity, just low-key runs with a few friends around the Boston Common and other parts of the city. We’d even stop at the tree outside of the Prudential Center and sing Christmas carols. It was a nice way to end the year after being so serious about training and racing so much of the time.
Now, the runs are a lot more organized, but they’ve kept that low-key feel to them. And we’ve made them fundraisers for different disabled children’s groups. I’m a former special ed teacher, so this aspect means the world to me. I like it when runners can make the connection between doing this great thing for themselves, running, and helping others. Now, most big cities have similar affairs, and I think it’s great that more runners have the chance to participate in these noncompetitive events and simultaneously do something for others.

Any Thanksgiving Race

Racing on Thanksgiving Day? Aren’t you supposed to spend the day watching TV and overeating? What’s next, racing on New Year’s Eve? Well, I’ve done that, too, which may have been taking things a bit far, but there’s nothing strange about going to a race on the most American of holidays. After all, what better way to work up an appetite for dinner?
Just the Facts
I’m guessing that you can figure out when these are held. Where are they? Believe it or not, in most towns that have a strong running community. Races on Thanksgiving Day morning have become as much of a celebratory running tradition as Fourth of July races. Check the sources I told you about in Chapter 18 to find a Thanksgiving Day race in your area.
Why Give Thanks on the Run?
The first road race of my life was the Manchester Road Race, a 4.75-miler held every
Thanksgiving Day morning on the streets of Manchester, Connecticut. Even when I first
did it, in 1966, it was a tradition-laden New England
event. I won the high school division in a time of
25:18. At the time, it was the longest race of my life. I don’t remember much about the race except that it seemed like an awfully long way. But I liked the feeling of being competent over this distance, which was more than what I was used to racing in high school races.
More than 20 years later, I was able to set a master’s course record in that race. I haven’t run the Manchester race in a while, but I always try to run in some event on Thanksgiving Day. You should, too. Why? To me, running a race is the ideal way to give thanks for having a healthy body that’s under your control.
Thanksgiving Day races, like most holiday events, are celebratory affairs. You’re out there with your family and friends, you have a lot of fun with bunches of other runners, and then you head home for a great dinner. Most Thanksgiving Day races give portions of their entry fees to food banks, or they encourage runners to bring cans of food to help the less fortunate.

The Walt Disney World Marathon

Maybe you’re starting to think that all of my favorite races are older ones that I’ve won. Not so. The Walt Disney World Marathon has been around only since the beginning of this decade, and I’ve never even competed seriously in it, much less won it, but it’s still worth recommending.
Just the Facts
The Walt Disney World Marathon is held in early January in, appropriately enough, Walt Disney World or more specifically, Lake Buena Vista, Florida. More than 5,000 marathoners finish it each year. In addition to the marathon, the event also has a children’s run the day before, a corporate relay, and a half marathon. To register, write Walt Disney World Marathon, P.O. Box 10,000, Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830; or call (407) 939-7810.
Disney Magic
The Walt Disney World Marathon is on my list because it’s emblematic of an important trend in races, namely, making them family-friendly. We running geeks used to go pound the pavement while our families were left to kill the time until we crossed the finish line. But race organizers have discovered that it’s better to involve as many members of the family as possible, rather than catering only to the hard-core marathoners. This family-friendly trend has grown as the average runner has become older and, therefore, more likely to have kids. Many races do a good job of making their weekend full of events for fit people of all ages and levels of seriousness. As the father of two young daughters, I like this emphasis and have enjoyed participating in Disney’s family 5K the day before the marathon. Of course, families have plenty of other things they can do during race weekend deep in the heart of Walt Disney World!
For kids of all ages, Walt Disney’s course has a certain charm. I grew up watching The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, so I’m a sucker for this stuff. Apparently, a lot of other “mature” runners are, too, if the number of people who rave every year about running through Cinderella’s Castle is any proof.

The Bix 7-Miler

Another race that I look forward to every year is the Bix 7-Miler. Like Falmouth, it’s a summer race at a nonstandard distance, but that’s the least interesting thing about it.
The Bix 7-Miler, or just Bix, as everyone calls it, is held in late July in Davenport, Iowa. The race was started as part of an annual festival held in honor of Bix Beiderbecke, a seminal jazz trumpeter of the 1920s. Now, with 18,000 entrants, the race has become bigger than any other part of the festival. For more information, write 2685 Kimberly Road, Davenport, IA 52722; or call (319) 324-8657.
Bix’s seven-mile course is a tough one, including a huge hill right off the bat in the first mile. The weather is usually tough, too, what with the race held in the middle of summer in the middle of America’s farmland. Conditions at race time in 1997, for example, were 83 degrees with 80 percent humidity. These aren’t optimal running conditions! So what’s the big deal about Bix? Why not go somewhere you can run fast? Certainly, running on flat courses where you have a better chance of running a personal best can be fun, but always doing that is boring. If speed is your only goal, why not just go around a track? I think there’s more to racing than just seeing how fast you can go. Races that have character, like Bix, are challenging; running them is a good way to test your character as a runner.
Few things are going to get you through a tough course on a tough day any better than the incredibly supportive crowds that the race has. In addition to the great hometown pride of the Quad Cities’ residents, you’re guaranteed several more thousand spectators thanks to the concurrent jazz festival. I don’t mean to sound like I do nothing but party, but this race, too, has a great celebratory atmosphere, including steamboat casinos drifting by on the nearby Mississippi River.

The Falmouth Road Race

What’s that you say? You’ve always wanted to run a race that starts on an incredibly narrow drawbridge and finishes right next to the Atlantic Ocean? Then look no further than the Falmouth Road Race.
The Falmouth Road Race is held in the middle of August. It starts in Woods Hole, Massachusetts (site of a famous oceanographic institute and the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard) and ends 7.1 miles later in seaside Falmouth. More than 8,000 runners take part every year. For an application, write P.O. Box 732, Falmouth, MA 02541; or call (508) 540-7000.
Falmouth is great for several reasons. It embodies the celebratory nature of racing that I’m so fond of; you finish right next to a huge field, where a post-race party/barbecue is held. Although some of the best runners in the world are in the field, the race has a vacationlike feel. I know one runner who makes it his only race of the year; he’s just so drawn to the atmosphere of New England by the ocean in late summer. I also like the point-topoint course that builds momentum as you near the finish, like at Boston. Speaking of the course, Falmouth’s course is one of the most beautiful in all of road racing. At about two miles, you run past a lighthouse that looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. For most of the race, you’re either running along the ocean or on roads through shaded forests. Right at the end, you come over the top of a hill to descend the last few hundred yards to the finish line, where there’s always a huge crowd.

The New York City Marathon

If you’ve heard of a marathon besides Boston, it’s probably New York. After all, it’s kind of hard to ignore 30,000 people running through all five boroughs of the world’s most famous city.

After initially being held in October, the New York City Marathon is now held on the first Sunday in November in an attempt to escape the Indian summer days that often plagued runners during the earlier dates. The race’s popularity has continued to soar as it approaches its 30th running in 1999. In 1997, more than 30,000 runners started the race, which was a record field for New York.
The New York City Marathon is the gem of the weekly races put on by the New York Road Runners Club. Because so many people want to run in the New York Marathon, the field is limited by a lottery, with many of the spots saved for overseas runners. To request an application, write Marathon Entries, P.O. Box 1388 GPO, New York, NY 10116; call (212) 423-2249; or visit the Web site, http://www.nyrrc.org.

