One
of my favourite training quotes for running is, “Make your hard days hard and
your easy days easy.” I think the individual who came up with this quote was
1972 Olympic marathon champion Frank Shorter. Shorter often complained that he
couldn’t find any training partners who wanted to run slow enough on easy runs,
but then were unable to stick with him on the hard days.
Frank Shorter finishing the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Shorter averaged 140 miles/week for the entire 1970s.
Recently I watched a seminar with
exercise physiologist Stephen Seiler. I’ve been a big fan of Seiler over the
last year, because he not only studies endurance training, but also studies
what elite endurance athletes do for training. He found that elite athletes
across all endurance sports spend at least 75-80% of their training at very low
intensities (55-75% of maximum heart rate). Another 5% of training is spent at
75-85% max HR and the remaining 15-20% is performed at greater than 85% max HR.
Contrast this with sub-elite and
recreational runners. According to Seiler, both groups tend to spend much more
time training at 75-85% max heart rate. Seiler calls this the “black hole” of
training and it’s usually achieved by running too fast on designated easy days.
This type of training ends up being too fast for recovery purposes, yet too
slow to develop race specific qualities. The end result is your race specific intervals
are too slow, because you tired yourself out the day before.
Running
too hard on easy days is a common problem amongst high school and university
runners. It’s really hard to force yourself to run at lower than 75% max HR. Hammering
easy days would’ve gone by the wayside a long time ago except for the fact that
it actually works gets one fit fairly quickly. There is a downside though! Back
in the 1980s when Portugal was one of the top running nations data was
collected on their national level male runners. Those who were doing a lot of
sessions at 75-85% max HR (i.e. hammering their easy days) had fewer years at
the national level than those who spent more time at lower intensities. As
well, this group wasn’t quite as fast as the other group.
If you’ve spent enough time studying the
training of elite runners you might ask about Hicham el Guerrouj. He often
dropped down to 3:00-3:10/km on his easy days and occasionally 2:50/km.
However, as fast as this seems the world record pace for the marathon is 2:55/km.
So, relatively speaking he wasn’t running that fast. Keep in mind too that El G
had better running genetics than just about anyone that ever lived, was running
70-100 miles/week, and didn’t have school/work interfering with his recovery.
Late in his career it would’ve been necessary to go a little faster in order to
see continued gains, but as interval training intensified and the competitive
season approached he ran slower on his easy runs.
Benefits
of Running Slowly
According to running coach John
Kellogg, running at low intensities allows one to run without straining. The
best athletes in every sport always make things look effortless. By learning
how to run without straining you become more economical. Seiler also believes
that low intensity running is the key to improving economy as it allows one to
practice the skill of running for longer. There are also cardiovascular
benefits that develop better at low intensities. In Ultimate MMA Conditioning
Joel Jamieson says that at high heart rates the heart contracts before it fully
fills. Thus, training at lower heart rates allows the heart’s left ventricle to
expend thereby improving the pumping capacity of the heart. Finally, higher
intensity interval training turns up our fight-or-flight mechanism, which
releases a lot of stress hormones. By going very slow the next day we turn up
our rest-and-digest system thereby aiding in recovery, but still allowing for
increased running adaptations.
In conclusion, one can improve
running ability through a variety of ways. However, in order for most runners to
maximize running performance and have a longer career it’s best to spend most
of one’s time training at very low intensities with about 15-20% of training at
higher intensities.
Stay fit,
Jonathan Pratt
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