Pace & running form

Train your self, not by yourself. You deserve company and the shared effort makes the time pass, as well as enriching your run. But your training has no competitors, it’s your training. Besides, you’ll quickly discover that we all respond differently to this type of training and each person needs their own pace/space to do that. While we are striving to run a race at the end of this training cycle, you should remember that it is a training cycle. What do I mean by that? I mean that you should set up your training so that you love training for training’s sake or running for running sake (I know you do not love racing yet, and maybe you will or will not love racing). We are going to make running a practice for you and to define this I quote Danny Dryer, “If you see running as only as sport, you’re limiting yourself to getting only the physical benefits. Making an activity a practice is a process of self mastery. You are no longer simply practicing that activity; you use it to learn about, understand, and master yourself as well as the activity.” That idea will make you better at nearly anything and it is the way people benefit from meditation, learn a new vocation, or tackle the largest of personal goals. While learning to run will be far from the largest accomplishment you ever achieve – I’d argue along with Mr. Dryer that you stand to lean more than how to keep yourself fit and get ready for a race - if you make your running a practice.

So if we are going to tackle some understanding of pacing and running technique we need to begin with what adapts first in our bodies to running.

Cardio system – in charge of keeping you going it is very versatile and will keep rising to the challenge if you apply changes at an appropriate pace so that it can keep up.

What next? Muscle systems: all of those supporting and accessory muscles will be adapting and with your strengthening and stretching program this happens even faster - just lift two days a week and stretch at least as many days as you run.

What next? Tendons, ligaments and connective tissue adapt the slowest. Keep in mind that this tissue does not get the same blood supply as other parts of your body and while tendons and ligaments are very strong, some of us have firsthand knowledge of how long they take to heal. These tissues need the longest to adapt to any sport, including running, so take your time.

Pace is relative from one runner to the next but pace can tell us a lot about your individual achievements and adaptations as time goes by. It can also tell us a lot about over training, fatigue, or where and when that injury began. Hey, sometimes we learn via hindsight but I hope that you and I can use your training notes to put together a picture of how you are progressing rather than looking back to identify your injury. We want to be proactive.
For all the work you are doing you deserve good notes.
· Writing down a few things about what went well and what didn’t allows you to learn over time what works best for you.
· This same record is a confidence building tool that verifies you are in fact improving and putting in the work.
· Keeping your times and distances as you progress in your training allows you to evaluate progress quantitatively and keeps you from going too fast or over training.
· If you can justify the cost (they are now in the range of $70-$200) a heart monitor is also a great gift/tool for self evaluation that will keep you from running yourself too hard.

If you vary your routes from a list of good ones you can avoid boredom and see new places. Varying routes makes you a stronger runner by varying terrain also. Over time this will make you faster too. You may always ask runners for new routes and good ones to add to your list. Some of our class has already started using a map program online to chart and share routes; allowing you to find new places to run. I am adding additional routes to a website called walkjogrun which is listed on the site as a smartphone compatible product but it also works on your desktop or other device and you can make routes without using your car (the old school method is to drive or bike the route, just to get the distance.) New routes can be motivating and will help you vary your training and pace over time.

Warm up – even if it is only a minute you need to allow the joints and muscles to get moving slowly. Walk 3-5 minutes before your workout or if you cannot do this at least run very slowly for the first 3-5 minutes of you workout and get the groove going. I like my route to start a few blocks from the house and this makes me walk a few minutes before I start running. You also can begin thinking about the pace, goal, technique you’ll use to get it all accomplished.

Your pace should be at a rate which allows you to relax. If you are not relaxed it will be difficult to run with clean, efficient form. Exercise is tough enough, right? So make sure that you travel slowly enough that you can think about technique and begin to relax into that technique. People often think that they need to travel at a particular speed in order to call it running and you will see that we are more concerned about your heart rate and level of perceived effort than your actual ground speed. Of course, heart rate and level of perceived effort are very personalized and that is where you come into the training plan process to really make it work. I can help you plan workouts but you are the speedometer for them and the final say (refer to – “you are an experiment of one”.)
Here are a few things to think about that save energy for each run.

You are headed in a particular direction and we want as many of your body parts as possible headed in that same direction you are traveling. Sounds simple but many of us have varying alignments. So from the top:
Your head should be upright and you can easily see out to the horizon. Think about a long spine and the back of your neck being long as well so that when you take a breath, it goes straight into your lungs. Relax your neck and shoulders by breathing rhymic-ly & deeply.
Please take not of this rhythm and tune into it because over time you will notice that it changes and this breathing rhythm will alter as soon as your pace does. Every engine needs air. Keep your eyes on the horizon and imagine the back of your neck being long and straight. This relaxes shoulders and opens the airway giving all the air a straight route to where it is needed.