The Boston Marathon

If you’ve heard of one runner’s race, this is probably it. I’ll make you a bet: Within your first year of running, if enough people see you running, eventually one of them is going to ask you, “Whaddya trainin’ for the Boston Marathon?” Another prediction: If you start going to races and let others know about it, eventually one of them will ask, “So, have you run the Boston Marathon?” There’s no more famous race in the world.
Just the Facts
The Boston Marathon starts at noon on Patriot’s Day every year. Patriot’s Day is a New England holiday that commemorates the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775; in Massachusetts, it’s a state holiday, and it falls on the third Monday in April. The race begins in Hopkinton, Massachusetts and ends in downtown Boston. The Boston Marathon is put on by the Boston Athletic Association. For an application, write BAA Boston Marathon, The Starting Line, One Ash Street, Hopkinton, MA 01748-1897; or visit the Web site, http://www.boston-marathon.org.
What’s So Special About Boston?
The Boston Marathon has it all: more than a century of history, a great course, and spectacular spectators. For average runners, it’s unique among marathons in that it has qualifying standards. The standards were introduced in 1971 to make the size of the field more manageable. The qualifying time has to be run on an accurately measured course within just more than a year before the Boston Marathon that you want to participate in.
The current standards are shown in the following list:
These standards are tough! For example, if you’re a woman under the age of 35, you have to run 26.2 miles at an average pace of 8:25 per mile or faster. Older folks certainly don’t get a break: a 70-year-old man has to average about 8:45 a mile for 26.2 miles just to make it to Boston’s starting line.
But rather than resent these standards, most runners I know appreciate them. After a few years of running, a lot of runners look at qualifying for Boston as their personal Olympics. Even if they make it just once in their lives, or even if they fall short, they value the challenge that the Boston qualifying standards offer. If only for this once in their running life, they like the idea of having this inflexible goal that they’re willing to make great sacrifices to meet.
The most special thing about Boston is its course and the crowds that line it. You start in a small, New England village and then make your way through several towns with names that have meaning to all marathoners: Ashland, Framingham, Natick, and so on. Near halfway, you pass an all-women’s college, Wellesley, where the roar from the students was so loud that when three-time champion Ibrahim Hussein passed through in 1992, he covered his ears. Then it’s the famous Newton Hills, finishing with Heartbreak Hill, which crests at 21 miles. From its top, you have five mostly downhill miles to the finish right near Copley Square in downtown Boston.

How to Finish a Marathon?

To finish a marathon, the least you need to do is still pretty darned much. There’s no way to get around the necessity of long runs—that’s why they’re the focus of this marathon training schedule. As a first-time marathoner, your goal should be to cover the distance. The way to do that is to gradually build the distance that you can cover without having to slow dramatically in the last few miles.
These long runs are probably longer than you’ve ever run. They’re all the training stress that your body needs, so this schedule doesn’t include any speed workouts. At this point, they’ll just get in the way of recovering from your long runs. But you will be doing striders. Most weeks, you’ll be doing them twice. That’s because when you do nothing but train for marathons, it’s easy for your form to deteriorate. You’re always just shuffling along, not moving through a full range of motion. Striders will help you to improve your form, and they’re a fun contrast to the long runs.
Where the schedule says “2 12” under striders, that means that on two other runs that week, do striders. When it says “1 12,” just do striders once that week. Make one of your striders days the last run that you do before the next week’s long run. For example, if your long run is on a Sunday and you are going for a run the previous Friday, do striders on Friday. Don’t do striders the day after a long run.
The schedule doesn’t have you running a long run every week. That would be too much because your long run starts getting up there in distance. On the weeks when you’re not going long, you’ll see that it says “10 miles” under the “Hilly run” column heading. On these weeks, I want you to do a hilly 10-mile run on the day that you usually do your long run. This run will help to build leg strength and will give your VO2 max a bit of a boost.
The long runs are the key to this schedule. How much you run the rest of the week depends on how quickly you recover from the long runs. You should be running at least two other days most weeks. (Gotta do those striders!) It would be good if most weeks you included a run in the middle of the week that was half the distance of your last long run. For example, in week 6, your last long run was an 18-miler in week 5. So in week 6, do a 9-miler in addition to the hilly 10-miler. These medium-long runs in the middle of the week will help to consolidate the gains from the long run.
With two weeks to go, try to run a 15K to half-marathon race. Don’t worry so much about your pace as about experiencing a race atmosphere. A lot of first-time marathoners train in isolation for months, never enter a race, and freak out when suddenly they’re surrounded by thousands of others in a marathon.

Spaghetti for Dinner Again?

But I also told you that there’s nothing you can eat to make you a better runner. Confession time: That’s not entirely true. In the few days before a marathon, you can help to push The Wall a few more miles back by carboloading. Carboloading is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean looking at the last three days before a marathon as an excuse to hit every all-you-can-eat buffet in town. You’re running less; you don’t need to eat much more than you usually do. What matters is increasing the percentage of your calories that come from carbohydrates to more than 65 percent, not just chowing down on everything in sight.
Carboloading works for the same reason that tapering works. Your muscles have become trained to store more glycogen. You’re tapering, so you’re not running much. Good—you’re barely dipping into your fuel stores. Simultaneously, you’re eating more carbohydrates than usual. Your muscles love it! They soak up the stuff. Do it right, and you can store an additional few hundred calories. That’s worth an extra three miles of running!
The key to carboloading is to emphasize the right foods. Concentrate on basing all of your meals in the three days before a marathon on high-carb foods, especially the complex ones. Most runners eat pasta when they’re carboloading, but rice and other grains are good, too. Fettucini alfredo is pasta, but it’s pasta in a heavy cream sauce. If you’re going to eat pasta, go with the light red sauces.

The Rest Is Easy

If you look closely at the training schedules in the two previous chapters, you might have noticed that I have you doing less work as your goal race nears, not more. That’s especially the case in the marathon schedule—your last long run is three weeks before your marathon. Whatever happened to use it or lose it?
Preparing for a top effort isn’t like cramming for a test or meeting a deadline at work. It takes time for your body to get the benefits of a training session. The day after a long run, you feel tired. But two weeks later, you feel stronger. The longer your race, the more important tapering is. In the marathon, tapering is especially important because of the whole glycogen-storage issue. When you taper, then obviously you’re not draining your glycogen supply as much. But because of your long runs, you’ve tricked your muscles into thinking that they had better be ready anytime, anywhere to fuel you for hours. So even though you’re barely running, they’re still suspicious that something is up, and they keep stockpiling glycogen at a high level. This gives you a larger gas tank on race day.
Notice what I said—you’re barely running. That’s a lot different than not running at all. If you follow the tapering plan in the marathon schedule, you’ll maintain the benefits of your hard work. Once you become fit, you don’t have to do as much running to maintain that fitness, at least for awhile. So in the three weeks before your marathon, you can, and should, gradually reduce your training.
Do your longest run three weeks before the marathon. The following week, do no more than 75 percent of your usual weekly mileage. The week after that, do no more than 60 percent of your usual weekly mileage. And the week before the marathon, do no more than 50 percent of your usual weekly mileage.

