Senior Advanced Running

Moving on, reaching that next plateau, achieving your long term goals and fulfilling your potential.

Year on year is a learning curve and each person is an individual on their own special journey of discovery, looking to achieve their possibly elusive full potential.

The greatest percentage of people do not achieve their full potential, why do you think this is so ?

Well below are some areas of development that could be missing for various reasons. Be it poor commitment, lack of motivation, career , education or family time limitations, not looking after your body health sufficiently, or maybe you go off on a tangent of training that is not suitable to your goals.  And then you accept year on year a level of mediocrity not suitable for your goals.

With coaching help, it is possible to work together to get as near as possible to your goals and dreams by showing motivation and employing smart training and racing decisions.

Commitment

It should be self explanatory, but to do yourself justice at the level of attainment you desire, then you have to create the right personal environment to be able to carry this out, and if you cannot do this, then you have to accept a more mediocre level.

I am talking about lifestyle, sleep and rest patterns, nutrition, core stability and training in the correct, consistent but progressive way suitable for you.

Endurance Base, Consistency and Progression

The cornerstone of any advanced distance running programme, is consistency of training with minimal upsets and breaks and to build a progressively higher endurance base, from which harder sessions can be attempted.

This is achieved by means of periods of planned training with a major racing goal in mind and balancing various kinds of training in the process of building to your goal.

Building your endurance base, Long steady distance runs, running at tempo, steady state, recovery runs, fartlek, hill work, sprinting, interval and repetition running, along with conditioning, core stability, rest, low key races with a mix of distances on varying surfaces, event specific training focusing on your next major goal.

These are probably all familiar to the advanced runner along with concepts such as aerobic and anaerobic work, and maximal oxygen aerobic capacity, but the beauty of good coaching is in the way they are applied and adapted to the individual in a balanced form and not just a matter of mixing various runs during the week.

Practicality and Common Sense

My  coaching is based on a natural and practical approach to running, not theories or philosophies as there are many scatterbrained theories on training, but serious runners don't need theories; they need what has been proven in the real world and although science based answers can be used in explanation, it does not have to be rocket science in it’s application..

It is not possible to reach ultimate potential without first establishing enough of a lifetime base to make your training count when you become physically mature, 

I don’t believe in the quick fix approach of banging out hard intervals, many times throughout each and every week, it simply doesn't work for a  progressive approach to peaking for your main goals.

I feel that a Senior runner absolutely must develop the ability to train upto 100 miles  or more per week by the peak of their running career. in order to achieve full potential and realize their goals, any less than this commitment is opting for a lesser level of achievement and a more socially objective way of training with it’s own particular rewards, but not achieving what you are fully capable of.

• .   Strength and Resistance

• Training regularly on hills in various ways I feel, can make the difference between you being a racer or just a runner.  There are various ways to progress this.

• Event Specific Training

• Counting down to your main goal race, it is of the utmost necessity to carry out some training at your event specific pace.

• There are various ways to do this, dependent on what distance your main goal race is, but also getting used to race pace on the same race surface is needed towards the end.

• Racing at lower key events on various surfaces, at different distances and on a fairly regular basis, is very much necessary for honing those racing skills.

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• Raising your performance threshold

• If you have a major goal or annual goal as opposed to goals for different periods of the year or seasons, then  your racing and training structure of phases, cycles and peaks will vary somewhat. And along with that will be the intensity and purpose of various training runs or races. Whether you ease down, taper or train through some of them, also what distance for any build up races.

• I won’t venture into macrocycle, mesocycle and microcycles, as I prefer to just talk in goals, periods, phases and training blocks.

• But like all endurance athletes, particularly for long distances, you distinctly need to have your endurance base building where 80% is easy / steady runs, and 20% is faster running 

• As approx 10% high end aerobic running at tempo ranges below 10k pace and 10% at a faster anaerobic speed of endurance speed intervals and reps along with shorter and faster  speed.

