I should start out by stating that the following diatribe is by no means a professional opinion on effective race training. I have been running since high school cross country, have done a number of marathons, half-marathons, a handful of adventure races, and soon, nine consecutive Around the Bay Road Races. I have even managed to get relatively decent times. Often in spite of myself.
Like most people, my running training has - and is - continually evolving through trial and error. I can easily say that one of the biggest training errors I have made, once upon a time, was running, a lot. I used to believe that to be prepared to perform well on race day, I had to be running consistently, and at consistently high distances. What this lead to was plateaued results, IT band injuries, sore knees, poor agility, and terrible performance in other sports.
It was frustrating, although I would readily admit that I was only an amateur runner, I still could not understand why I was not able to get any faster and stronger. In fact, I generally found that instead of getting better, my form and overall feeling would get worse. More importantly, this "feeling worse" even extended to how I generally felt on a day to day basis.
This was until I actually put a bit more effort into researching the training techniques and approaches of different types of amateur runners. I was intrigued, particularly with, say, cross-fit athletes, and the way in which many actually wouldn't run much at all (and certainly less than me), and yet perform really well (and certainly better than me).
Roughly 14 years since I first started running, if there is one thing I have learned about both feeling prepared for a race, and performing well during one, is how important it is to vary your training. Moreover, how important it is to all but forget about running, and engage in other activities to round your body out.
Yes, running is still the priority preparation exercise, but whereas old me would have only focused on pounding the pavement, new me now only uses running to benchmark mileage, and to gauge distance capability. Otherwise, in any given week, I will also do:
- Swimming. I enjoy doing this for the low impact, the inherent refreshment and feeling of vitality, and the overall body work out.
- Boxing. I love going to McGrory's, at the corner of Barton and Sherman in Hamilton, and wailing on a bag. Boxing provides great agility training (approximately 60mins of a 90min workout do not even involve punching). As well it releases aggression and boosts confidence in a way running never can.
- Weight Training. One of the biggest mistakes I feel like I always used to make was not properly integrating weights into my training. Suffice to say, heavily weighted squats, deadlifts, lunges, and other compound exercises are among the best things you can ever do for yourself and your body.
- Sprints, Stairs, Spinning. These three are kind of a no-brainer, but still a lot of people don't do them like they should, myself formerly included.
Since re-aligning my training ways last year, I have seen a great improvement in my running performance, and overall body feeling. I am stronger, faster, with better form, and have happily achieved new personal bests. More importantly, I no longer have to endure the mind numbing boredom of running long distances nearly everyday in the weeks leading up to a race.
Of course, I have learned all of this just in time for a new challenge, being 30. Now I need to learn proper and effective recovery techniques for my no-longer-irresponsibly-20-something-body. Wamp WAA*
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| Nine times around this, across nine years. |