Don’t Hit The Wall

You might hear a runner explaining why she dropped out of a 5K by saying, “I hit The Wall.” Well, now she’s got two strikes against her: Not only did she not finish her race, but she’s misusing runner lingo. Get her a copy of this book and quick! When you get tired in a short race because you’re breathing so hard, that’s fatigue. When you’re doing a run of 90 minutes or more, and you’re feeling fine, and then all of a sudden, bam, every step is a major production and your pace gets way slower, that’s The Wall. Most people can store enough glycogen in their muscles to fuel about 18 to 20 miles of running. When you run long distances, your body senses that it’s getting low on glycogen. It wants to preserve that glycogen, so it starts to burn more fat. At this point, you’re able to maintain your pace, so you keep running. Your body has to keep doling out its precious glycogen stores, and it starts burning more and more fat.
By now, you can keep up your pace, but you have to work a little harder to do so because fat doesn’t burn as efficiently as glycogen when it comes to fueling your running. But you keep running because you were idiotic enough to listen to me when I told you how great the marathon is. Now your glycogen stores are getting very low, and you’re burning more and more fat.
That wouldn’t be all bad, except for this fact: Fat burns on a flame of glycogen. To keep running at your normal pace, you need at least enough glycogen to help burn the fat. But you’ve pretty much used it all up. You’re primarily burning fat, and fat takes a lot more oxygen to burn than glycogen does. As a result, you have to slow down dramatically, sometimes by more than two minutes per mile. You will want nothing more than to lie down by the side of the road. To top it off, you’ve also depleted the small amount of glycogen that’s stored in your liver. Your liver is supposed to feed this glycogen into your bloodstream to maintain your blood sugar well enough to feed your brain glucose. When this process starts breaking down, you feel woozy, light-headed, uncoordinated. Great!
You want to lie down by the side of the road, and now you’re getting so uncoordinated that you just might have your wish fulfilled. You’ve got as many as eight miles to go. Unless you’ve got incredible willpower, you’re a leading candidate to join the DNF list.
So how do people ever survive marathons? First and most important, they train. Long runs improve your body’s ability to store glycogen. Runners who do marathon training can store more than twice as much glycogen in their muscles as untrained people. Your body can get more fuel from the food that you eat when you train properly.
Also, marathoners start their marathons at a pace they know that they can maintain to the finish. The faster you run, the more glycogen you burn. Going out too fast in a marathon is a huge mistake, because even at a reasonable pace you’re going to need every last bit of glycogen that you can get. One trick that runners do to make sure that they don’t go out too fast in the marathon is to run the first mile one minute slower than the pace that they hope to average for the distance.
Even if you do the right training and pace yourself well in the marathon, The Wall can be pretty daunting. But what you do in the few days before the marathon can push it past the finish line.

A Run or a Race?

The fastest male marathoners in the world run 26.2 miles at faster than 5:00 per mile. The fastest female marathoners in the world run 26.2 miles at faster than 5:30 per mile. I think we can safely say that these people are racing the marathon. That was certainly how I went about it. For me, the challenge wasn’t just running 26.2 miles; it was seeing how fast I could run 26.2 miles. When I ran marathons at 5:00 per mile, I was running about a minute faster per mile than my usual training pace. Most people, however, are running the marathon just to conquer the distance. I’m all in favor of that approach. Remember the basic principle from Chapter 20: The first step to participating in any race is being able to cover the distance. The longer the race, the more that negotiating the distance becomes a limiting factor in performance. Almost anyone can run one mile faster than their regular training pace. Almost no one can run 50 miles faster than their regular training pace.
For your first marathon, your goal should be to finish. Trust me, that’s more than enough challenge for one race. If you define a race as trying to run the best that you can for a set distance on a given day, then just finishing your first marathon is a race. After you’ve done one or two marathons, then you can try to reduce your time.

What is Caveat Runner?

Even if you’re all fired up to run a marathon for all the right reasons, you have to tread carefully. You’re going to be doing training runs that are substantially longer than anything you’ve ever done. If you don’t become an expert at listening to your body’s response to the training, you might not even make it to the starting line. It’s not uncommon for runners to have to postpone or give up their marathon hopes because the training necessary to do one is too much for their current level of fitness. I think you should be a regular runner for at least a year before starting to train for a marathon. You need that amount of time for basic strength building to get your muscles, tendons, bones, and ligaments used to the stress of running. You also need to be in a good training routine, having figured out how best to make your running work with the rest of your life.
Don’t even think about starting to train for a marathon if you’re injured. Doing the long runs that are necessary to finish a marathon is exactly the kind of repetitive stress that will make your injury even worse. But if you want to run a marathon for yourself, and if you’ve been running regularly for at least a year, and if you’re currently running injury-free, then let’s get going!

Is Marathon Really Necessary?

The marathon is one of the greatest challenges in sports. That’s why so many runners are drawn to it. Run a marathon, and you know that you’ve really accomplished something. Some runners think that they have to run a marathon to become a “real runner.” They think that no one will think they’re legitimate runners otherwise. That’s not true. No one is less of a runner for not running a marathon. I don’t race marathons any more, but someone must still think I’m OK because I got to write this book. One of the most revered figures in American running, Steve Prefontaine, never ran a marathon. And if how far you run in a race determines your worthiness as a runner, then shouldn’t we all be aiming for 50-milers, 100-milers, or even the six-day races that a few runners do? Training for and running a marathon takes a lot of work. When the going gets tough, you’re going to come face to face with your soul, and you’re going to ask, “Why am I doing this?” Before doing a marathon, you should be able to answer that question with your own reasons, not someone else’s standards.

Understanding The Marathon

I told you before about how your body can usually store only enough glycogen to fuel about 20 miles of running. And yet marathons are 26.2 miles long. What gives? The legend of the origin of the marathon goes like this: In 490 B.C., a Greek messenger named Pheidippides ran the 24 miles from the Plains of Marathon to Athens to announce that despite great odds, the Athenian army had defeated the invading Persians. Upon reaching Athens, Pheidippides said, “Rejoice. We conquer!” collapsed, and died. When the modern Olympics began in Athens in 1896, organizers included a 24-mile race from Marathon to Athens to honor this great moment in Greek history. Did this really happen? No one knows for sure, but the general consensus is that like any good story from antiquity, there’s some embellishment stirred in to the truth so well that it’s hard to separate the two, and it’s more fun not to bother anyway. There was a Greek messenger of the time named Pheidippides, but no contemporary record of him producing such a great deathbed quote exists. Nonetheless, the legend has its own resonance. At the 20-mile mark of his first marathon, Frank Shorter turned to a runner next to him and said, “Why couldn’t have Pheidippides have died at 20 miles?” The long race caught on after the 1896 Olympics. The first Boston Marathon was held the next year. Early marathons weren’t standardized—they were 24 or 25 miles, depending on how long a course turned out to be. Early in this century, the starting line of a marathon in England was moved back so that the Queen could watch from Windsor Castle. The resulting distance was 26 miles, 385 yards, or 26.2 miles, which is now the official distance for a marathon.

