Ryan

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

Note: This is again an article I wrote a long time ago. I would probably write it much differently now than I did back then. However, I don’t want to shy away from my historical views. They were important steps in the progression of my views on running and played a role in shaping my current views.

This is a very popular question during the winter, as people gear up for the coming year. High school runners are between cross-country and track seasons and are wondering what the most effective way would be to improve their times for the spring track season. The rest of us are waiting for spring and summer track, road racing, cross-country, basically pick your poison. We are all looking for the same thing. What can we do during our non-competition months to best prepare ourselves to rewrite our personal record books when the next racing season comes around?

The answer for us all is simple and easy if you are willing to do the training. The off-season is the time to establish your aerobic base. Why would this be such a simple answer? Why would it work for the high school middle distance runner as well as the veteran marathoner? Simple: everything starts from an aerobic base, an aerobic base takes time to properly established, it can be maintained during your racing season fairly easily once established, and continually and repeatedly building your base stronger during the off-season is the most effective way to gain long term improvements.

Why is an aerobic base so important? For long distance runners, the answer is actually pretty obvious. For races of 5k and up, the race itself is nearly all aerobic. In a 5k race, about 85% of the energy your body will burn will be burned through aerobic processes. Only 15% of the energy you burn, give or take, will actually come from anaerobic processes. Even for races of as short as 800 meters, the race has a meaningful aerobic component. Aerobic training offers many benefits along this line, such as increasing the number of capillaries, the smallest of blood vessels which go through your muscles and directly deliver oxygen to your muscles for energy production, in your working muscles; increasing the number and size of mitochondria, the aerobic power plants of the muscle, within your working muscles; and increasing your body’s ability to burn fat at higher rates, meaning you save your less readily available glycogen for when you really need it. The last one may not be of high importance for races of shorter distances but can have positive effects across the board. On top of that, building a strong aerobic base will allow you to get more out of your harder workouts you will be doing later with less risk of injury. The better the base you get in, the stronger your muscles, bones, and connective tissue will be, increasing your body’s ability to handle the punishment of hard workouts as well as its ability to avoid injury. On top of that, your body will be working from a higher level of fitness, allowing it to work harder, get more improvement from each workout, and recover more quickly and completely between workouts which means you can get in more workouts.

How do you establish a good aerobic base? It’s actually one of the easiest parts of distance running training. All you do is get out and run easy. How far? As far as you can go and still be able to run tomorrow. How fast? Go by how you feel. Sometimes, that may mean fairly fast. Other times, maybe it means quite slow. In fact, leave your watch at home and just enjoy the scenery if that’s what you want to do. According to Arthur Lydiard, there is no such thing as too slow for these runs, only too fast. I’m not totally sold on that but I do believe most people, myself included, come much closer to too fast than too slow. How frequently? The more the better. Once a day every day is great. Twice a day is even better. Many of the best runners do 13 runs a week. That’s twice a day 6 days a week with a long run once a week. Of course, gradually build the number of runs you do. Don’t go straight from 4 runs a week to 13 runs a week without giving your body time to adapt. How long should you do this for? Ideally, as long as you can. The longer, the better. I would say a good guideline for minimum in most situations would be 2 months for distances that would be standard track and field distances, 3 months for longer distances such as the marathon. Why so long? Well, it takes time to establish a good aerobic base. Aerobic fitness takes time to build, it’s not something that can be gained as quickly as anaerobic fitness.

Fortunately, aerobic fitness also won’t be lost as quickly as anaerobic fitness. Maintaining it during your racing season and your preparations for your peak race isn’t too hard. With a good base built, it can also be easier than if you don’t have a good base. All you have to do is cover some distance on the days between your hard workouts and once every week or two get in a long run. Again, the same rules apply as when building the base with one little twist. Remember that you have to be well rested for your workouts. Still, pace doesn’t matter on these runs. Just cover the distance, which is the most important aspect. What does matter is making sure you are adequately rested for your workouts. That may mean not running quite as far and backing off the pace some. How frequently you run also may or may not change. Some people will still do 13 runs a week, others will remove some of the 2 a day workouts and some even feel the need to take occasional days off. Experiment to find what works best for you.

Building a base is a very simple but very important and frequently overlooked part of training for all distance runners. Many runners seem to be totally focused on intervals, intervals, and more intervals then wonder why their times stagnate after a while. The answer is simple. Intervals are important for reaching your highest level of performance on race day but they will only take you so far. You need to take a look at the whole picture and a large part of the picture for any distance runner should be building an adequate base to support the later high intensity training that will take you to your peak. As my cross-country coach when I was in in high school said, running is like building a pyramid. The larger the base, the higher the peak.

