Author: Modern Athlete

In a world where mileage is king, always remember the short guys: The recovery run, the easy run and the high intensity workout. – BY RAY ORCHISON

A week of training should be made up of far more than just long slow running, or LSD as it is known. LSD has many benefits, such as developing aerobic capacity and endurance, and it also prepares the mind to go the distance come race day, but this is where runners go wrong. The focus tends to shift entirely to LSD with not much room for anything else in the week.

You don’t get fast by only running LSD – there’s a reason the middle word of LSD is SLOW. LSD runs should be done at Two Oceans and Comrades race pace, which will be slower than your marathon pace, and after two or three months of this, it will take a notable effort in the second half of the year to get some speed back into your legs.

GO SHORT

The good news is that shorter runs will help you rediscover your speed, and they have a number of benefits which supplement LSD’s:
• They teach the body to run in a fatigued state.
• They add bulk to the overall mileage of the week.
• They enable speed maintenance.

There are three types of Short Runs:

1. THE RECOVERY RUN: This easy run is usually done the day after a hard workout or long run, and the purpose behind the recovery run is not always recovery. It can certainly aid recovery by relieving stiffness, but the real benefit is teaching the body to run in a state of depletion.

Imagine you’re in a peak building week, running consecutively for six days. You’ve had two hard days and a long run on Sunday. Instead of taking your normal rest day on Monday, you get up and head out for a short ‘recovery’ run of 30 minutes. You will be doing this run on tired legs and with low energy reserves. This will teach your body to run through fatigue, something you’re sure to experience as you make your way up Constantia Nek or Polly Shortts.

Limit the recovery run to between 15 and 45 minutes. Doing it without a watch will help you avoid the temptation of running too fast, and be careful not to push your body too far and end up injured or sick! Make sure that you still allow yourself adequate recovery on a weekly basis.

2. THE EASY RUN: When it comes to Two Oceans and Comrades, the easy run makes up the bulk of the weekly training and should be done at Two Oceans and Comrades race pace – a pace that feels like you could run all day.

3. THE HIGH INTENSITY WORKOUT: This is usually a short but hard effort workout, like intervals or fartlek, and is taxing on the body. If you have never done these types of workouts, do not add them to your training just before a major race. Once you’ve recovered from your race, you can then reduce overall mileage and gradually introduce one light session of high intensity a week and build from there. I suggest you always keep a light session of high intensity work in your week, so that you maintain the speed developed in preceding months.

KEEP IT BALANCED

Each short run has its place in training, depending on season and upcoming races. Avoid trying to find that one ‘magical’ workout, rather keep a balance of training types as you progress.

Many of us do the same thing over and over when it comes to training, and thus we make the same mistakes over and over, too. So check out these top 10 training tips and make sure you get the most out of your training.

1 PLAN AHEAD: Approach the season with a plan. Getting out of bed each morning and thinking to yourself, “What should I do today, 800m repeats or 60 minutes easy?” is a recipe for disaster. Plan the structure of your training, and think about the races you want to do and what goals you want for each. Identify which races you are going to use as training runs and which races you are going to race.

2 RECOVERY IS KEY: Rest days should be the first aspect you build into your season plan. The purpose behind training is to take your body to new levels through a constant cycle of stress and adaptation. If you’re only ever stressing your body and not allowing time for adequate recovery, then your body never adapts and you end up injured, or never reaching your full potential.

3 LISTEN TO YOUR BODY: The older you are in training years – for example, if you’ve been running for three years then your training age is three – the more aware you become of your body. Your body sends you signals all day long, and the more experienced you are, the more you become aware of those signals. If you’re pushing yourself too hard for too long, your body begins to give warning signals, like niggles, signs of a cold, etc., indicating that you need more recovery. If you ignore these warnings, you will end up injured or sick. Having said that, you will learn to distinguish between the body crying out for recovery and your mind trying to take the easy route. In the case of the mind, fight it!

4 ALTERNATE HARD AND EASY DAYS: Continuous hard training will wear you down. Alternate hard days with easy days in order to benefit fully from the hard training.

5 ADD QUALITY: You only get faster by running faster. By gradually introducing quality sessions into your training programme, you will begin to train the body to run faster at different distances.

6 TRACK DOES NOT MEAN FLAT OUT: At school, a track session usually involved some teacher with a whistle and a stopwatch shouting at you to run faster. That is not a track session. Track sessions are designed to introduce your muscles and energy systems to new varying paces, and this never equates to a flat-out session.

7 THE KNOCK-ON EFFECT OF YOUR 10KM TIME: If you can teach yourself to run faster over shorter distances before building up to longer distances, then once you start introducing longer runs you’ve enhanced not only your running form but your running efficiency. A faster 10km time leads to a faster 21km time, which in turn leads to a faster 42km time, which ultimately leads to a faster Comrades and beyond.

8 YOU DON’T GET FASTER BY RUNNING FURTHER: Countless runners finish Comrades each year with new motivation to go back the following year with the goal of showing Comrades who is boss, and invariably the plan to achieve this involves more mileage. Distance running makes you slower, and as a result you don’t get faster by simply doing more mileage. You get faster when you adhere to the previous seven tips!

9 CORRECT MUSCLE IMBALANCES: We’re not the physically active bushmen in the Kalahari – most of us sit behind computers or drive in cars all day. Our modern lifestyles leave us weak in the areas we need the most when it comes to running: Glutes, calves and core. So, in order to avoid injury, focus on and strengthen these areas before introducing quality and distance to your training.

10 INTRODUCE CHANGES GRADUALLY: Any change in your training means that your joints and muscles have to adapt to the new session, shoe, running form or strength session. If you introduce the changes too quickly, or change too much, you will invariably pay the price with injury, so build up to it gradually.