Timing Is Everything: All About Tempo Runs

Improving your lactate threshold is pretty straightforward: You train at or slightly above your lactate threshold. In the training schedule, I call this speed your LT (lactate threshold) pace. Training at your LT pace pushes back the point at which lactate accumulates, allowing you to maintain a faster pace for these mid-range races. How do you know what this pace is for you? If you already race in 15K to half-marathons, your race pace for those races is your LT pace. If you haven’t raced much, you can still approximate what your LT pace is. If you’ve run a 10K, your LT pace will be about 20 seconds slower per mile than your 10K race pace. If you’ve only run a 5K, your LT pace is probably around 30 seconds slower per mile than your 5K race pace is, but you should go run a 10K first anyway before trying to race a 15K to half-marathon.
Regardless of what pace you choose to shoot for, keep this guideline in mind: Your effort during LT workouts should feel “comfortably hard.” You should feel as though you’re working at a high level that you can sustain. If you were to increase your pace by 10 seconds or more per mile, you would have to slow within a few minutes.
It’s important to run as close to the right pace for as much of your LT workouts as possible. Remember what I told you in the last chapter about training to improve your VO2 max:
The biggest gains come from doing the workout in that small window where you’re most stressing the systems that you want to improve.
When you do LT workouts, you’ll probably think in the first mile that you should be going faster. After all, you’re not all that much out of breath. Stick to your pace. The point of the workout is to run it all at your LT pace. That’s different than starting out too fast, and then slowing in the second half of your LT workout. In that case, you might average the right pace for the whole workout, but never run any part of it at the right intensity. That kind of workout won’t improve your LT as much.
The classic workout to improve your lactate threshold is the tempo run, a continuous run of 20 to 40 minutes at LT pace. An example of a tempo run workout is a two-mile warm-up, a four-mile run at your LT pace, and a short cool-down jog. You can also do LT intervals. In these workouts, you do two or three intervals of a fairly long distance at LT pace, jog easily for 25 to 50 percent of the duration of the interval, and then repeat the sequence. For example, after warming up, you would run two miles at your LT pace, jog for five minutes, run two miles at your LT pace, and then do a cool-down jog.
In the training schedule, I start you with LT intervals to get you used to the workouts and to help you learn what your LT pace feels like. Once you’re familiar with your LT pace, I have you do tempo runs. Tempo runs are better because you become more accustomed to concentrating for an extended period while you’re running hard. This kind of training helps you mentally in your races.
At first, you should do LT workouts on the track or other accurately measured courses so that you have a way of checking your pace. After a few LT workouts you should have a feel for the pace. Studies have shown that most runners can accurately produce that “comfortably hard” level of effort on their own once they have learned it. This frees you to do your LT workouts on the roads or trails. Doing a five-mile tempo run on the track can get pretty boring, after all. Doing some of your LT workouts away from the track is an especially good idea if you’ll be running a hilly race because you’ll be more used to running LT pace over a variety of terrain.
Not many runners know about these workouts. They think that to run a faster halfmarathon, they should work on their speed, so they run 800-meter intervals. This type of workout does make them faster, but it doesn’t do much for their ability to sustain a pretty hard pace for more than an hour.
Those who do talk about doing tempo training throw around the words pretty haphazardly. They’ll say they’re doing an “uptempo run,” when all they mean is that they’re going to go a little harder than usual for a few miles in the middle of a run. Or they’ll go out and run a hard 10 miles and say that’s their tempo run for the week. They can call it whatever they want, but these aren’t really tempo runs. Unlike you, they don’t know why they should do these 20- to 40-minute runs at a precise pace.
Because those were workouts that I think all runners should do some version of. LT workouts are only necessary if you’re going to be doing races of 15K or longer.
Then they make an incredible dif

Beyond the Lactate Threshold

Put on your lab coats: It’s time for a little science lesson. As you know by this point in the book, glycogen, a form of stored carbohydrate, is your body’s preferred source of fuel for aerobic exercise. The faster you run, the more glycogen your body burns compared to how much fat it burns. Like any chemical burning process, the process of burning glycogen generates by-products. Burn paper, and you get smoke. Burn glycogen, and you get lactate. Lactate is the by-product of your body burning carbohydrates. You’ve probably heard about lactic acid. For our purposes here, that’s the same thing as lactate. Have you ever tried to sprint all-out for more than a few hundred yards? Remember how at the end of the sprint your muscles felt as though they were on fire? That’s because there was a lot of lactate circulating in your system from all the carbohydrates that were suddenly being burned to power you down the track. So much lactate was being produced that your body couldn’t clear it from your blood, so your muscles stung. Some people think that you’re damaging your muscles when you expose them to lactate.
That’s wrong. You’re always producing lactate—when you’re running easy, when you’re walking, even when you’re sitting. When you burn carbohydrates, as you almost always do, you produce lactate. Your muscles don’t ache at these low levels of effort because the rate of lactate entering your blood is equal to the rate at which it’s removed.
As you move up the intensity scale from walking to easy running, you produce more lactate, but your body also increases the rate at which it removes lactate from your blood. When you exercise above a certain intensity, however, the rate at which you produce lactate is greater than the rate at which your body can clear it.
The lactate concentration rises in your muscles and blood, and suddenly your effort feels much harder. At this point, you’ve reached your lactate threshold.
You’re probably thinking, “Thanks for the biochemistry lesson, but what does this have to do with running a 10-mile race?” Remember the basic race-training principle that I laid down last chapter: If you want to complete a race, you have to be able to cover the distance. If you also want to race the distance, then you should do workouts that improve your capacities to handle the limiting factors on your performance in that distance. For 5Ks and 10Ks, that meant doing workouts to max out your VO2 max. For 15Ks to half-marathons, that means improving your lactate threshold. Once you get past the hump of being able to cover the distance without great fatigue, the limiting factor on how fast you can run the 15K to the half-marathon is your lactate threshold. In fact, your race pace for the 15K to the half-marathon is roughly equal to your lactate threshold. Go faster than that, and you’ll start accumulating lactate in your blood. You can exceed your lactate threshold in shorter races, such as an 8K, but 15Ks to half-marathons last one to two hours for most runners, and you just can’t run that fast for that long.
To improve, then, you need to increase your lactate threshold. When you do that, your lactate threshold occurs at a higher percentage of your VO2 max. So with the right training, you can push your 15K to half-marathon pace closer to that of your 5K pace; that is, you can make better use of your basic aerobic fitness. You can run faster before you start accumulating lactate.

The Rodney Dangerfields of Races

Races of 15K (9.3 miles) through the half-marathon (13.1 miles) get no respect. The half-marathon doesn’t even get its own name; it’s just half of another distance. Imagine if people called 5Ks “half-10Ks.”
This range of races, which also includes 10-milers and 20K (12.4 miles), is almost never the focus of a runner’s races. Runners usually use these races as tune-up races a month or so before a marathon. Or some runners will run one of these races at the beginning of a racing season to build strength, and then drop down in distance to 5Ks and 10Ks for the rest of the season. But you almost never hear a runner say, “This fall, my goal is to be the best 10-mile runner I can be.”
That’s too bad. These hybrid distances can be some of the most satisfying in running. They’re plenty long, so you’re not going to get through one by running a few miles a few times a week, as you could with a 5K. But they’re not so long that they’re going to knock you down for too long. Most of the soreness and lingering fatigue that people have from marathons comes from what happens after 18 or 20 miles. Should you try a 15K, 10-miler, or a half-marathon? Why not? For people who are thinking about trying a marathon someday, building up to one of these races is a good idea. You learn the routine of training for longer distances by gradually extending your distance. Anyone running a marathon should have experience with other races first. These longer races will give you a better idea of what you’re going to experience if you try to tackle a marathon.
If you usually don’t run farther than five miles, keying on one of these races is a good motivation to extend your distance. To do that, increase the distance of your long run by one mile two out of every
three weeks. For 15Ks and 10-milers, work up to running that far two weeks before the race. Take it easy for the next two weeks, and then run the race at a strong but reasonable
pace that you know you can maintain to the end. If you’re going to do a half-marathon, then build up to 10 to 12 miles at a time, again doing your last long run two weeks before the race.
But if you’ve been running a bit more and think that you can not only cover the distance, but also run a good notch faster than on your usual training runs, you can improve your performance at these distances by entering the strange world of the lactate threshold.

What You Should Do Before a Race?

