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.