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.

How to Find a Race

Where can you find details on races in your area? The best place to start is with a local running club. Don’t worry if you don’t know anyone in the club or even how to contact them. If you don’t know any runners in your area who you can ask about local clubs, call the national office of the Road Runners Club of America at (703) 836-0558. Ask for the name and number of the club nearest to you. Once you know the club in your area, give it a call. Most clubs maintain a hotline that has a recording of upcoming club races.
If you know of a running store near you, visit it. Ask the salespeople (who are usually local runners) if they know where you can find information about local races. Many areas have local running publications that do a fantastic job of listing all of the upcoming races in a locale. Most running stores are also depositories for race flyers. Look through them to see if any of them interest you.
If you have Internet access, next stop is the World Wide Web. Appendix B, “Resources for Runners,” lists some of the best running Web sites. Because of the nature of this book, most of those Web sites are national in scope, but many have links to local running Web sites. There, you can often find race listings.
The two top national running magazines, Runner’s World and Running Times, list upcoming races in their calendar sections. Of the two, Running Times maintains a more in-depth calendar, but neither can possibly list all of the 15,000 races that are held in the United States every year. Their calendars are handy resources, however, if you’re going to be traveling and want to sneak in a race while you’re away.

Over Hill, Over Dale

The most elemental of races is cross-country. These races take place on grass and dirt, usually through woods, on golf courses, or in other pleasant settings. Cross-country races are usually from 5K to 10K in length and are usually held in the fall. Like track races, they’re usually put on by local running clubs and have, at most, a couple of hundred runners. They usually are low-key affairs with no T-shirts and a small entry fee. Crosscountry races are often team races, and many people like that aspect of them. Times are pretty meaningless in cross-country, so runners concentrate on feeling that they ran strongly.
Building on this attitude is the growing number of trail races. These races are usually much longer than standard cross-country races; sometimes they’re as long as 50 miles or more. In spirit, these races are more akin to marathons, as most of the participants care more about finishing honorably than getting a certain time.
Training for and racing cross-country can do a lot to help you as a runner on other surfaces. You learn to run strongly over uneven terrain, and you become a better hill runner. Kenyan men have won the team title at the World Cross-Country Championships every year since 1986, and every year they produce an astonishing percentage of the top track and road runners in the world.

Get on Track

Races held on the track can be hard to find once you’re out of school. But especially during the summer, many local running clubs will put on one or more all comer’s meets. In some parts of the country, you also can find indoor track meets open to all runners during the winter. These track meets are usually sparsely populated events, with less than 100 runners taking part. There are no T-shirts, and the entry fee is nominal. All comer’s meets have an intimate atmosphere that’s hard to match at a big road race.
Whereas road races are often about doing the best you can on the course you find yourself on, there’s no such mystery in track races. Seen one, you’ve seen them all. Because of this universality of tracks, most runners are going to be there to chase after a time goal. As a result, many runners are intimidated by track races because they associate racing on the track with something that only really fast people do. That’s a shame, because I think all racers should experiment with different types of races occasionally. Track races are usually shorter than road races; 5K (12.5 laps of the track) is usually the longest race. Many runners gravitate to the longer distances because that’s what’s available on the road. But by running track races in addition to road races, you might find that you have a talent for speed-based events such as the mile. Track races are also a good place to develop a strong sense of pace. Because there’s no variation from lap to lap, you do best by getting in a rhythm. Learning how to get in a rhythm can help you on flat road courses as well. You also develop the ability to concentrate when you compete on the track frequently because churning lap after lap can get so boring.