Following are two training schedules, one for building up to a 5K and one for building up to an 8K or 10K. Here’s the fine print on these schedules:

• They assume that you can manage the first week’s training. If you’re not at that level yet, build your mileage until you are.
• I’ve only listed the key workouts for each week. Try to get in at least one on two other easy runs at your usual distance during the week.
• Don’t run so much or so hard the rest of the week that you can’t complete the listed workouts. They are the ones that will spur your improvement.
• Space the key workouts evenly throughout each week to allow proper recovery.
• Try not to miss any of the key workouts, but don’t try to “make up” missed ones. Just keep going through the schedule.
• If you miss the key workouts two weeks in a row, postpone your goal race by two weeks, and pick up the schedule where you left off.
• Do the striders at the end of an easy run. Try not to do them the day after the speed workouts or the long runs.
• The speed workouts are in terms of meters. If you don’t want to run speed work on the track, translate miles to minutes, and do the workouts on the road or trail.
• The schedules include races before your goal race. Enter these to get used to what racing feels like.
• Don’t run to exhaustion within five days of your goal race.

The speed workouts are in runner shorthand, specifying the number, distance, and pace for the workout. For example, 4 800 meters at 5K goal pace means to do four intervals of 800 meters each at your per mile goal pace for 5K, with the proper recovery between the intervals. Remember, a standard outdoor track is 400 meters around, so 800 meters equals two laps. Also, keep in mind that a 8K/10K goal pace is 10–15 seconds per mile slower than a 5K race pace. Finally, before starting these training schedules, your minimum weekly mileage should be 15 miles for the 5K and 25 miles for the 8K or 10K.

The Proper Pace Prescription

I’ve convinced you that you’ll run faster in 5Ks to 10Ks by doing a weekly speed workout at your VO2 max pace, and I’ve convinced you that you’ll improve more if you do them at this pace instead of as fast as you possibly can. Now you have just one question: How do you know what that pace is?
If you’ve run a 5K race at a solid effort within the last few months and have been running consistently since, use that pace as your current VO2 max pace. Better yet, hop in a 5K race soon, run hard the entire way, and figure out your average pace per mile. In both cases, make your 5K goal pace (what, you hope, will become your new VO2 max pace) about 15 seconds per mile faster. If you haven’t run a 5K in a while (or ever), you can still figure out the proper pace. If you’re running at least 15 miles per week and know your average training pace, subtract one minute per mile to get a reasonable 5K goal pace.
The 5K and 10K training schedules later in this chapter include speed workouts that are based on your 5K goal pace. The intervals in the 8K/10K schedule are a little longer and a little slower to better meet the demands of the longer races. If you’re decently trained, you should be able to run an 8K or 10K within 10 to 15 seconds per mile of your 5K race pace.
These workouts will help you to know what pace to try to reach in your race. You’ll be used to running hard while tired. After awhile, the pace will become second nature. That’s not to say that it will feel easy, but that you can launch into it and be confident that you’re at your goal pace until you get your first split time.
You should try to run as even a pace as you can in races of 5K to 10K. Many runners like to blast through the first mile much faster than their goal pace. This is a bad idea. Their reason behind doing this is to build a cushion to allow for when they slow later in the race, and their strategy becomes self-fulfilling. They have to slow in the second half of the race because they’ve gone into oxygen debt. Oxygen debt doesn’t demonstrate how mentally tough they are; it is an unforgiving physiological fact of life. As a result, their overall time is slower than if they had run at an even pace.
In races of 5K to 10K, when you’re working right at your VO2 max, you have a very small margin of error. If you run more than 10 seconds per mile faster than your VO2 max pace, then you’re running at a pace that you can sustain for at most two miles, usually much less. Trouble is, you still have at least a mile to go. So you’re going to have to slow way down, and you’re really going to hurt. It’s not uncommon for runners to have to slow by more than 30 seconds per mile in the last mile of a 5K when they’ve started too quickly.
In these short races, I sometimes start out a little bit more slowly than my goal pace. I give myself the first few minutes of the race to build gradually. For the first few minutes, I might be running at 5 to 10 seconds per mile slower than my goal pace. This slower start helps my heart and muscles better adapt to the sudden shock of running so quickly. Then, when all systems are firing, I can take off. Running an even pace is physically the most efficient way to race, but trying to run negative splits provides a tremendous psychological boost. You’re passing other runners pretty much the whole way. If you’ve ever run a race and been passed by someone in the last mile, you know how disconcerting it can be. You’re trying as hard as you can, and this runner is just blowing by you. There’s nothing you can do. When I run negative splits, I like to key on a runner about 100 yards ahead of me. I’ll focus on chasing him down and pulling him in gradually, and then I pass him quickly to demoralize him and move on to my next target. Running at an even pace or at negative splits leaves you better prepared for your kick.
How good a kick you’ll have at the end of a 5K, 8K, or 10K depends a lot on how intelligently you ran the race. If you haven’t gone out too quickly, then you’ll still be running aerobically. This means that you can start your kick from farther out than if you’ve gone into oxygen debt. If you have good natural speed, you can shave several seconds from your finishing time with a good, long kick.
Your body can run anaerobically for about 300 yards, so that’s the farthest away from the finish line that you should launch your sprint. If you’ve started the race too fast and have slowed during the second half of the race, you’re going to have a tough time kicking for more than 50 to 100 yards.

Understanding Aerobic Capacity

The key to training to become faster at 5Ks, 8Ks, and 10Ks is to improve your aerobic capacity, or VO2 max. That’s because you run these races at very close to your aerobic capacity—an all-out 5K is run at about 95 percent of your VO2 max, a 10K at about 92 percent. To run those races better, then, you need to max out your VO2 max. The best way to do that is to do one workout each week in which you run intervals at a pace that’s roughly at your VO2 max.
But wait a minute. Didn’t I tell you early on in this book that steady, comfortable running increases your VO2 max and that it will increase by 20 to 30 percent within a year of running? Why would you need to do anything more to race a good 5K? Early on, you don’t. You’re getting fitter by leaps and bounds just by running easy. But after those initial gains, you have to work harder to keep improving. It’s like learning a new computer program—you make the greatest improvements in the beginning, when you go from complete unfamiliarity to a basic working knowledge. It’s only after more extensive experience that you learn all those little tricks of the program that allow you to make that small but significant leap from a basic user to the one in the office who every one asks for advice.
In the training schedules at the end of this chapter, I’ll have you do one speed workout each week that will focus on boosting your VO2 max by having you run your intervals at roughly that pace. In your case, I’m making them a bit faster, because I’m assuming you haven’t done systematic speed work before, so you have more room for improvement than a long-time runner. It’s important to run them as close as possible to that pace to get the greatest improvement.
In these workouts, harder isn’t necessarily better. Most runners think that if they can run a workout of three interval miles in 8:00, then running them in 7:40 will be that much more of an effective workout. But it doesn’t always work that way. In these workouts, the important thing is to work right at the limits of your VO2 max. But that’s not the same as your max.
Remember, you run 5Ks very close to your VO2 max. But obviously you can run shorter races faster; you can maintain a quicker pace for 1 mile than you can for 3.1 miles. In races shorter than 5K, a bigger percentage of your energy is supplied anaerobically, independent of the oxygen that you breathe in. So it’s possible to run faster than your VO2 max for a short distance, stop running until you catch your breath, and then run anaerobically again. Unfortunately, many ambitious runners do their speed workouts this way. They run each interval as hard as they can. When they do that, they’re definitely training hard, but they’re not training very effectively. By training faster than their VO2 max pace, their workouts are more anaerobic, so they’re training their anaerobic systems. But then they go and race 5Ks, 8Ks, and 10Ks, which rely almost entirely on their aerobic systems. In their races, they’ll often not perform up to their expectations. They’ll think, “Gee, I ran three mile intervals the other night in 7:00 each, but I could only average 7:20s in the race.” To make matters worse, they’ll then often think that this means that should train that much harder, and the next week they’ll push themselves to run their mile intervals in 6:50.
See how they’re making their workouts less and less effective the farther that they stray from doing them at their VO2 max pace? Don’t let it happen to you. Train at the right intensity, and you can pass them in the races, leaving them to wonder why you’re behind them in speed workouts, but ahead of them in races.

