The mix workout

Why do we do this training program stuff?

Arthur Lydiard is one of the fathers of the running movement who was a New Zealander of modest origin that used keen intuition and mileage based testing to produce great gains in humans of average athletic ability & also in that process, coach more Olympic champions than any other coach.

While gains are hard won over time the runner needs patience above nearly all else in order to see their greatest personal advancements. They also need a varied workout to expand beyond their base potential. This is largely due to the idea that aerobic capacity is not limited the way anaerobic capacity is - workload under oxygen deprivation can be expanded but has finite and tested limits.

Lydiard coined the adage “train, don’t strain” as a way to promote intense and profound development of aerobic capacity and thus stood the world on its head - as his athletes ran over-distance to the point that they would never tire in competition. Yet he started them slowly and gradually increased the loads to get these results. Much of his work is the foundation that modern coaching is based upon.

He also said that the athlete needs to know why something works and must be told the benefit of training. Not prone to dogma or pure didactic methods – athletes were better driven by understanding the methods. I personally think that this idea aids motivation as well. The FIRST program does a good job of summing up a few of the elements of the why/how equation for us.

Workout types for training

	Track repeats	Tempo runs	Long runs
Purpose	Improve speed, VO2, economy	Improve endurance, raise lactate threshold	Improve aerobic metabolism, endurance
Intensity	Race pace, PE 8	PE 6-7	PE 3-4, 90 sec./mile slower than race pace
Duration	Very short sessions mixed into a run	One per week, mid-distance run Negative split run	One per week LSD

VO2 is our maximal oxygen consumption and the ability to use this effectively. Maximal oxygen consumption is often related to “the size of the engine” you are working with at the time. A runner with a high VO2 score can run faster, longer. Folks typically score between 40-80 (ml/kg/minute). Research shows that this score can increase by 20% using endurance and interval training.

Lactate threshold is a measure of metabolic fitness. Lactate is produced when you are working anaerobically. How well your body can perform at a steady state where it is producing lactate but able to process and remove this metabolic waste without cramping or feeling miserable is your lactate threshold. Many runners might reach Lactate threshold after running 30 minutes at 60% of their MHR, while an elite runner may not reach Lactate threshold until after running 30 or more minutes at 95% of MHR. Tempo runs introduce a little bit of this anaerobic work gradually and thus slowly raise our Lactate threshold and ability to metabolize lactate waste.

Aerobic capacity is increased by all of these workout types as capillary development builds, heart and lung function increases and you body adapts to the workload being requested. Any rate of travel that gets you into PE 4 and above (65% of MHR) will quickly develop your aerobic capacity and first you develop the distance you can run, while speed comes afterwards as you are able to handle greater loads and are more efficient.

Our version of track work will allow for you to ease into speed work and what it feels like. Remember when you started running and how good it felt to get the walk break? Maybe they still feel good ;-) Well now we’ll introduce a dose of running faster and the result of that is that the regular running will feel good – kinda like the walk break did. It will also allow you to gently rev the engine and build the speed, economy and VO2 capability slowly w/o injury. Later you can try longer repeats and shorter rest intervals (shorten recover time by 15 seconds) to really build this capacity. Many folks come to love track work & it does make you fast. Unlike the name however, it need not occur on a track. If you have already measured a distance you can do your speed work anywhere. We’ll only do speed work one time each week.

AI or aerobic intervals will be sessions where you push the pace and are breathing harder (maybe PE 7) and then you follow this with slow running to allow your tachometer to come down and you are ready to resume your regular pace. Your speed play never leaves you gasping for breath but is a steady, faster-for-you effort. Try to think about that feeling you had as a kid where it was fun to feel yourself accelerate across the playground. You start with one or two and build the number of them over the coming weeks.

GP or gentle pickups are about you learning to drive up the pace and hold it there for 100 yards. You will run it up to about PE 8-9 and then gradually decelerate. You get to walk the recovery phase of these until you feel like running (maybe 90 seconds) your regular pace again. Again we’ll start with just one or two and we are giving you the sensation of “…so this is what it feels like to really get myself going fast”

Our Tempo Runs are speed work also but allow for a slow steady push of the pace. Faster running is necessary in order to improve endurance and lactate threshold. The negative splits workout allows this while slowly exposing you to higher lactate levels. Run your second half of the chosen route 5-10 seconds/mile faster than the first half. By stepping it up in the back half you lower your overall pace, finish strong and train your body to finish strong. Additionally, you get experience with faster running, just a little more challenging than what your base mileage runs are. These runs feel “comfortably hard”. You may feel like walking 10 minutes after these runs to help flush lactate from your muscles.