Arms should swing naturally and swing straight ahead and back. Do not cross your body with your arms. Smile occasionally to relax neck and shoulders (folks will wonder what you’re up to.) Hands are loose and relaxed, form “O’s” if you need to.
When we get to your hips, think about your pelvis being level and parallel with the ground. What I mean by this is that your standing posture may show a tendency to tilt your hips either forward or back but if you stand up straight and tall you can align the pelvis so that the top of its “bowl” is not tipped fore or aft. In order for this to happen your knees will be very slightly bent and your ankles will be very slightly flexed. You want to ease any strain on your back and allow for easy breathing, again – relax.
Stand up for a minute and while standing straight and tall, close your eyes, now jump up in the air with a little hop and as you land on the ground – freeze. This frozen posture that you land in, is a balanced position (if you fell over just now, you were not balanced and will need to repeat the experiment, sorry) this is a very good basic stance for running.
Another thought on posture. If you are standing still in a balance way as we have discussed above, can you see the tops of your feet? If not you may have your hips too far forward, or ankles flexed too much. Try to have that body all centered over your feet and yet a little flexed. We will demonstrate some of this posture in seminar.
Seek to not land on a straightened leg when you travel down to road, have this flexed knee that you experienced a minute ago. Flex the ankles as well so that you are flowing a bit.

Are you using all of your energy to move forward? Look at the horizon and see if it bounces – it should not. Keep feet low and smoothly moving forward to stop upward travel or change it to forward travel. Arms, feet, knees and other body parts should all be moving forward as best as you are able, so practice this and have a friend look at your running form. Moving economically is all about technique, moving slowly enough to practice and to stay relaxed and it gets easier the more you try it.

We use our lower legs to catch us from falling forward. DO NOT push off the ground with calves and toes while running as this will cause injuries to shins, calves, Achilles tendons and possibly elsewhere. No running on your tip-toes – even when going uphill keep feet are landing smoothly and flat. Think about picking up your heels, peeling them up from off the road starting at the back and finishing towards the toe.

Most of us land on our heels and knees should be bent. Do not take a large or unnaturally big step but think about your feet landing right underneath you or just slightly in front of you. Stand up straight or with a very slight forward lean. Your feet should land on the ground quietly and as you listen for your breathing see if you can hear you feet as well. The elite runners run faster because their “turn-over” is 2-3x what ours is. They do not have a longer stride necessarily but their feet strike the ground 3x more often in a minute than ours. When you hear them go by at that pace it sounds like typing, pitter pat, pitter pat, very quiet.

Now for the effort part – we want to get you a workout and start the cardio system on adapting but we balance that with moving slowly enough to practice technique and to stay relaxed.

Heart rate: You can take your pulse in the morning before getting out of bed to determine your resting heart rate in beats per minute. Use the artery in your wrist or neck (just beside your windpipe) and quietly count for 30 seconds and multiply by 2.

The traditional formula from your book: Your maximum heart rate (MHR) will be 220 minus your age = MHR seeks to never exceed this number.
Your MHR X .60 gives you your training level for 60% effort.
Your MHR x .95 gives you the 95% effort number; the highest heart rate you would reach in race conditions.
Most of our training builds endurance to get us to race distance and so we train at 65-85% of our MHR. This is aerobic training and is the type that offers infinite improvement physiologically.
Your text refers to another way to calculate your heart rate that is slightly different than the old standard which will give you a little higher overall allowable rate see page 112 for the Karvonen formula – there are many ways to calculate but what if you do not have a monitor to track your heart rate? Believe it or not – most pro athletes start the season with a monitor and once the tune into where they are at for the season they leave it at home because they are so good at sensing “perceived effort”.
Perceived effort (PE) is the feeling of “how much of my total energy is being spent running right now?” or how close is this to the fastest I can go (100% effort)

Easy pace= 65-70% PE you can have a complete conversation, feels like a 3-4 on a 10 scale of effort, you may run 3 strides per inhale, 3 strides per exhale

Aerobic pace=75-85% PE you can still speak in sentences, feels like a 5-6 effort on a 10 scale, 2 inhale or 2 inhale-1 exhale per 3 strides. Some call this tempo pace.

Threshold pace= 88-92% PE you - speak a –few-words-at a- time, feels like a 7-8 hard effort, breathing in & out on every stride. Some call this interval pace – you cannot hold this one for very long.

If you feel the need to run faster during a workout save it for the second half of your run. Running the second 50% slightly faster is know as a negative split or a progression run and trains the body for race day by building endurance. If you start out faster in the first half of your run and then tire…you teach the body to slow down instead. Better still, for 90% of your workouts (we’ll talk about speed workouts in a few months) start at the pace you plan to finish at, which means keep a slow steady rhythm that reflects that PE 3-4 or 65-70% or your target heart rate. You’ll not only enjoy the run more but you’ll feel more like you could run the next day.