Some great sources on base training:

Summer of Malmo (discussing summer training for high school and collegiate runners but works for any base training, I frequently do my revised version as a "Winter of Hillrunner&quot

Lydiard Training Guide

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

"People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care." – John Wooden

Recently, I received a request from someone who wanted me to coach her daughter. In the end, I had to say no. I won’t get into the details but it just wasn’t a good fit. I didn’t feel like my working with this individual would have been in her best interest. More than picking up another client, I wanted to see her do her best. Even in declining to coach her, I cared about her as a runner and as a person and wanted to see her get what was best for her. It’s always hard to turn someone down but sometimes it’s in their best interest.

I don’t often write about the topic of coaching or coaches on the blog because I’m afraid people might get the impression that I’m interested in self promotion. That’s not what this is about. It’s just a statement of what I believe is the most important aspect of being a coach and, if you are thinking of getting a coach, one thing I truly hope you will think a lot about before hiring anyone.

If your coach doesn’t care for you, is your coach going to invest enough of him/herself to really help you get the most out of your running? Is your coach going to give enough attention to the details of your personal life that make you different from every other runner in the world and build your training plan to work around that life? Is your coach going to be paying enough attention to adjust that plan as unforeseen circumstances present themselves? Is your coach going to be personally invested in your success?

If not, what are you paying for?

There are many coaches out there. There are varying degrees of knowledge, from those who are true masters of the sport to those who have only been involved in the sport for a few years. As important as it is to pick someone who has deep and broad knowledge of the sport and how to succeed in it, it’s also important to pick someone who is going to care about you as an individual and is going to be personally invested in you. There are coaches out there who meet both qualifications. If you’re looking to hire a coach, make sure you’re picking one of them.

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

You’re out running on a beautiful winter day. Gentle snow falling, a fresh blanket of snow over everything. You planned ahead and have your trail shoes, Yaktrax, screw shoes or whatever other device you decided necessary. Still, while beautiful to see, the fresh blanket of snow leaves your footing questionable at best. Now, what do you do?

Traction devices aren’t always enough. Worse yet, we don’t always get what we planned for and we can be caught without what would be best for the conditions we’re running in. So we need strategies for running when our footing isn’t the best. Here are a few strategies I’ve found useful after 20 Wisconsin winters.

As most people from wintery climates know from walking in the conditions, the key to staying upright is keeping your center of gravity over your feet. I’ve heard the philosophy of "walk like a penguin" several times over the last few years. The problem for runners is penguins don’t run real fast for a reason.

Still, we can carry over lessons from the penguins. The idea of keeping your center of gravity (more) directly over your feet still applies. Shortening your stride and keeping your feet more directly under you is the most important step you can take. This means you might not be able to run with that wide open, graceful stride you would like to. You need to become a shuffler. Just remember, it’s better than not running at all and you can use it to practice a quick turnover.

Once you get that short, quick stride down, you have running straight at a steady speed mostly taken care of. Next, you have to worry about changing speed and going around corners. When it comes to these things, the simple rule is nothing sudden. There are times when I come to nearly a complete stop to take turns. There are times when I begin slowing down several yards before I need to come to a stop. On downhills, I might start slowing 10-20 yards early or even more. Again, this is just what we have to do in some conditions. These things may break up our runs a bit but they are better than not running and they are better than falling and getting hurt.

There are times when you just know you’re going to slip. Those patches of glare ice where melting snow runs across the sidewalk or similar obstacles are just waiting for us out there. No matter what we do, we’re going to slip. In these cases, it can be better to take a controlled slide than try to run across and lose your footing. I remember one person I ran with a few times who said I would "surf the ice" to get across particularly bad patches. I would essentially get a wide stance, get my arms out for balance and just slide across the patch of ice. This was my strategy for getting across particularly bad patches and it has saved me from quite a few sure falls.

So what do you do if all the advice above doesn’t work and you do fall? I’ve run through 20 Wisconsin winters. Only once did I go through a whole winter without at least one fall, which means maybe all the above advice should be taken with a grain of salt and commenters will have advice that I should be following. Unfortunately, when we do fall, it happens so quickly that we usually respond instinctively. If you can temper your instincts in that split second you have, don’t try to catch yourself. This is often how people get hurt. The best strategy I’ve found is to just tuck and roll or tuck and slide.

Finally, the treadmill is not your enemy. If the conditions are bad and the treadmill is an option, don’t hesitate to use it. The good news for most of us is that slippery conditions typically only last a day or two. Roads and sidewalks will be cleared, we’ll be back to sure footing and you can head back outside without fear of falling.

What do you think? I know there are people reading this who have a lot of experience running through winter weather. What tips do you have to stay upright while running?