Don't get too bummed out if you've had a running-related injury during the past 12 months. After all, you're in the majority. Scientific studies show that about 60-65 percent of all runners are injured during an average year (By definition, an "injury" is a physical problem severe enough to force a reduction in training). When compared to many other endurance sports, the risks associated with running are higher. For example, runners miss about 5-10 percent of their workouts due to injury, while racewalkers are absent just over 1 percent of the time, and step-aerobics participants go AWOL with a frequency of less than 1 percent ("Incidence and Severity of Injury Following Aerobic Training Programs Emphasizing Running, Racewalking, or Step Aerobics," Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, vol. 25(5), p. S81, 1993). Still, running is far from being the most injury-producing sport. In recent study in the Netherlands, running ranked fourth-behind outdoor soccer, indoor soccer, and volleyball - in the total number of injuries produced per year, and whne injuries were expressed per hour of actual activity, running was well down the list - in 14th place (Sportblessures breed Uitgemeten, Haarlem, DeVrieseborch, 1990). In addition, running's 65-percent-injury and 5-percent-absence rates could be significantly lower - if runners knew more about the actual causes of injuries and made a few simple adjustments in their training schedules. In fact, research suggests that running injuries could be cut by around 25 percent (Sport for All:Sport Injuries and their Prevention, Council of Europe, Netherlands Institute of Sports Health Care, Oosterbeek, 1989). Lets identify where injuries are likely to occur. The five anatomical "hotspot" for running injuries are: (1) The knee (25-30 percent of all running injuries occur ther) (2) The calf and shin (20 percent of all injuries) (3) The ilio-tibial band - a long sheath of connective tissue which runs from the outside of the hip down to the lateral edge of the knee (10 percent) (4) The Achilles tendon (8-10 percent) (5) The foot - the focal point for hobbling injuries like plantar fasciitis (10 percent) To learn how to minimize your injury risk (the full article can be read by purchasing Vol.9 Issue 5) and many more running related topics. Simply enter What You Don't Know About Running Injuries Can Hurt You, in the "search archives" box, or enter any subject you wish to learn more about. A subscription to Running Research News is another way to receive valuable information. SIGN-UP NOW

If you carry out challenging interval workouts during your training, you are studying the true nature of fatigue.

After all, you have probably had the following experience: You decide on a workout, say 10 X 400 in 90 seconds each (we've selected a familiar type of training session and an arbitrary time for each work interval). Your warm-up goes well, and you're off and running!

The pace you have chosen is an ambitious one, but you are feeling great the first time around the track, and you cover the initial 400 in 87 seconds. The second one is 88, the third 89, and from the fourth one on you are struggling a bit to hit your target of 90. For the most part, you stay on track, but one interval, we'll say the eighth, slides up to 92.

The ninth feels really tough, but you hang in there and produce a 90. You have reached the point in the workout at which fatigue should be close to maximal. After all, you are a believer in the traditional concept of fatigue. You know that as you continue to run quickly, for one work interval after another, your intramuscular pH is dropping fast, reflecting the tide of hydrogen ions which are flooding your muscle cells(1). That devastating fall in pH is interfering with the release of calcium ions into your muscles' sarcoplasmic areas (2), making it much-more difficult for your muscle fibers to contract forcefully (3). As a result, adhering to planned pace is becoming a major undertaking.

And then, something magical happens! At the point when muscular fatigue is greatest, when pH has bottomed out, when calcium ions have been locked away for the day, when muscle contractility has ebbed, you uncork your best 400 of the day - an 85! Who said that running does not have its magical moments?

Huh? If muscle fatigue is truly a function of metabolic events inside muscles, that last 400 should have been the slowest, not the fastest interval of the day. Our views of fatigue - and of what determines running pace during workouts and races - must be wrong!

Indeed, that is what recent research carried out at the University of Cape Town, the University of Stellenbosch, and the Sports Science Institute of South Africa is telling us. In this investigation, eight healthy males (average age = 22 years) completed "anaerobic-capacity" tests in the laboratory on a Monark friction-braked cycle ergometer (4). To gain a better understanding of the nature of fatigue and of pacing strategies during high-power exertions, the South-African researchers used an element of deception with the subjects. Specifically, the young men were informed that they would be completing four 30-second maximal trials, as well as one 33-second and one 36-second maximal effort on the bike. In reality, they completed two trials of 30 seconds, two tests of 33 seconds, and a duo of 36-second exams.