10K Racing 101

The first step to running your best in any race is being able to cover the distance. I don’t care how fast Carl Lewis can sprint; if 5K is a long run for him, he’s not beating me (or many other people, for that matter) in that race. The longer a race is, the more being able to negotiate the distance becomes a limiting factor. That’s why 5Ks to 10Ks are so popular. You don’t have to run all that many miles each week to be able to finish the race. But when you want to do more than just finish the race, then you need to alter your training. How? Here’s a simple training principle that many runners ignore: Different races have different physiological demands; that is, they stress different systems of your body. It’s impossible to effectively train all of the systems of your body in a short period (say, a few months). Therefore, to reach your potential, you should pick a race distance that you want to focus on for a racing season, and then train to meet the physiological demands of your target race.
In other words, you can’t train to be a miler and a marathoner at the same time. The demands of the distances are so different that you have to choose, and then structure your training accordingly. If you want to be a miler, then do a lot of short, very fast speed workouts, and don’t worry about how many miles you run each week. If you want to be a marathoner, don’t worry about how fast you can run a quarter-mile; concentrate on increasing your endurance with long runs.
This focused, seasonal approach is what the best runners in the world do, but many recreational runners are all over the place. They run a 5K one weekend, a half marathon the next, then another 5K, then a 10K. That’s not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t race at a variety of distances. But within any period of a few months, you’ll do better if you focus on a group of distances that have similar physiological demands. That way, you’ll be able to train more effectively because you can concentrate on developing the type of fitness needed for your target races.

How Far Is a K?

What’s the deal with all these “K”s runners are always talking about? I mean, everyone trains all week by measuring their miles, and then they go off on the weekend and race 5Ks and 10Ks. “K” stands for kilometer, as in a five-kilometer race. A kilometer is a metric standard of distance equal to 1,000 meters. One kilometer equals .621 miles. Europe is the epicenter of the international track and field circuit. Every summer, the best runners in the world spend June through August traveling to track meets throughout Europe to race each other. World-class track meets in Europe are like the Super Bowl is here. They often sell out more than a year in advance, with some stadiums holding more than 50,000 fans.
I ran a few of these meets in the late ’70s, and it was an incredible experience. The fans are really knowledgeable. They spend most of the distance races clapping rhythmically, stomping their feet, cheering wildly. You can’t help drawing from their energy. You just don’t see that happening at track meets in this country, which are usually more sparsely attended than a shoe-sniffing contest.
As a result, European track meets set the agenda. Because tracks are measured metrically, being 400 meters around, almost all races are in metric distances. (The main exception is the mile, which fans all over the world love.) The two main distance races are 5,000 meters, or 5K, and 10,000 meters, or 10K. Usually when people talk about track races, they give the distance in meters; when they talk about the same race on the roads, they describe it in kilometers. So a 5,000 on the track is the same distance as a 5K on the roads. Wacky, eh?
Road races used to be all kinds of strange distances: 4.7 miles, 7.1 miles, 11.6 miles, whatever. People would lay out a good course, measure it, and that’s how far the race was. But when the first running boom started in the ’70s, the new breed of runner wanted more precision. Theses runners wanted to be able to compare their times from week to week to make sure that their 5K time this month was better than it had been last month. So the standard distance races from the track were transported to the roads. Next thing you knew, runners who failed algebra could instantaneously convert miles to kilometers and back again.
But what about 8Ks, which are never run on the track? Why don’t those races lengthen their course by 47 yards and call themselves five-milers? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to know what your pace in them was that way? I don’t know. Stop asking so many questions. Just run ’em.

Fartlek: Not an Intestinal Disorder

Some runners thrive on track workouts. They love the precision and the ability to objectively compare their workouts from week to week. A lot of runners get burned out when they do speed work on the track frequently, however. They just don’t like going around and around in circles. Also, many runners don’t have easy access to a track, or they have to train when it’s dark, or the track is covered with snow. How can these runners get in their fast running?
They can do fartlek. That’s not what you do on a run after having a burrito; it’s a Swedish word that translates as “speed play.” Fartlek workouts are done away from the track. Many runners prefer them because the change in scenery makes them less mentally grinding, and they find that they can concentrate of running fast.
Fartleks can be a lot less structured than speed work on the track. You might plan a fartlek on your usual five-mile course. After running easily for a mile, you might run hard to that telephone pole way down the street, and then jog easily until the end of the next block, and then pick up the pace again until the school, and so on until you had a mile left in your run, when you would run easy the rest of the way home as your cooldown. Some runners make fartleks more structured. They might head out on one of their loops and, after warming up, spend the bulk of their run alternating running hard for two minutes with running easy for two minutes.
Runners who don’t have access to a track often use this approach. (It helps to have an alarm on your watch for this type of workout.) This approach is also good when the weather is bad, and you know it would be hard to reach your usual times on the track. In this situation, do a fartlek on the roads and get in a good workout without the weather-induced slower times bumming you out.
Doing fartleks on the road is a good choice if you’re going to be running road races with hills in them. If you do all of your fast running on the track, then you might not be able to tackle the uphills in races as well. But if you’re alternating running hard for three minutes with running slow for two minutes on a road course, then you’ll go over more varied terrain. Sometimes, you might start running hard at the base of a hill. Or your recovery jog might end when you’re halfway down a hill. You’ll learn how to keep running strongly off of the flat.
Fartleks are a safer way to run fast on hills than what some runners do, which is a series of intervals of running fast up a hill, and then jogging down to recover. Sure, this workout is very effective, but it also increases your risk of injury. If you want to work on your hill running ability, do fartleks on the road, and do your long runs on hilly courses.

Speed Work Guidelines

I’ll show you what interval workouts are best for the most popular race distances.
Here are some general guidelines:

• ➤ Aim for a total of 15 to 20 minutes of hard running in your workout. This range means that the shorter your intervals, the more you should do of them. Don’t do more than 25 minutes total of hard running in a single workout.
• For intervals that take longer than five minutes to complete, allow a recovery time of about 50 percent of the time it took you to complete the interval. For example, if you run a fast mile in eight minutes, recover for four minutes before running hard again.
• For intervals that take from three to five minutes to complete, allow a recovery of about 75 percent of the time it took you to complete the interval. For example, if you run a fast half-mile in 3:30, recover for 2:30 before running hard again.
• For intervals that take less than three minutes to complete, allow a recovery time that lasts roughly as long as it took you to complete the interval. For example, if you run a fast quarter-mile in 1:40, recover for 1:40 before running hard again.
• Have the workout planned before you start. If you make it up as you go along, you’re more likely to quit too early.
• Figure out what your goal pace for an interval is in terms of time per lap, and then try to hit that pce on each lap. For example, if you want to run each of your interval miles in eight minutes, try to run each lap as close to two minutes as possible.
• Your time from interval to interval shouldn’t vary by more than 10 seconds per mile. If you run two interval miles in 8:00 each, and then a third one in 8:30, you did the first two too quickly.

