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When you become serious about running it is necessary to experience many different types of running workouts.
You may be preparing for a race or resuming running after taking a long break - whatever your reason is you must have proper running workouts in place.
Check out the information below and for more in-depth information click on the links referred to to learn more.
Running Workout #1: Base Running
As long as you aren't a 100m or 200m sprinter, the core of your running program should be base running. Just as a building has to have structure, running depends solely on its base.
If a building's foundations are flawed, then the building inevitably will collapse. In the same way if your running speed does not have a solid foundation, you will quickly be breathless and before long have to slow down and stop.
Base running is crucial to ensure you have enough depth and should be in place before accelerating your speed in your running workout.
This running workout, interval running, is running at an anaerobic pace and is taxing for the body. Interval workouts deliver results so should be incorporated into your running workout routine.
When training for long-distance events you should be able to run, at an easy pace, for at least one hour before you attempt the interval running workout.
As said before when talking about base running, the foundations need to be there before you start doing anything else.
Only when your base is in place you can then move on to doing speed work. I would suggest once a week is enough if you are training for longer races (10k and over).
Interval sessions are hard, taxing sessions and overdoing them during a week of training will make it difficult to include other, tough, running workouts (lactate threshold runs, long runs) into your schedule.
You should remember that your interval pace is faster than your lactate threshold pace.
This is the pace you will be at when you experience lactic acid building up in your legs and you won't be able to keep up this pace for miles without slowing down.
Fartlek is great for beginners to introduce them to running speed workouts. Fartlek means just getting out there, warming up, beginning to run at varying speeds and for different periods of time and finishing up with a slow easy paced cool down period.
Each Fartlek session differs; for instance you could be running for five minute down to one minute sessions with two minutes of 'floating' time between.
Floating means keeping up a moderate speed which alleviates a recovering jog or walking. It's also an excellent way to build up to more structured speed running workouts like intervals.
Another way to increase your running speed is with running strides. A lot of runners have discovered that adding a few strides to their easier runs is beneficial.
Running strides are short runs of 60-100 metres in which you simply pick up the pace - they are very fast but not all-out attempts.
A good reason to introduce running strides into your running workout is that usually when a race is ending you try to pick up the pace and 'go for it'.
Running strides simulates that final burst in addition to helping improve your running style and economy.
They have to be quality strikes and you will need to concentrate to ensure your legs are going fast but at the same time you maintain your running style.
Should you try to do them following a hard tempo or interval session you will be too tired so it's recommended to do them after easy runs.
Another great way to train your mind and body for a race is a tempo running workout. Athletes as well as experts worldwide think the tempo running workout is an important step to increasing running speed and attaining more success.
Essentially, a tempo run will aid your body to moving for a period of time at a constant rate. Tempo running is also called lactate threshold pace - this is because the speed of a tempo run is such that you do not build up much lactic acid in your legs.
And because you are running at that threshold you train your body to become better at getting rid of the lactate acid, in turn making your lactate acid threshold higher.
Should you run slower than tempo pace your body isn't able to build up the lactic acid - however if you run faster than tempo pace there will be a rapid build up of lactic acid in your running muscles.
Be aware that too much lactic acid in hour muscles will make you stop quickly as it causes heaviness in the legs and you will need recovery time.
So it is a bit hard to find that sweet spot at first, but when you do, you will be able to reap the rewards quickly.
If you are working towards an important race then an important running workout is goal pace running. In a goal pace running workout you focus part of the workout on your goal pace.
Practising goal pace running prepares you for a hard race day and will give you an clearer idea of whether your goals are truly attainable.
This running workout, the Yasso 800, is so called after Bart Yasso, a Runner's World editor. It has gained a lot of popularity over recent years. During marathon training you are required to build up the 800 metre repeats each week (from abour four to ten).
The goal is to run these 800 metre-repeats at a constant pace.
The minutes spent running these 800 metres translates into how fast you will be able to complete your marathon in hours.
For instance if your Yasso 800 takes 3:30 mins for 800 metres and you then you recover for the same time (3:30) then your time in hours to complete the marathon should be 3:30 hours.
Using the same math doing the 800 metre-repeats at 2:50 mins will therefore bring around a lesser time of 2 hours 50 min to complete your marathon.
Is it really that easy? Not really! The Yasso 800 is a good running workout although its predictions are not totally accurate.
An expert on improving running performance is Veronique Billat. She is a fast half marathoner (sub 1:20), coaches top runners in France and is also a revered exercise physiologist.
In her article in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, Billat states that the 4x5 running workout increases max VO2.
VO2 means the amount of oxygen that your body passes on to your muscles and a higher max VO2 helps to increase your running speed.
Simply, run four times for five minutes each time - take a 2 1/2 minute recovery job in between runs. Do this at a pace somewhere between tempo and interval pace and this should be close to 5k race speed. It is a very tough but satisfying running workout.
Billat has got another special workout which you can read about in the link below.
These are the basic running workouts that I use for most of my running.
There are many variations of the basics.
These ones, when done properly will give you all you need for top performance in your next race.
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