• Later these percentages change as more tempo running is carried out, repetitions and interval running varied, hills introduced and races are run.

• Speed would not change from approx 10%, for most above 800m runners, but tempo running in it’s various levels or forms, could go to 10, 15, 20 or 25% of your weekly total, depending on what stage in a competition phase you are at.

• Easy recovery runs and steady maintenance runs, are slower than steady state or marathon pace, and with a regular long steady run (LSD), 

• Tempo running in it’s various ventilatory levels, (lactate turnpoint LTP) in other words threshold pace to marathon pace (steady state), or even broken into blocks with a short interval recovery, then run at sub tempo of your 10k pace.

• Obviously whether you are training for short distances or a marathon, this dictates how far you eventually go up to for time or distance at tempo, also leading up to the competition phase, then you can be nearer to LTP, but also nearer to marathon pace means that you can fit more in at faster tempos and recover more easily.

• The speed training would usually be at 5k pace in the early stages, but include repetitions on good grass, trail  or track, fartlek, strides, short hill sprints etc. But also include sessions with 3k and 1500m pace.

• The next phase or smaller mesocycle, would introduce more faster running at tempo paces and strength or resistance, so would involve more hills and an increase in running at various tempo ratio’s.

• When you get into your main competition phase the ratio could be nearer to 70-74%: 16-20%: 10%

• The increasing intensity of the speed training will sharpen you for your peak, but too much cannot be maintained for long because it brings you on quickly, risking peaking before your goal race, but also can risk something breaking down health or injury wise if prolonged too far.

• So in essence, the training components needed for successful progressive distance racing are shown below.

Volume & intensity, when and where is an individual thing, which you and your coach have to discover and apply, if you want to move on from mediocre levels of your racing potential.

Elite training sessions, runs and general necessities for progression

What are the common themes that are present with most of our top internationals across the decades of late 1900’s  and early 2000’s

• • Nearly all Started young in short races, and were used to regular varied training when young. And all raced cross country when younger.

  • Were used to a training progression in the year and annually, but always had a good winter endurance case build up and ran recovery runs as a matter of course while training twice a day on most days.

  • All raced cross country seasons including championships. And all raced often across varying distances, whether road, XC or trail / fell.

  • All raced the club road relays. and road 5k upwards, and even  marathon runners raced 5000 and 10,000m on the track. and all  had long runs each weekend.

  • Most 800m runners trained 75 -  90mpw in the winter months,

  • 1500/5k runners summer  and winter 80-100mpw.

  • 1500/5k runners winter 90 -110 mpw.

  • 10k to Marathon runners even in summer work towards  100-120mpw.

  • 10k to Marathon runners winter 110-140mpw.

So in essence, and to repeat, the training components needed for successful progressive distance racing upto your full potential, are shown below.

Your actual Volume & intensity, and when and where, is an individual thing, which you and your coach have to discover and apply, if you want to move on from mediocre levels of your racing potential.

• Regular long runs

• Fast distance runs at around the anaerobic threshold. Tempo @ LT, HM or marathon.

• Hill running, as on long off-road runs, long hill tempo reps, short reps, fartlek, short hill sprints

• Intervals or repetition work, in various and numerous forms at 1500m to 10k pace

• Speed work, also varied in it’s form. short reps, fartlek, short sprints and strides, hill sprints

• Event specific pace training, at your race pace practice, 

• Recovery runs, easy with your pace irrelevant.

• Gym sessions (can be done at home), strength based to gentler flexibility / mobility & yoga

All these are worked into the various training periods and phases, towards your peak goal.

Preparation Periods (1 & 2), Competition periods (3 & 4), recovery (5).

1. General Preparation Phase , your endurance base build.

2. Specific Preparation Phase, strength & conditioning, fast high end aerobic running, leading into some anaerobic reps.

3. Pre-Competition Phase,  low key races, speed-work, and event specific pace training.

4. Main Competitions Phase

5. Recovery Transition

Enjoy the process and journey

By David Rodgers 2014