How fast to run depends on how long your intervals are. I’ll show you how to figure that pace for specific workouts in the next three chapters.
Some runners add variety to their interval workouts by doing a ladder, or varying the distance of the intervals. The name comes from the visual image of going up in distance, and then coming back down by the end of the workout. For example, you might run two quarters, and then a half-mile interval, and then a mile interval to finish the climb up the ladder. Then you would come back down as you went up, with a half-mile interval and two quarters.
Ladders can help to break up a workout psychologically. You can tell yourself, “OK, just one hard mile, and then they all get shorter the rest of the workout.” If you sometimes need to coax yourself into finishing your speed work, ladders can be helpful. In general, though, it’s better to stick with intervals of one distance so that you practice pushing yourself mentally as your fatigue increases. That’s certainly how it happens in races!

Tips on Speed Work

The most popular place to do speed work is at a standard 400-meter outdoor track. Such a track is precise and unvarying, so you get objective feedback about how fast you’re running. When you do speed work on the track, you’re doing intervals.
An interval workout has a defined structure. First, you run fast for a specified distance (usually one to four laps, which equals one-quarter to one mile). You have a rest interval of a set length, expressed either in distance or time, during which you jog very easily to recover from the fast run. At the end of that interval, you run fast again. You repeat this process for the number of times you had planned at the start of your workout.
Technically, the term intervals refer to the recovery portion of the workout, but everyone has his or her own usage for this term. Some people call the fast runs the intervals, as in, “I’m going to do mile intervals today.” (I will use the term this way in this book.) Other people don’t use the intervals term at all; they call the fast runs repeats, as in, “I’m going to do half-mile repeats today.” Don’t let them confuse you. If they talk about doing intervals, that refers to the workout as a whole; it means they’re doing speed work on the track. (Some runners just say they’re “doing a workout,” meaning that they’re going to do intervals as opposed to a normal training run.)
Most runners do intervals of one to four laps. Doing intervals that are one lap long is called doing quarters, because a 400-meter track is just short of a quarter-mile long. That’s a standard distance for intervals, but for the wrong reason. Seems so logical to do one lap fast at a time, so quarters have become a regular part of many people’s training.
But unless you’re going to be racing the mile, quarters don’t help most runners as much as longer intervals do.
Quarters are too short to require any real sustained effort, so you have to do tons of them to get the benefits that you get from fewer numbers of longer intervals. When you do longer intervals, such as two laps or four laps, you’re working at the intensity that’s going to be required of you in races for a longer period of time on each interval. Running fast for a longer time provides a better stress to your system.
How do you structure an interval workout? What’s best depends on what race you’re training for. If you’re concentrating on 5Ks, then you’re better off runnin shorter intervals at a slightly higher intensity. If you’re getting ready for a half-marathon, you should do longer intervals at a bit slower pace.

On the Fast Track: Speed Work

Speed work is the best way to train the physiological systems that are stressed when you race. Your regular daily runs give you the base to cover the distance; striders help you to run fast smoothly; long runs give you a little extra boost of endurance so that you can keep running strong when you get tired. But to boost your performance in a race, you need to do some running at the pace that you hope to maintain in the race or even a little bit faster.
Running fast works in the same general way as running long does. After you do a long run, your body rebuilds itself so that it’s better prepared the next time that you try to do such a silly thing. Same thing with running fast—your leg muscles get more used to turning over quickly, your heart gets used to working at a higher rate for a sustained time, and your lungs get used to processing a lot more oxygen. Just as important, your mind gets used to putting up with a certain kind of pain, but persisting nonetheless.
When you do speed work at the right intensity, you’re going to be near your maximum effort. A little voice (OK, sometimes it’s huge) inside your head will beg you to get off this crazy ride. You’ll learn how to keep this voice at bay as you become more used to pushing yourself to keep running fast despite your fatigue. By combining the physical and mental benefits of speed work, you’ll be able to sustain a faster pace in your races. Aim for one speed workout a week when you’re building toward a race. The best ways to make speed work more bearable are to stay focused on your race goal to remind yourself why you’re doing it and (does this sound familiar?) to do speed work with others of similar ability (see the following figure). Many runners who run on their own every other day of the week seek out people to do speed workouts with. They know that they’ll be less likely to bag the workout when they’re running with others, and they know that sharing the effort with others helps the workout to pass more quickly.

Warming Up and Cooling Down

You should start all of your runs at a gentle pace and spend the first 5 to 10 minutes of the run building to your normal training pace. This gradual building allows your muscles, heart, and lungs to warm up and work better when you want to get going. You also should ease off during the last bit of a run to allow your heart rate to return to normal more gradually. When you start doing races and fast workouts like the ones in this chapter, you need to make your warm-up and cool-down much more pronounced. Most people know that they should warm up before trying to do something hard, whether it’s running fast, lifting a heavy weight, or what have you. The best way to warm up for any activity is by doing that activity at a low level of effort. So a weightlifter might do a few bench presses at a very low weight, and runners might run one to three miles very slowly before they try to run fast.
Where many runners fall short is on the other end of the workout. They neglect to do a good cool-down after a hard effort. Usually that’s because they’re exhausted, and think that more running is just going to exhaust them more. But cooling down (you’ll also hear runners call it warming down, but that’s really the opposite of what you’re doing) helps you recover more quickly from your hard efforts. When you finish a race or a hard workout, your heart rate is near its maximum, and waste products have built up in your muscles. You’re tired, so you plop down and consider yourself done for the day. The next time you run, your legs are still sore because those waste products have pooled in your muscles. A good cool-down flushes those waste products out. Cool-downs don’t have to be long. One mile is often plenty. After catching your breath, run very slowly for at least 10 minutes. A cool-down run should be at a much slower pace than your regular runs. By the end of the cool-down, I guarantee that you’ll feel better.

The Long and Short of Long Runs

When I was training to be the best marathoner in the world, my long run was the focus of my week. But you don’t have to be a marathoner to benefit from long runs, and your long runs don’t have to be 20 miles or more, like mine were. What counts as a long run is relative to how much you usually run. Marathoners need to build up to at least a couple of runs of 20 miles or more before they should try to cover 26.2 miles. But for a 5K runner, a long run could be as short as six miles.
There’s no set standard for what constitutes a long run, but here’s a good guideline: Two out of every three weeks, do a run that’s at least one and a half times longer than any other run you do that week. If your normal run is three miles, then five miles is a long run for you. Hard-core runners who log 10 miles a day would say that they’re “going long” if they went 15 miles or more. If you measure your runs by time, the same standard applies. If you usually run for half an hour, then going 45 minutes or more would be a long run for you.
Many runners do a long run every week, but you don’t have to. Two out of every three weeks is a good goal. This frequency is enough to progress in boosting your endurance, but the occasional week off gives you a chance to recoup physically and mentally. A plan that many runners use is to do a long run on weekends that they’re not racing. This plan mixes things up nicely.
What do you get from doing long runs? Obviously, marathoners need to train their bodies and minds to be out there for a long time. But every runner, even ones who aren’t going to race, should incorporate runs of varying lengths into their training. When you do a long run, you deplete your muscles’ glycogen stores more than usual. During your recovery from the long run, your muscles develop the ability to store more glycogen. This means that the next time you run as far, your muscles won’t get tired as soon. Psychologically, long runs help your usual runs seem easier. When you’re used to being out there for almost an hour once a week, then your normal 30-minute runs don’t seem as daunting. And obviously, the longer you run, the more calories you burn, and the longer you’ll burn calories at an accelerated rate after your run. Long runs are great for losing weight.
Do your long runs at your normal training pace. These runs count as hard workouts because of the increased distance, not because you maintain a faster pace. You should be able to finish your long runs at the same pace you start them. If you have to slow dramatically at the end, then you’ve prematurely depleted your glycogen stores by starting too quickly.
The key to successfully increasing your long run is progressing gradually. When you can comfortably complete a long run at a given distance, try going one mile farther the next time. This is the approach I take. After my racing season ends in the fall, I take it easy for a while. My longest run for a month will be 10 miles or so. Starting in December, I’ll go 12 miles or so once a week, and then start adding one mile per long run until I’m at my target distance.
Make your long runs special. Try to do them in a nice setting, and try to do them with friends. These factors will make these runs more enjoyable, and the miles will pass more easily.