The deception took place in the following way: Prior to one of the 33-second tests, the cyclist were told that it was actually a 30- second exertion, and the same was true for one of the 36-second affairs. The researchers hoped to determine whether the subjects would subconsiously alter pace or strategy during the "informed" 36-second trial (when they were told that the trial would last for 36 seconds), for example, compared with the "deception" 36-second trial, when the cyclists thought they would only be cycling for 30 seconds. The cyclist were allowed to watch a clock during all of their maximal exertions, but - ingeniously - the scientists had programmed the clock to run more slowly during the deception 36-second trial, so that it would tick off 30 "seconds" during what was really 36-second time frame.

To learn more about Fatigue (the full article can be read by purchasing Vol.22 Issue 2) and many more running related topics. Simply enter fatigue, in the "search archives" box, or enter any subject you wish to learn more about. A subscription to Running Research News is another way to receive valuable information.
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    What is the best possible workout for advancing your running velocity at lactate-threshold? Best Lactate-Threshold

    That is an important but "dangerous" question. After all, a single workout does not exist in a training vacuum, producing adaptations which occur totally uniquely, without any influence from the overall training plan in which the workout is deployed. In one set of circumstances, for example, a session of 3 X 1600 at 5-K race pace might help put a sharper edge on a runner's vVO2max. In a different context, the 3 X 1600 could push the same athlete "over the brink" into an over-trained state.

    Nonetheless, we know that certain sessions can produce unique effects on lactate-threshold speed, and that these effects are often specific to the runner involved in the training. For example, running for 60 minutes at a moderate pace (below lactate-threshold velocity) probably will have a significant, positive effect on lactate-threshold speed for the relatively inexperienced runner who has been logging about 10 to 15 miles of running per week. However, this same session would have no effect at all on lactate-threshold velocity for the experienced, 70-mile per week runner who has been engaged in lots of high-quality training. The latter individual would probably have to soar up to intensities of 90 to 95 percent of VO2max and beyond to get lactate-threshold speed moving in the right direction.

    As you can see, it is possible to give specific workouts the "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" sign when it comes to lactate-threshold improvement, and one of our tasks as runners is to identify the sessions which are likely to have the greatest impact on threshold and then position them properly in our training. Best Lactate-Threshold

    But how do we identify such sessions? Fortunately, that job has been made easier for us, thanks to recent work carried out by Carl Paton and Will Hopkins of the Centre for Sport and Exercise Science at the Waikato Institute of Technology and the Department of Sport and Recreation at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand (1). Paton and Hopkins have conducted an extensive literature search for scientific papers dealing with the effects of training on the performance and physiology of endurance athletes.

    This search used stringent criteria. For examplem Paton and Hopkins excluded studies which investigated the effects of training on performance in subjects who were merely recreationally active, instead of being involved in serious training. The New-Zealand duo also eliminated inquiries carried out with individuals who did not have the characteristics of serious endurance athletes ( for example, exercisers with low aerobic capacities, low training frequencies, etc.). The studies examined by Paton and Hopkins also had to be peer-reviewed and published in a respected scientific journal.

    In addition to looking for research which explored the link between training and improvement in lactate-threshold speed, Paton and Hopkins also searched for studies whick looked at the effects of training on general endurance performance, maximum power (measured during an incremental test), maximal oxygen consumption, exercise economy, and body mass. Included in the Paton-Hopkins diggings were studies which focused on moderate- and high-intensity interval training, tempo running, plyometrics, and resistance training.

    The study which produced the greatest increase in lactate threshold in runners was the research (often mentioned in the pages of Running Research News) carried out by Leena Paavolainen and Heikki Rusko in which experienced runners reduced their mileage from 70 to 45 miles per week, substituting( for this mileage) explosive training which includes progressive series of jumps, bounds, hops, and very fast running(2). The jumping-bounding-hopping-sprinting workouts designed by Paavolainen-Rusko team, carried out three times a week for nine weeks, yielded about a 6.8-percent increase in lactate threshold. Best Lactate-Threshold

    Almost as good for threshold were the workouts employed by Edmund Acevedo and Allan Goldfarb of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in their study of seven well-trained male distance runners (3). These runners had an average age of 22, and they were actively involved in competitive racing; mean VO2max was 65.3 ml.kg-1.min-1. As the study began, the young runners were training six to seven days per week, averaging five to 12 miles of daily running. Weekly volume averaged 50 to 65 miles before and throughout the investigation. RRNEWS Subscription

In New Zealand, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a short, stocky, fiercely determined man named Arthur Lydiard experimented with his own body to see how much running the human body could take. Running up to 200 miles in a week, he writes in his book Run to the Top, “…(I) was so determined to find just what the human body would stand without actually cracking that I frequently exhausted myself completely and had to walk the last few miles home”.

