Tempo runs and interval training are at the top of the list.

Canada's best marathoners--from left to right from left to right: Rob Watson, Dylan Wykes, Matt Loiselle, Eric Gillis and Reid Coolsaet. Photo: The National Post

The very best Canada has to offer in the men’s marathon have been cornered by The National Post. The question for these men: got any running tips for us mortals?

Eric Gillis, a 31-year-old from Nova Scotia had this to say: “When you go out jogging, warm-up and cool down, but that’s not a workout — whatever you do in the middle is the workout.” He goes on to point out that going out and doing the same loop around your house is not going to make you a better runner.

“You want to do tempo runs, which is about 70% of your top speed or really any speed above being able to hold a conversation, without being a sprint,” he says. “If you’re planning on running a half marathon or longer, you have to be willing to mix up your runs.”

The fastest marathoner in Canada, Reid Coolsaet, is a proponent of interval training.

“If there was a gun to your head and someone said, ‘Do that for 20 minutes,’ that’s about the speed you want on an interval,” he said.

For More: The National Post

1. REST AND RECOVER.
Include rest days into your training plan by taking a complete break from training both physically and mentally. Get off your feet, rest your mind, rest your body for the day. I recommend training no more than two weeks consecutively without resting. Novice and/or masters athletes may require “off” days more frequently.  Recovery weeks, typically less hours spent exercising or less miles trained, should be included every third to fifth week.  Recovery days, easy non-intense training, should follow hard training days.

2. INCORPORATE RECOVERY TECHNIQUES.
There are a number of ways to incorporate recovery into your routine. Biofoam rollers and massage sticks help sore, achy or stiff muscles recover from exercise. Watching movies, spending time with family, reading, listening to music or socializing with friends can all be effective relaxation strategies that allow you to disassociate from physical exercise and reduce tension while developing positive mood states of happiness and calmness.

3. SLEEP.
Essential for physiological growth and repair, routinely physically active individuals are encouraged to aspire for 8 to 9.5 hours of sleep each night. Cardiovascular performance can be compromised by up to 20 percent with sleep deprivation while reducing reaction time, the ability to process information and emotional stability.  Naps are always icing on the cake.

4. CONSUME POST-EXERCISE FUEL.
The goal of post-exercise nutrition is to restore muscle and liver glycogen stores, improve hydration and repair muscle tissue. You should eat 15 to 30 minutes after exercise, preferably as soon as possible, when the muscles are most receptive to fuel. Muscle replenishment and tissue repair can be accelerated if you combine carbohydrates and protein together in a ratio of 4 to 1.
Weigh yourself before and after exhaustive exercise to determine how much water you lost. Stay hydrated by consuming at least 24 ounces per pound of body weight lost within six hours after exercise. Performance begins to decrease after only a two percent loss in body water. Include electrolytes to eliminate the risk of hyponatremia if engaging in activity for more than four hours.

5. WARMUP AND COOLDOWN.
A proper warmup is a key component to preparing the body for the demands of any training session or competition. Developing a pre-race warmup is unique to each individual. Performing a warmup will elevate heart rate, VO2, and increase blood flow to the connective tissue and local muscles to be trained. This in turn will raise muscle temperature and help decrease joint and muscle stiffness, therefore improving range of motion. Warm-up periods of five to 15 minutes are recommended with the effects lasting up to 45 minutes. After 45 minutes of inactivity, re-warming may be needed. On the other side of the coin, the recovery process and preparation for the next day’s training begins with a proper cooldown.  Low-intensity aerobic exercise, such as aquatic-based training, light jogging or cycling, are effective cooldown activities for clearing lactic acid and lessening the severity of muscle soreness.

6. INTEGRATE STRENGTH TRAINING.
Strength training is essential for preparing the body for the rigors of training and racing. It facilitates bone health and enhances injury resistance, including factors that contribute to overuse injuries. It can help bridge the metabolic power gap between swimming, biking and running by boosting lactate tolerance, as well as assist with delaying fatigue.

7. USE PROPER EQUIPMENT.
Correct equipment minimizes unwanted stress. A bike should fit you, not you fit the bike. Cycling posture and position is individualistic for maximizing aerodynamics, power, efficiency and comfort while minimizing injury potential and discomfort. Running shoes should fit your gait pattern. The road will wear your shoes faster than running on trails. How to know if it’s time for a new pair? New shoes may be in order if the grooves on the outsoles are worn smooth, or the upper appears stretched causing the foot to slide off the midsole. Note that midsole foam may take up to 24 hours to recover from a run, so training with a second pair of running shoes may provide more protection for your body.

8. FOLLOW THE 10 PERCENT RULE.
Increase annual training hours, or training volume, by ten percent or less. For example, if you ran 20 miles this week, your total mileage next week should not exceed 22 miles. If you are training according to time, for example, and your triathlon program called for 15 hours of training this week, it’s recommended training hours not exceed 16.5 hours the next week.

9. INTERVAL TRAIN.
Proper interval training can improve VO2 and anaerobic threshold.  Intervals allow your body to adapt to and eventually race at greater speeds.

10. KNOW THAT MORE IS ALWAYS BETTER. Recovery allows your body to adapt to training loads. Conditioning should be specific to the event you are training for. Training volume can be defined as the combinations of how often you work out (frequency) and how long you train (duration). Training volume is going to look different for an Ironman triathlete versus a 5K runner.

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Vic Brown is an associate strength and conditioning coach at Boston University and assistant coach for Boston Performance Coaching, a triathlon and endurance athlete coaching service. He can be reached at vbrown@bu.edu.

