Last night I went to the Run Inn, which is a bit of an institution as far as the running scene in Kerrisdale goes. They have just started their winter training clinics. They have clinics to get you ready for the 10km Sun Run and Vancouver Half Marathon if you are interested. I will be running with them every Thursday evening at 6:30 and I am going to try and run with the group at 8am on Saturdays. The 8am runs are going to be difficult for me. I have only run at 8am in the morning 11 times in my life. Those 11 times were race day; the day of each respective marathon.
Last night’s training session was fun because my friend Michael Hoenisch, who has just started running, came for a work out. I enjoy training with the people at the Run Inn. Not only are the staff extremely knowledgeable, but also a wide range of people come out. To cater to the needs of such a random sample of runners the Run Inn splits us up into three groups.
1. Walk/Run Group
2. Road Group (Fartlek)
3. Track Group (Intervals)
By splitting us up into groups, everyone is able to get a great workout, not feel intimidated and stay injury free.
It’s never too early or too late to start running with a group. Besides getting the added benefit of being social, running groups usually take care of the two most important “runs” or training sessions that you should be doing in a given week.
To improve your running there is two general techniques. Run faster or run farther. Very, very rarely will you combine running farther and faster. If you do combine them you will likely be on the couch watching soaps with an injury.
When you are running it is good to think of yourself as a car, a car with 4 gears. Each gear has a threshold. Once you reach a certain speed you have moved into another gear. Make sense, right? Understanding and using your 4 gears will make you a smarter and better runner.
How do you know that you are in gear 1? You are in gear 1 if you are jogging. You know you are shifting up and out of gear 1 when you can no longer comfortably hold a conversation. This is the most used gear, especially if you are a distance runner (10km or more). This is the gear that you use to do all your long runs. Long runs are usually 1 to 3 hour run and they are done 2 to 4 times per month (I will talk more about long runs next time).
All your maintenance runs should be done in gear 1. To improve your fitness you should be running 3 to 6 days a week depending goals. This does not include cross training (i.e. working out at the gym). If you are not doing a long run or and interval work out, which I’ll talk more about this in a moment, you are doing a maintenance run. Typically maintenance runs take about 30 to 50min. Keep in mind that during a maintenance run you may need to walk for part of it to stay within the parameters of first gear.
Gear 2 is seldom used. It is simple to understand. Intuitively, one puts out more effort in gear 2 than when in gear 1. You should be going faster than when in gear 1. Typically, you know that you are in gear 2 if you are in the middle of a race. Gear 2 is often referred to as “Race Pace”. It usually feels good to be in gear 2. This is often when one gets a good does of the “runners high”. However, for reasons that I won’t go into now, stay out of gear 2 unless you are in a race.
The second most used gear should be gear 3, which in my opinion is not as fun to be in as gear 1 and 2. This is the gear that will help to make you a faster runner. You know when you are in this gear if you are putting out 80% to 90% effort. As previously mentioned, this is the gear that is used for “Interval Training”.
At the track last night I did a Pyramid set using this gear (it is called a pyramid set because the workout starts small gets bigger and then goes small again. Between each interval I rested for the same amount to time that it took me to do the rep.
- 2km warm up
- 400 meters 1min 25sec
- 800 meters 2min 50sec
- 1mile 6min 7sec
- 800 meters 2min 45sec
- 400 meters 1min 10sec
- 1km cool down
I do not suggest doing a work out like this unless you are under supervision or you have a very solid RUNNING base. In other words, you have been running for several months and you feel comfortable running 7 to 10km. Even if you are in shape from other forms of exercise (e.g. biking), you need a running base to do this workout. There are other types of workouts that use gear 3 that I will talk about in future entries.
Gear 4 is never used except for perhaps the last 100meters of a race. Gear 4 is an all out sprint. For the average runner it doesn't serve a useful purpose. Some elite runners will train in this gear, but that is beyond the scope of this entry.
Resolutions: When you run, you will use the right gear and get the most out of every run.
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