by Coach Mike Ricci, USAT Level II Coach
As we get closer to the start of the race season, be careful not to be rushing things too much. It’s easy this time of year to want to go out and start really drilling yourself with some high intensity training. During this past off season, I have seen many of my athletes prepare for the upcoming season with an incredible work ethic. I have also seen these same athletes catch a cold, or tweak something skiing or mountain biking missing a few weeks of training.
When we miss training time, most of
think that the season is over and we
might as well start to get ready for the
2005 season, because the 2004 season will
be a wash. Not so! The base training we
do over the course of the fall and winter
is exactly that, base training. It’s the time
we start to re-build the engine for the
upcoming season and hopefully push our aerobic limits to new
highs for us. Some athletes want to rush back and jump right into
interval training, as they think this will be the cure all. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. Sure, you will get a nice jump in
improvement (short term) but in a few weeks, you will be peaking
and all the other athletes in your Age Group will just be starting
their interval training.Who cares how fast you are in March or April? It’s later in the season when you want to have your endurance, strength, and speed all come together. If you happen to miss a few weeks (2-4) of training, then start out slowly again, and get your fitness back to where it was. Stick with your long term plan of building aerobic fitness, that is the key to your season – you can do all the intervals you want, but if you can’t sustain the pace for longer then ten minutes, you will be sorely disappointed in your racing. You can poll any of the athletes I coach, and they will tell you that once they backed off on intensity and prescribed to my idea of solid base training, they were racing faster then when they were doing interval workouts. Why? For most of us, our biggest limiter is our aerobic conditioning.
My advice to you is to improve your aerobic base over time and you will see improvement without ever doing a single interval. Think about that.
Whatever Happened to Food?!
by the Fuel Coach, Ellen Coleman
Nutrition research generally focuses on the effect
of individual nutrients or food components on
health and disease. To
understand
mechanisms, it’s necessary to use
single nutrients or dietary
constituents so that complex
interactions don’t make the
interpretation of
experimental results
impossible. However, foods
contain a large number of
biologically active ingredients
and athletes eat foods, not
nutrients or dietary
components. Trying to
understand the full impact of diet
on health when considering only
isolated food components is comparable
to missing the forest for the trees.
More...
Going Mental!
by Coach Mike Ricci, USAT Level II Coach
My background: 5k PR 16:54, 10k PR 35:35 - in
the last few years I've been ironman training
and ignoring most type of speedwork. In 2003
I raced exclusively at the shorter distances. I
was hoping to see a sub 38:00 10k at the end
of my Olympic Distance Races. My open 10k time in May was 38:50
at the Bolder Boulder or 6:16 pace.
At the Boulder Peak Tri my run time
was 40:10 or 6:28 pace. 3% loss -
pretty good - it has been established
that 7% loss in run pace is very good
so my 3% loss is even better. I would
say that my LT work was good and
my strength was solid. The issue
becomes why aren't I running faster
in an open 10K? Strength issues? No,
we already ruled that out with the
solid run off the bike in comparison
to my open 10k.How about lack of
ability to old LT? Nope, LT work was
strong. Low aerobic base? No - I had
run a 3 week cycle of 240 miles (80
mile average for 3 weeks).
So what could it be?
How about foot speed? Let's
examine this a little further. When I
was running at my peak levels of 18:00 5km times at altitude (1999)
or 17:15 5km at sea level - I was running speed work almost every
week. Speed work for me is defined as 'going fast for short
periods' - not running mile repeats or 800s or anything longer
then a 200m sprint. Speed for me means SPEED or RUN FAST,
feeling like you are about to DIE, recover,
and then repeat. So for my 2004 training
I went old school - back to the basics. I
s t a rted out with 4x30 second repeats.
Then I did 6x30, 8x30, and lastly 4x30, 2x
60 seconds, 4x30 again. A few other
times I did 4-8x 15 seconds as fast as I
could. These hurt! My longest interval was
60 seconds over these 4-5 weeks.
The next week I ran a 5k in AZ - I had about 4-6 speed workouts
under my belt. No LT work. I was hoping to run under 6:20 pace or
around 19:00. Here is how the race unfolded: Mile 1: 5:51, Mile 2:
5:31, mile 3 was 5:50 - finish time was 17:47 - later found out the
course was short .1 so call it 18:22 - or 5:55 pace. Hmmm - I didn't
do any LT workouts, nothing longer then a 1 minute pick up....so
what was the diff e rence in my pace? The short speed work. Keep
this in mind when you feel like your running is getting stagnant.
The bottom line is: If you want to run fast, you need to run fast.
upcoming season and hopefully push our aerobic limits to new
highs for us. Some athletes want to rush back and jump right into
interval training, as they think this will be the cure all. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. Sure, you will get a nice jump in
improvement (short term) but in a few weeks, you will be peaking
and all the other athletes in your Age Group will just be starting
their interval training.
Who cares how fast you are in March or April? It’s later in the
season when you want to have your endurance, strength, and
speed all come together. If you happen to miss a few weeks (2-4) of
training, then start out slowly again, and get your fitness back to
where it was. Stick with your long term plan of building aerobic
fitness, that is the key to your season – you can do all the intervals
you want, but if you can’t sustain the pace for longer then ten
minutes, you will be sorely disappointed in your racing.
You can poll any of the athletes I coach, and they will tell you that
once they backed off on intensity and prescribed to my idea of solid
base training, they were racing faster then when they were doing
interval workouts. Why? For most of us, our biggest limiter is our
aerobic conditioning.
My advice to you is to improve your aerobic base over time and you
will see improvement without ever doing a single interval. Think
about that.