Written by: Matt Fitzgerald

The workout that I call a relaxed 10K time trial is not one that I learned from anyone else. Although I’m sure other runners do it, I came up with it (or reinvented it) on my own. It’s one of my favorite workouts, so I can’t help but try to convert other runners to it, as I’m doing right now!

In format, it couldn’t be simpler. Warm up with some jogging and a few strides (20-second efforts at 90 percent of full speed), and then run a measured 10K at about 95 percent of race effort, on the clock. A post time-trial cooldown is optional. (Contrary to popular belief, cooling down after hard running serves no purpose in terms of attenuating physiological stress or facilitating recovery. It just feels good and adds a little more volume to the workout.)

Nailing the targeted intensity of this workout is crucial. It should be close enough to a maximal, race-type effort to give you a strong training stimulus and an accurate measurement of your current fitness level, but it should not become a de facto race. You need to hold something back so the workout doesn’t take too much out of you, compromising your training in the next few days.

When I say “95 percent effort” I mean exactly that. So, if you currently have 40-minute 10K fitness, you should run your relaxed 10K time trial about 5 percent slower than that, or in 42 minutes. You might think that the difference between a 95 percent effort and a 100 percent effort is negligible in terms of how stressful a workout is, but it’s not. That last 5 percent makes all the difference in the world. If you are currently a 40-minute 10K racer and you run a 42-minute 10K workout, you will feel significantly more comfortable in that workout than you would in a real race and you will also significantly feel better in the next day’s run.

What’s the purpose of running a relaxed 10K time trial? Again, it gives you a very clear view of your current fitness level. In that regard, it’s the next best thing to an actual race. Once you get the hang of this workout and are able to perform it at the right intensity, you will find it very easy to convert your time to a projected race time. As in, “I think I could have run about two minutes and 15 seconds faster than the time I just ran if I’d had a gun to my head.”

Regardless of the distance of the race you are training for, your 10K performance capacity is a great indicator of your race-specific fitness. In other words, you need to be capable of running a solid 10K whether you’re preparing for a 5K or a marathon. So, I like to run a relaxed 10K time trial every three or four weeks to track my progress toward my race goals, whatever they may be at the time.

In addition to being an excellent fitness indicator, the relaxed 10K time trial is also a tremendous fitness builder. It’s important to do some very hard workouts when you are training toward doing your best in races. Hard workouts are uncomfortable, so it requires a certain amount of motivation to put in the effort required to absorb the suffering you must absorb to get the most out of such a workout. In my experience, performance test workouts are the most motivating kinds of workouts. These are workouts where the object is to put up a good number, just as you do in races, and are workouts that you do the same way every time, allowing you to compete against yourself.

Just be sure you don’t let that competition get out of hand. I keep myself in check by running conservatively in the first relaxed 10K time trial I do within a given cycle. I go hard but keep the edge off my suffering and thus produce a time that will be easy to beat when I repeat the session. Ideally, improved fitness alone will enable you to improve your relaxed 10K time trial time in each new iteration. It’s best to allow a little room to improve it through increased effort if necessary, however, because it’s important that these workouts build confidence–you need to set yourself up for success. My goal is to beat my last relaxed 10K time trial just slightly in each new one. Even if I feel capable of blowing my preceding time away on a given day, I hold myself back to leave plenty of room to post a still better time in a few weeks.

Finally, a note on the training environment. I love running on the track, so I always perform my relaxed 10K time trials there. You will certainly post faster times there than anywhere else, and being able to take splits every 400 meters helps you regulate your effort and pacing. But if you hate running in circles or don’t have ready access to an oval, you can do this workout elsewhere. Just do it in the fastest environment that’s convenient to you and do it in the same place every time, for apples-to-apples comparisons.

[sgi:MattFitzgerald]

Check out Matt’s latest book, RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel.

A marathon gives you plenty of time to warm up during the race. Photo: ASI

A new study finds that static stretching before running reduces running economy and performance.

Whether, when, and how runners should stretch are hotly debated questions lately. A new study by researchers at Florida State University may settle the specific question of whether runners should engage in static stretching (held passive stretches such as toe touches) before running. Ten trained male runners participated in the study. On separate occasions, they ran for one hour on a treadmill, beginning with 30 minutes at a moderate pace and ending with a 30-minute performance test wherein the runners were instructed to cover as much distance as possible. The runners performed 16 minutes of static stretch for the major muscle groups of the lower body before one of the runs and just sat around for 16 minutes before the other.

On average, the runners ran 3.4 percent farther in the non-stretching performance test than they ran in the post-stretching performance test. Yet while they ran farther after not stretching, they burned 5 percent fewer calories, indicating that pre-run static stretching sabotaged running performance by reducing running economy. These results were published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

Why would a static stretching warm-up make you run less efficiently? The authors of previous studies have speculated that static stretching warm-ups temporarily reduce musculoskeletal stiffness. While the word “stiffness” generally has negative associations with respect to athletic performance, a certain type of stiffness is beneficial to running performance. When you run, your legs function as springs that repeatedly bouncing off the ground, capturing “free” energy (i.e. energy that the body does not have to generate for itself) from each impact and using it to for forward thrust. Just as a loose mechanical spring (think of a worn automobile shock absorber) is less effective than a stiffer one, a less stiff leg (resulting from laxity at key muscle-tendon junctions) bounces less effectively off the ground during running. Consequently, the leg captures less “free” energy from the round and running economy is reduced.