Most programs wait 8 weeks before adding any hill repeats or speed work on the track – it is better and OK to seek to run negative splits during runs as an easy endurance builder. First you develop a running form that feels natural to you – speed work will later cause your body to subtly improve upon that form.

Aerobic training – the athlete can infinitely develop their potential in this area – it is not yet known what a human’s maximum oxygen handling capacity is… and a number of coaching experts agree that this is the zone where you should spend the majority of your time. The only trouble is that is can be easy to creep out of this zone and into the anaerobic zone without knowing it. Pay attention to your pace, your breathing rhythm and what it “feels like” in terms of perceived effort so that you do not wear yourself down prematurely.

Anaerobic training – the ability to perform work under oxygen deficit - this ability is finite and can only be developed to a point. Training at your near maximum heart rate, at or above threshold pace is anaerobic training. “running—so fast—that—you can—hardly—speak—might—vomit…” is an anaerobic pace and will leave you feeling wasted for your next run.

Here is another great tool that you should consider as a conservative means to keep yourself in the aerobic zone & you’ll need to be A) serious enough to really want to improve – as it requires restraint B) you’ll need a heart monitor and the ability to use grade school math.
from philmaffetone.com
The 180 Formula

To find your maximum aerobic heart rate:

1. Subtract your age from 180 (180 - age).
2. Modify this number by selecting one of the following categories:
1. If you have or are recovering from a major illness (heart disease, any operation, any hospital stay) or on any regular medication, subtract 10.
2. If you have not exercised before, you have exercised but have been injured or are regressing in your running, subtract 5.
3. If you have been exercising for up to two years with no real problems and have not had colds or flu more than once or twice a year, subtract 0.
4. If you have been exercising for more than two years without any problems, making progress in competition without injury, add 5.

For example, if you are 30 years old and reasonably fit you would fall into category 2c: 180 - 30 = 150.This is your maximum aerobic heart rate for base training. For efficient base building, you should train at or below this level throughout your base period. [In this example 150 would be the runners 3-4 pace and the bulk of all their running.]

Why does Dr. Maffetone say this, and why is his number so low - even lower than the traditional method? Less is more. You need to feel motivated to run on the day that you do and over training by going too far, too fast, running somebody else’s pace, running too many days can really leave you unprepared for a good effort on your training day. Dr. Maffetone argues that many of us inadvertently train some in the anaerobic zone, feel stronger or faster than we really are and then fade due to aerobic deficiency syndrome. Dr. Maffetone gives a great analogy for steady progress in your cardio development in his book The Maffetone Method. [If you are] “jogging one mile at a heart rate of 140 bpm, initially in 12 minutes…a month later the same one mile jog at the same rate takes 11.5 minutes; two months later, 10.5 minutes; and three months later, 10 minutes. This would indicate good progress and also implies increased fat burning.” This allows development of your aerobic system and avoids the tendency to go out and try to overdevelop the anaerobic system. Many great coaches have suggested similar strategies but Dr. Maffetone has a great formula to keep you honest and measure the results. I like that for a lot of reasons, our culture thinks that if you’re not out dusting the competition you’re not running fast enough. This is slow, steady, phenomenal progress in cardiac capability and efficiency and will make your daily running seem effortless in the long run.

From another great coach – sometime called the father of jogging, and guide to more Olympic athletes than any other in history, “A distance runner employing a moderate work rate, can get enough oxygen to economically burn fat & glycogen. This enables ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to be rebuilt as fast as it is being used and the trained runner, working aerobically, can continue for several hours – in the case of the elite ultra runner, for day after day of steady aerobic output.
What happens when the runner sprints or shifts his work-rate into the anaerobic phase is that oxygen is no longer absorbed fast enough for the fat & glycogen breakdown. The body will then cheat & break down glycogen without oxygen.” Arthur Lydiard

By using a reasonable pace to develop aerobic capacity and refine good running form you will see gains faster. It is not a fast process, but it is faster in the sense that you will remain uninjured and have the capacity to maintain steady progress. Your running economy is as important as good fitness toward making you a faster more effortless runner. That said, we try to go farther before faster and the father of running states “why” best.

“Most people never realize what their potential is or understand the simple truth that it is based upon their ability to assimilate, transport and use oxygen. If we can appreciate that and then improve that ability, we lay a better foundation on which to build the technical skills and reach a tireless physical & mental state in which we can employ those skills & techniques much better and much longer” Arthur Lydiard

"Try to run each day in such a way that you would want to run again the next day…"