Our long runs are just that – measured in miles rather than time - you can go as slow as you need to and walk for 60 seconds after every mile if you need to as well. But staying out longer is the cornerstone of any strong distance program. This is the workout you may not skip – or do so at your own peril when the “rubber meets the road”. You run slower than the race pace because you are avoiding injury (none of us can race every week) and are seeking to build up endurance and oxygen utilization. We can do that at a PE 3-4 effort and simply extend the time on our feet. We have to condition and over prepare the muscles, joints and feet for the race effort. Additionally the Long Slow Distance (LSD) run burns calories like crazy and gets you used to being out there and in the groove. If I plan to run a 5k race in 40 minutes then by running LSD runs that far exceeds that time (even if they are shorter runs than 5k) I can acclimatize my body to the effects of being on the course that long. All the body systems need that experience of being upright and moving for at least as long as my goal race time, slow is good for this reason as well.

We run over distance to accomplish several goals.

·        Giving you the confidence that you can indeed run your distance

·        Develop aerobic capacity and endurance so your race feels easier

·        Allow muscles, joints and feet time to acclimatize to the workload

·        It is easier to do than you think if you “train, don’t strain” and then these longer runs becomes a regular means of high calorie burning cardio-fitness for you to use year round.

 We run the mix workout as soon as your body is ready so that you develop more tools in your tool-bag for more effortless and injury free running. The body prefers the variety and you are better motivated by a mix routine. Lydiard felt strongly that even when you are not training for a race – you will benefit from working on your speed and your aerobic capacity year round. Patience must again be emphasized – many coaches state that a runner improves the most in their third year – as lifetime mileage builds and tissues adapt to running. If you provide variety and recovery into your training there is no reason to expect that you will not continue to improve across your running career.

Lydiard was very big into hill training. His runners came from modest means as well and without the advantage of being “professional runners” they could not afford gym memberships and working a day job meant that they had a limited time to train. Lydiard proved that hills were as good as weightlifting for developing lean muscle mass in his athletes and this training offered “specificity” as well in that they were running up the hills; lots and lots of hills. New research has shown that strength training with weights can and does develop lean muscle mass which A) makes you faster, B) deflects the impact to joints in the aging runner, C) provides for a more balanced physique that moves efficiently down the road with fewer opportunities for injury. The idea is not to build bulk but to balance the body and particularly to strengthen the core muscles that support the legs back and pelvis when running. If you choose to add hills to your routine that is a good thing but do not overdo it. Give yourself just a hill or two each week, practice of the race course or something casual. No hill repeats for now. You must practice good running form with hills in order to prevent injury.

            Heels down, no running on your toes and no pushing off of the trailing leg

            Small strides to help with the effort of raising the leading leg

            Slow down your pace and look up the hill with a long back of the neck so that you are taking in air

            Run with an upright posture and use your arms to help you get up that hill

            A class on hills is upcoming – take it easy for now.

New research on intervals has just been published and covered by Runners World. The thing I love about the study is that it works with the athletes’ feel for things (getting you to listen to your body) and that it has a kernel of Arthur Lydiard’s training philosophy in it. Andrew Edwards (an exercise physiologist and former British 400-meter hurdle star) of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, has coined the term "perceived readiness." His study asked a group of trained athletes to complete interval workouts and the study focused on time to start the next interval, which was broken down into 3 distinct groups. The first group waited until their HR was at 130 beats per minute. The second group took the same time for recovery as the repeat took (in this study about 3:18). The third group took the time that they felt they needed before they could crank out another interval at 90% effort. Group one was thrashed from these workouts with the shortest recovery time between intervals, higher overall heart rates for the workout, slower repeats and feeling worse. The second and third groups were much more similar in results but the third group that began the next interval when they felt they could generate 90% effort again (the perceived readiness group) was quicker to start the next interval, ran nearly the fastest repeats, had the lowest overall heart rates for this workout, and felt better when the workout was completed. In other words they did not feel thrashed and yet their workout did not take as long to complete and they were nearly as fast. In the perceived readiness group their bodies were able to limit the rest interval and push a bit more on the whole without breaking the machine. Very cool stuff, and similar to Lydiard’s attitude of not counting the number of repeats his athletes did, but rather asking them to stop just before they felt they were going to diminish in their training performance. While this is an early study – keep this concept in mind when you take your turn with speed workouts and I hope we’ll see more about this in future research.