After 9 years of experimentation he developed a sequence of training phases, cobbling together marathon-type distance training, hill-springing, leg-speed work, repetition training, medium-pace training, interval training and sharpening and freshening. And soon his runners met with unparalleled success, winning the Olympic Games gold, silver and bronze medals, and accumulated world records like small change. So great was their domination of the local running scene that his runners would meet several months before New Zealand track championships and literally decide who would win each distance event. Lydiard’s training system used aerobic marathon type conditioning before proceeding to faster, higher intensity, anaerobic running in preparation for racing. It revolutionized running around the world, and has remained relatively unchanged since.

And therein lies the problem. No significant changes have been made to Lydiard’s system since, apart from individual adaptations to running in more severe climates such as in Finland, where deep snow curtails the runner’s ability to train outside for several months each year, or where it’s simply too hot to run outside in desert climates. Lydiard remained inflexible with his schedules for many years. For example, he advised runners to run 100 miles per week in their conditioning phase. However, the majority of recreational runners don’t have the ability to run 100 miles per week. Biomechanics, age, and time constraints have proven major limiting factors many runners simply disintegrate attempting to run this much mileage.

Other phases of Lydiard’s training have also proven unrealistic for recreational or even elite runners. The hill springing phase of his program has caused sprained ankles among runners not strong enough for the rigors of this highly ballistic, high impact technique, or sore legs that temporarily incapacitate the runner. Also, many runners never attempt the time trials recommended by Lydiard, because they don’t know what they are or how to do them. More recently, exercise science has shown several other techniques to be advantageous to runners, such as strength training, which Lydiard shunned, claiming that runners get strong enough through their running.

What has changed since Lydiard devised his system is an exponential increase in knowledge from exercise science, based on thousands of research papers and experiments. Several dozen new fields in this discipline have opened up in the past three decades. Today’s most basic exercise science textbooks contain far more information about endurance training and sports nutrition than was ever known back in the 1950s and 1960s. Here I summarize seven major changes that are recommended to runners contemplating using Lydiard’s system. These recommended changes are based on the results of exercise science over the past 3 decades.

Change #1.

Perform running fitness tests before and after your “build-up”. How do we know that long distance running has improved our fitness? Subjectively, we feel we can cover longer distances more comfortably, to the extent where we believe we are ready to run a marathon. But how can we really know? Elite runners have access to a university or Olympic training center treadmill test for VO2 max and anaerobic threshold, so they can have these tests done before and after “build-up”. But most of us don’t have access to these sophisticated tests, so we need to turn to field tests. Towards applying field tests, let’s use a basic exercise science approach to our training. Most research papers that investigate running performance use field tests along with lab measurements. Field tests are simple, easily administered, and reveal a lot of valuable information about our fitness state. Lydiard himself administered field tests. He would often have his runners compete in a marathon upon completion of their “build-up” phase. But that’s an extreme way to measure your fitness because there’s a lot of muscle cell damage done in a marathon, and it takes a long time to recover, wasting your valuable training time. I don’t recommend a marathon as a field test.

Here I provide an example of a field test that you may try. Choose 2-3 distances and do time trials on a track or an accurately measured flat road surface that preferable has accurately measured mile markers. Suggested time trial distances:

1 or 2 miles

3 or 5 miles

10K or 10 miles

Choose one distance from each of these three categories. Your time trials should be performed over a 2-week conditioning period, with 2-3 days of recovery jogging between trials to allow your legs to recover. These time trials should be done solo, without the aid of a pacer, as you want your post conditioning time trial to be under identical circumstances. Note the weather conditions, temperature, humidity, wind strength and anything else that could impact your times in these trials.

Record your time for each distance in the preconditioning tests, then again after your “buildup”. You can easily calculate your percentage improvement in each distance. If you find little improvement from your pre- to post- “build up” tests, you might consider adding another 2-4 weeks to your conditioning “build-up”.

