“A lot of you are continually trying to far exceed the paces you need to be running using the incorrect rationale that harder is better for you.”
As you prepare for the spring racing season, be careful to not let yourselves get caught in the overtraining trap. Many of you still approach your workouts with the attitude of “Let’s see how fast I can run.” That’s a typical Type A approach to training, but it’s one that will eventually get you into trouble if you repeatedly overextend yourself in your workouts.
When planning a tempo and interval workout, consider looking at a pace chart before you workout and have appropriate paces in mind based upon your current fitness and/or your target race times. A lot of you are continually trying to far exceed the paces you need to be running using the incorrect rationale that harder is better for you. Nothing could be further from the truth and the excess fatigue that you build up by constantly overreaching your target paces not only leaves you more susceptible to injury, it also sets you up for some major disappointments on your race days.
Likewise with the weekend runs, stick to targeted formats. On progression run days (which is the format for most of weekend long runs) make sure that the first 10-15 minutes of your run is a crawl and then settle into marathon pace (MP) plus 1:30-2:00 per mile thru the first 1/3 of the run; MP plus :45-1:00 thru the middle 1/3 of the run; and something around MP for the final 1/3 of the run. On the pickup days, stick with your target MP on the pickup sections. If your target marathon pace is 7:00 per mile, don’t be running 6:30 pace on the pickups. If you’re running significantly faster than your MP target, not only will you be digging yourself into a fatigue hole that could take several days for you to dig yourself out of, you’re also missing the opportunity to engrain in your brain what MP is supposed to feel like on race day.
Training isn’t complicated. Don’t try to make it more complicated or more taxing than it needs to be. You certainly want to be running fast on the 2-3 days every week that you meet with friends for your hard workouts (intervals, tempos and long runs fall into that “hard” category), but you want to be running appropriately fast and not crushingly fast. On the other 4-5 days of the week you should be doing nothing more than easy to moderately paced aerobic work which could be running (at 1:30-2:00 slower than MP) or some suitable cross training such as pool running or elliptical training.
If you want to be a successful distance runner you need to aim to keep your total volume of training high, but in order to do that you have to be very careful about limiting the pace of what you’re doing based upon your target race times. Don’t ruin your chances of being a fast runner on race day by constantly trying to be fast in your training.
George Buckheit is the leader and coach of Capital Area Runners. CAR is a DC metropolitan area club that was founded to provide group training opportunities for highly motivated and competitive minded runners of all ability levels.
