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.