If you follow all these tips, your chances of running smoothly and smashing your goal times or PBs will improve greatly. Now get to it!

Just over 4000 adventure seekers gathered at the picturesque Lievland and Warwick Wine Estates in Stellenbosch on Saturday, 17 and Sunday, 18 October 2015 to partake in the finale of the 2015 IMPI Challenge presented by Mitsubishi Motors.

Trevor Lagerwey and Chantel Nienaber set the course ablaze on Sunday securing victory in the IMPI Elite Race in impressive times of 1:46:12 and 02:13:20 respectively.

According to Lagerwey, he had a good race. “The race started at a fast pace with the trail runners taking the lead. I just stuck behind them. As the race progressed I managed to catch and stay ahead of Antoine Van Heerden. I only caught Chad Gordon close to the end. He was struggling with an obstacle. This is my fourth IMPI Elite Race, winning feels awesome. I’m a heavier guy, so I’m good at the heavier obstacles, but struggle on the run. I have been working hard on that though. FITstrong, the gym that I own, and IMPI go hand in hand. It’s the most balanced sport. You need to be both mentally and physically strong. It’s part of my life. I love it.”

Antoine Van Heerden came in second, while Chad Gordon finished third.

“I love coming back to the IMPI Elite Race,” said Nienaber. “I really enjoyed today. The first 5km is always intense as this is when you test the competition. The last 10km was the most enjoyable as I knew that I had a strong lead and didn’t have to worry too much about being overtaken. The IMPI Challenge is good, clean fun. You never have to worry about your own safety. You do have to put in solid, hard work. It’s tough, but attainable. Running across the final obstacle, the Lily Pads, is always such a cool feeling. It’s an awesome moment. I’ll definitely be back next year.”

Carina Marx came in second, while Ashley Harding finished third.

According to Pieter Du Plessis, IMPI Challenge Race Director, the 2015 IMPI Challenge season was met with great excitement. “The vibe in Gauteng and Cape Town has been amazing with entrants of all ages joining in on the fun. Exciting new developments in 2016 will see the IMPI Challenge boasting with a new venue in Gauteng as well as a reintroduction to Durban. Event dates and venues will be announced shortly. For now all that I can say is that the 2016 season will be bigger and better.”

Prize money was allocated to the top three finishers in the men’s and women’s IMPI Elite Race. Trevor and Chantel each took home an impressive R10 000, while runners up secured R5000 and R2500.

To add more excitement, the first male and female IMPI Elite finisher that was 45 years of age and/or older took home a well-deserved R2000 prize.

The IMPI Challenge supports the Pebbles Project. Thanks to generous IMPI Challenge entrants, Event Organisers were able to handover a whopping amount of shoes to this impressive organisation.

Entries for the 2016 IMPI Challenge Gauteng#1, Cape Town #1 and Durban #1 will open in November. For more information on the IMPI Challenge presented by Mitsubishi Motors contact 076 772 3735, email [email protected] or visit www.impichallenge.co.za

You’ve been running for a number of years and PB’s seem to be a thing of the past, so you tell yourself that “Age is catching up with me,” but a simple change to your training pace can set you back on the road to new PB’s. – BY RAY ORCHISON

When we first start running, we normally notice huge improvements in performance quite quickly, and with minimal effort, but as we age in running terms, and become stronger, faster and more experienced, most runners begin to find that improvements become smaller, and a much greater effort is required to better previous times. In most cases this is not because our training deteriorates, but rather because as we improve, we move closer and closer to our own personal maximum performance level.

The question then is what do we need to do to push new levels of performance once we reach this stage of our running career? The answer may lie in polarised training, which means to train at either a low or a high intensity, with very little training time spent in-between. This is by no means a new concept, but one that is often ignored by veteran runners, because as we become more experienced, we often fall into the trap of thinking that to get faster we need to train faster… all the time. While the first part of that statement is true, the second part, “all the time,” is not.

When the gap between our easy run pace and our fast interval or race pace is small, we find ourselves in no-man’s land, where we don’t run slowly and we don’t run fast, and end up with poor, sub-potential performances. The way to correct this is with polarised training: On easy days you run slower and on quality days you run faster. In other words, you need to get slower (on easy days) in order to get faster during your race.

FOLLOW YOUR HEART
The easiest way to ensure that you don’t get stuck in no-man’s land is to train with a heart rate monitor to keep your training primarily in two zones. Zone 1 is the easy zone, where you should do the bulk of your training, somewhere between 70-80% of your weekly mileage at between 60-70% of max heart rate. The second is zone 3, somewhere between 15-20% of your weekly mileage at between 80-100% of heart rate. Zone 2 is no-man’s land, which is run between 5-15% of your weekly total and at a heart rate between 70-80%.

(If you don’t use a heart rate monitor, run on perceived effort. Easy runs should feel easy and you should be able to have a conversation, while zone 3 is the anaerobic zone and should feel very hard. Interval sessions on the track or time trials would fall into this zone.)

If you’ve never done hard, fast sessions, then gradually start by introducing one session per week into your training schedule. I suggest that you start with four to eight short, fast hill repeats. These will push you into zone 3, but are not as hard on the body as a fast track session. Hill repeats are an introduction to track work and help strengthen your body to better handle the stress of a track session. Once you’re stronger, then gradually introduce a track session, like 4x200m at 3km race pace with a 200m slow recovery jog between repeats.

As you get stronger and faster, start to increase the number of repetitions and pace. With more time spent in zones 1 and 3, and less time spent in zone 2, you should start to see some improvement in your performance.