Change #2.

 Include periodization recovery during the “build-up” conditioning phase. Periodization is now a commonly used technique when planning endurance training schedules for cycling, swimming, cross-country skiing, triathlons, and most other endurance sports. It incorporates lower volume recovery running, something that many runners have great difficulty integrating into training schedules. It allows recovery from incessant long running by programming in a lower mileage recovery week every few weeks. Most runners do this on a 3 weeks increasing mileage block, followed by a 1 week recovery block. This is referred to as a step type approach, where running volume increases for three consecutive weeks, followed by a lower mileage fourth week. In this lower mileage week, often called an adaptation week, the intensity of the running can also be reduced.

The purposes of periodization are to program recovery running into the training schedules, as well as to:

• allow muscle glycogen levels to replete

• encourage muscle tissue regeneration and healing

• provide a mental break from the constant grind of long hard running

Who are the proponents of periodization?

Dr. David Costill recommended periodization training as far back as 1986 in his book “Inside Running: Basics of Sports Physiology”. What is interesting is how few of the books by the “experts” on running training recommend periodization during the “build-up” conditioning phase. So how is periodization used to plan training schedules? It looks something like this:

Conditioning Program for advanced distance runner, allowing recovery week every 4 weeks.

Periodized Conditioning Program for Advanced Runner

Miles

120

100                                      _     *            *     *      

80               _   *          *      *     *    _      *     *     *    

60       *     *    *    *    *      *     *    *      *      *     *   

40       *     *    *    *    *      *     *    *      *      *     *   

20       *     *    *    *    *      *     *    *      *      *     *    

0         *     *    *    *    *      *     *    *      *      *      *    

           1     2    3    4     5     6     7     8      9    10    11

                                    Week

Conditioning program for semi-serious runner, allowing recovery week every 3 weeks.

Peridiodized Conditioning Program for Semi-Serious Runner

Miles

90

80                                                                                 *

70                                                       *              *        *

60                                 *            *      *      *      *        *

50              *          *     *     *     *      *      *      *        *

40       *     *    *    *     *    *     *       *      *      *        *

30       *     *    *    *     *    *     *       *      *      *        *

20       *     *    *    *     *    *     *       *      *      *        *

10       *     *    *    *     *    *     *       *      *      *        *

0         *     *    *    *     *    *     *       *      *      *        *

           1     2    3    4     5     6     7     8      9      10       11

                                    Week

Change #3.

Include Anaerobic Threshold (AT) training during the conditioning “build-up” phase

What is AT?

AT is running “at a pace that produces an elevated yet steady state accumulation of lactic acid”, according to Jack Daniels, PhD., in his book “Daniel’s Running Formula”.

Why should we do this? AT running may be one of your most valuable training techniques, as it :

What is AT?

AT is running “at a pace that produces an elevated yet steady state accumulation of lactic acid”, according to Jack Daniels, PhD., in his book “Daniel’s Running Formula”.

Why should we do this? AT running may be one of your most valuable training techniques, as it :

Include Anaerobic Threshold (AT) training during the conditioning “build-up” phase

• increases your AT cruising speed of long training runs, thereby
  



• increasing your overall pace
  



• increases your VO2 max
  



• prepares you for track workouts to come.
  

How do you do AT running?

The pace is somewhere between your current 10K pace and your 2-hour long run pace. i.e. you can maintain it for 50-60 minutes. These do not need to be full, hard interval training intensity type workouts, but they should be faster than your normal road running pace. AT runs can be done in bursts of 3-10 minutes, with a brief (1-3 minute) recovery jog, or they can be longer steady paced efforts lasting up to 10 miles. You should aim to maintain a steady pace the entire distance. I recommend using a heart rate monitor for AT runs, as you can quantify your speed and heart rate to establish a cruising speed. Expect to be running between 75% and 85% of maximal heart rate in these runs. AT workouts can be done every week or two.

Change #4

Include one day per week of interval training or higher intensity training in your “build-up”.

Why do interval training during conditioning?

One inherent problem with the classic Lydiard build up conditioning phase is that your pace does not vary much from day to day. This prevents your neuromuscular system and leg turnover from adapting to a faster pace, hence your VO2 max improvement will not be as high as it could be.

The research literature is swamped with papers on the effectiveness of interval training (See references).

This could include any form of interval training such as fartlek and track training