Smooth Striding

One of the best ways to introduce fast running into your program is by doing striders. Striders are good because they’re fast enough to teach your muscles and nervous system how to run smoothly at a fast pace, but they’re so short that they don’t fatigue you. Striders don’t really count as a hard workout. Still, I think that all runners should do them once or twice a week. Striders move you through a fuller range of motion than regular moderate runs. They also feel great—it’s fun to run at close to top speed, knowing that you’re only going to be doing so for 20 seconds or so. Most runners do striders at or near the end of a normal run. When you do striders, do 8 to 12. Some runners like to do them on the straightaway of a track, so they know that they’re going about 100 yards and that the footing will be good. But you can do them anywhere you can run smoothly for 100 yards at a time on a flat, level surface. A good day to do striders is the day before a fast workout or a long run. Striders wake up your body from the usual plodding. That’s why most serious runners also do a few striders just before starting a fast workout or a race.
The key to doing striders is to stay relaxed. Watch the top sprinters in the world, and you’ll see that although they’re running faster than 25 miles per hour, their entire bodies, especially their shoulders, neck, and face, are incredibly relaxed. Shoot for this lack of tension when you do striders. Accelerate smoothly to what feels like the fastest pace you could maintain for half a mile. Try to reach that speed by halfway, hold that speed for a bit, and then gradually slow down. Wait a minute or so, and then start your next strider. Striders are a great way to improve your running form. By learning to run smoothly when you’re running at close to top speed, you become better able to do so at all speeds. On each strider, concentrate on one aspect of good running form. For example, concentrate on keeping your shoulders low and relaxed during one strider. On the next, think about maintaining a quick, smooth turnover of your feet. On the next, concentrate on keeping your hands cupped, relaxed, and passing your body at about your waist. Pretty soon, you’ve done your 8 to 12 striders.

The Hard-Easy Principle in Running Training

I told you that you progress in your running by applying a stress, allowing enough recovery time for your body to rebuild itself a little stronger, and then applying a slightly higher stress. When you start adding different types of workouts, apply that principle to your training as a whole. You want to start training by the hard-easy principle—you run faster or longer than usual on one day, and then follow that day with a run that’s shorter or slower than usual.
The hard-easy principle helps you in two connected ways. Say I have a fast track workout planned for Wednesday. On Tuesday, I’ll be sure to run very easy. This might mean running a bit less than usual, and it definitely means running at a slow pace for the entire run, no matter how good I feel. This slow pace reserves my body’s strength for the next day and allows me to have a better workout than if I had gone into it more tired. By running easy before a hard effort, you progress because you’re able to get more out of yourself on your hard days.
For at least one day after my fast workout on Wednesday, and more often two days, I’ll take it easy again. After a hard workout, it’s usually easy to go slow enough because I’m beat from the previous day’s work. Taking it easy allows me to consolidate the gains from my hard workout and helps me to avoid injury. If you run too fast or long on the day after a hard workout, then you’re risking injury or staleness later on. Your body needs that chance to rebuild itself.
Remember that the general rule is to plan an easy day the day before a hard workout and allow for at least one or two easy days after a hard workout. By hard workout I mean either a run that includes at least a couple of miles at race pace or faster or a run that’s much longer than usual. What counts as an easy day varies among runners. For some runners, an easy day means a day of no running—that’s certainly a good way to make sure you don’t work too hard! In running terms, an easy day means making sure that you can pass the talk test the entire run.
Before and after fast running, it’s OK to run your usual distance, as long as you keep the pace easy. Before and after runs that are longer than usual, you should not only keep the pace easy, but also run a shorter distance than usual. The longer runs drain your glycogen stores.
The day before, you don’t want to run too far because you might start your long run low on glycogen. The day after a long run, your muscles will still be a little low on fuel, so you’re risking injury if you ask them to go too far.

Adding More Structure to Your Body

You can run the same distance at the same pace every day for the rest of your life, and I’ll gladly call you a fellow runner. Certainly no one has ever been barred from entering a race because they hadn’t done hard workouts on the track for the last several weeks. But if you want to run faster in races and your running is at the moderate, steady pace that I’ve been urging, you need to make a few changes in your training. You’ll race better if once a week you include a few miles of running at race pace or faster. You’ll have more strength for these fast workouts if you boost your endurance by occasionally running longer than usual.
A lot of runners avoid doing this type of training because they don’t like the idea of planning their running so meticulously. They just want to get out the door and run how they feel on a given day. They think that adding more structure to their running will make it less interesting. Actually, the opposite is true. Variety is the spice of running as well as life. When you add different types of workouts to your running, then you’ve gone a long way toward finding a way to keep yourself motivated from day to day. Each run seems to have more of a purpose. If I’ve done a fast workout on the track on a Wednesday, then I look forward to running slowly on the roads on Thursday to recover. By the weekend, I’m looking forward to joining some friends for my longest run on the week, which I’ll look forward to following the next day with a short, slow run by myself, which will get me fired up for that track workout on Wednesday, and so on. I think all runners, even those who aren’t going to race, should at least dabble in the different types of workouts covered in this chapter. Including runs that are faster or longer than usual is just part of training more completely, like stretching and strengthening exercises are.

Understanding Seasonal Race

The best runners in the world take a seasonal approach to their racing year. For example, they’ll focus on cross-country races in the winter, road races in the spring, and then shorter track races in the summer. In the fall, they might run more road races or take a break from racing. Top marathoners aim for one or two peak marathons a year, using shorter races at other times of the year as part of their buildup to their next marathon. When I raced marathons, I usually made a spring marathon, such as the Boston Marathon in April, one focus. When I recovered from that, I’d run shorter races as I built back up to a fall marathon, such as the New York City Marathon. Many recreational runners could benefit from this approach, but the current racing calendar can make it tough. It’s so darned enticing! As running has become more popular, races have proliferated like Star Trek TV series—it seems that no matter where you look, you see one. Still, in parts of the country that have definite seasons, at least a bit of logic remains in what races are offered when. After all, a marathon is tough enough by itself. You don’t need a hot summer day to add your work.
Here’s when some of the most popular races are most often held:

• Although 5K road races are held pretty much year round, you might do better in them in warmer months, because it can be tough to get going quickly when it’s cold.
• Although 8K to 10K road races are also held year round, their popularity peaks in spring and fall because even 10K can get too long in hot weather.
• Because runners build toward marathons and concentrate on longer runs in the cooler months, 10-milers and half-marathons are mostly held in the fall and winter.
• Marathons are mostly held in the fall, with the spring being the second most popular time. Summer is out of the question in many places.