“Most runners are fairly annal about their training and tend to feel guilty by taking a true easy day.” – Joe Rubio
Every now and then I like to dust off this article (https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20788804/the-dirty-dozen/) about the dozen most common training mistakes and link it in the newsletter. In it, Pete Magill discusses a lot of training mistakes that you’ve probably heard me rant about in the past including starting your workouts too fast, recovering inadequately on what should be your easy days, and just generally overtraining.
Among my favorite sections of the article:
“Every single time we walk out the door, every single run, every single workout should be a negative split,” says Sean Wade, a 1996 Olympic marathoner for New Zealand and coach to thousands of runners through his Houston program, The Kenyan Way. “That means the first mile of a distance run should be super easy, and as we naturally warm up we should get quicker.”
and:
“Most runners are fairly anal about their training and tend to feel guilty by taking a true easy day,” says Joe Rubio, a two-time Olympic trials qualifier in the marathon and coach of Central California’s ASICS Aggies (Today Joe leads Running Warehouse and is a member of the USATF Foundation board). “Most fail to acknowledge that all gains in fitness are achieved during periods of recovery.” Rubio views recovery as a necessary component of training. “The Overcompensation Cycle is the basic principle that guides all athletic improvement,” says Rubio. “The body will grow stronger if it encounters a training stress above and beyond what it normally encounters – called an overload – and is then provided adequate time to recover and regenerate.”
and my favorite:
“Distance runs provide the exact same benefit (strengthening slow-twitch fibers, etc.) at an easy, conversational pace as at a harder (medium) pace. But the easy pace ultimately delivers greater benefit because we’re able to run longer and recover more quickly.”
A lot of you have heard me rant about that last point until I’m blue in my face! Many of you make the mistake of simply running too fast on your recovery runs and weekend long runs. The end result is that you are training in a constant state of elevated fatigue which leaves you prone to injury and unable to produce quality efforts on your race days. In addition, that “faster than you need to be running” approach makes it extremely difficult to complete the high volume of training that you need to be doing when training for marathons and half marathons. Don’t make your training harder than it needs to be! Slow down!
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.
